# Treating Ick With Garlic?



## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

I have had to remove fish before to treat them with salt, since my tank is heavily planted I am unable to treat them in the display. The stress of a hospital tank was too much and killed some of my fish before, this time I want to try treating them in the display by raising the temp and adding garlic. Has anyone tried this? Will garlic kill my plants? I read you can both add garlic water and feed them garlic directly. 

For background information this is a 16 gallon tank with 20 Embers and a single Dwarf Gourami that has two small white dots. All of the Embers are perfectly healthy, it is the Dwarf Gourami's that I can never find without ick.


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## WaterLife (Jul 1, 2015)

I haven't heard of using garlic before. Though usually garlic benefits are when the garlic is in the bloodstream (ingest - like dogs eating a *safe* amount of garlic to repel fleas).

I would personally just use Kordon Ich Attack (works and is extremely safe for plants, inverts and fish even if overdosed)


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## landonnap (Mar 31, 2017)

So how do you identify ick just for future reference, is it a lot of spots or just one or two.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

Good question I just assume it is ick, this is as I said something I notice on Dwarf Gouramis. Specifically more on the side fins but sometimes on their tail fin, is is a raised white dot. Appears to be a tiny version of a Nerite snail egg.

I saw some at the store with 5-7 on each then a few had just 1 or 2. I bought one with 1 or 2, this same store was where I bought one that appeared 100% healthy and a few dots appeared a week later. That fish eventually died in quarantine.


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## lahornby (Apr 19, 2017)

When I had saltwater fish, I and many others who made our fish food always added garlic. That was the main reason for making homemade fish food, was to get garlic in the fishes diet.

The garlic food was/is very useful to PREVENT ich. It wouldn't cure a fish that already had it.

BUT, none of that might be relative here since these are freshwater and my experience is with saltwater.


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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

There are people online claiming it worked better than anything else to rid their ick, claiming the ick can not live off the host if it has traces of garlic in their blood. This one person went through like 8 medications before trying garlic. I just made up some garlic food I am going to try it, as well as float a cube...possibly a growing cube will release oils into the water column.


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## Dman911 (Nov 24, 2016)

Teebo said:


> There are people online claiming it worked better than anything else to rid their ick, claiming the ick can not live off the host if it has traces of garlic in their blood. This one person went through like 8 medications before trying garlic. I just made up some garlic food I am going to try it, as well as float a cube...possibly a growing cube will release oils into the water column.


I used to put garlic in the home made discus food as it has anti-fungal properties and supposedly helps with color. I can assure you there is no ill effects to trying garlic other than I'm not sure if it is effective for ich. I know heat works but you may experience some melting of plants. I recently used heat with Kordon ich attack for 14 days worked great.

Dan


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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

Anti-fungal you say? Hmm I am having an issue in one of my tanks with white cloudy water, I have eliminated the possibility of an algae bloom and have come to the conclusion that it is a fungal bloom. I wonder if some garlic will help with that, I just tossed in an entire whole cube and let it sink.

So I diced up a cube and pressed it into a cup with some NLS I crushed into powder. I added all the juice to the tank from 1 cube, as well as sunk an entire uncut cube to grow. 

It has been 12 hours (overnight) and none of the fish are acting weird, my whole room reeks of garlic and the water surface smells strongly like garlic...I hope I did not add too much to this 16 gallon tank. No negative side effects so far, my Dwarf Gourami even eats chunks of diced garlic raw! 

I am going to continue experimenting with garlic, and I may replace ick medications with garlic in the future if this works out.


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## Dman911 (Nov 24, 2016)

Teebo said:


> So I diced up a cube and pressed it into a cup with some NLS I crushed into powder. I added all the juice to the tank from 1 cube, as well as sunk an entire uncut cube to grow.
> 
> It has been 12 hours (overnight) and none of the fish are acting weird, my whole room reeks of garlic and the water surface smells strongly like garlic...I hope I did not add too much to this 16 gallon tank. No negative side effects so far, my Dwarf Gourami even eats chunks of diced garlic raw!
> 
> I am going to continue experimenting with garlic, and I may replace ick medications with garlic in the future if this works out.


Lol yes it can be quite a potent garlic smell, you probably won't have any vampires knocking on your door.

Dan


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## lksdrinker (Feb 12, 2014)

I really really really really doubt that the garlic will help cure or prevent ich. Garlic is known to help stimulate a fish's appetite and therefore medicated foods are easier to introduce. This is why garlic is often talked about when diagnosing/treating many aquatic ailments. But as a standalone treatment I think you're wasting your time and money!

Its also worth pointing out that marine ich and freshwater ich are not the same thing.


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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

Just going to leave this here...

https://youtu.be/mFIspTSWc9s


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## lksdrinker (Feb 12, 2014)

Teebo said:


> Just going to leave this here...
> 
> https://youtu.be/mFIspTSWc9s


as a good lesson of what not to do when you incorrectly diagnose something as ich.... I hope?! super ich? lol


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