Loaches Online Forum

In a recent post, euthanasia was brought up...

Clove Oil Euthanasia

angelfish83 wrote:Clove oil is better than freezing- which is quite painful and a crummy experience for the fish. Clove oil just knocks them out dead painlessly at a high doseage... beats a whack to the head by a mile... freezing by two.

-brett.

Yup. Harold who is a very knowledgeable person from the LFS I go to suggests doing that. I think the doseage is readily available out there. Apparently if you do it right its like you going into anaesthesia. You just kind of feel dizzy then WHAM you're asleep...

Just that in this case you don't wake up.

Apparently an extremely small dose does have an anaesthetic effect and calms fish right down. I suppose that has uses for moving big fish or something.?

I (and others) have used clove oil for knocking out puffers to trim thier teeth. I think it is about 3 drops to a few cups of water (dont remember the specifics off hand) and in a minute or two the belly up (knocked out).

The new Drs. Foster and Smith catalog is carrying an new clove oil product for humanely sending your fishy to the big aquarium in the sky. It's called "Euthanase".

Awww I can't imagine having to put one of my fish down.
But I'd never want them to suffer.

if you put enough clove oil in they will die quite qiuckly and painlessly. i think thats better than watching the fish die a very slow painful death due to disease. its not nice to do even so.

personally i use boiling water, the fish hits the water and dies immediately.
i suppose if it's a large fish your way is far better but for fry and small fish
i'll carry on using the water.

mick

mick, would you like it if i dropped you in boiling water?

sure you'd die quickly, but those first few moments would be hell, literally..

-brett.

i thought we were talking about seeing your fish of?.
i have bred fish for many years now and every spawning will have deformaties in one way or another, so while i'm culling them the boiling water is at my side.
and the fish die instantly, so in that way it is not cruel.

mick

I think, myself, that anything which is very quick is good. there are probably a lot of ways of achieving that.
what I find less clear is how you measure, for want of a better phrase, pain or additional suffering in a fish - stress & serious physical suffering is clear, but if a fish needs euthanasing it's usually so immobile it's very easy to catch (someone once said in a thread somewhere else "if you can't catch it, you shouldn't put it down yet" ), how do you tell if the clove oil is causing extra distress before the fish dies? I've read reports of labyrinth fish reacting extremely poorly to clove oil, and I would be concerned that dojos might have the same issue...

I've had to put fish down before, and I netted them, transferred them to a board and hit them very hard behind the head with the sharp edge of a trowel. very quickly. not pleasant at all, but the quickest and surest method I could think of. I decided that the extra distress of being out of the water for a few seconds was as nothing compared to the distress they had suffered for some time prior to my intervention. I can see that this would be a horrible thing to do to a fish you'd had for ages and were very attached to, but I think that the extra distress it would cause would be for the owner and not for the fish. it would probably be more difficult for a very big fish, too.

just my view.
it's an unpleasant subject, but one that needs to be dealt with well...

I wouldnt know how the clove oil reacts with labyrinth organs but I am pretty sure with normal fish it appears to be painless. With the low concentration I use to immobolize puffers, they simply start swimming around slower and slower until they just settle at one spot on the bottom of the dish they are in. After that they tend to roll over and then can be handled. I am sure with euthanasia the concentration is more and the effect is just a bit quicker.

BTW, clove oil can be found at many places easily, often either as potpourri or as a topical anethstetic for tooth pain. Probably one of the more expensive places but I got a small jar of it at CVS for $6.99 if I remember correctly. I had to ask the pharmacist about it, and despite having it 'behind the counter' it was labeled for use as potpurri. Just make sure it says 100% pure clove oil on it.

I havnt been able to get my hands on any clove oil down here, and believe me I've checked everywhere.

I had to put down a betta last year, and the only thing I could think of that would do a similar thing to clove oil was vodka. I realise its probably not the best thing, and I'll probably be criticised for it (go ahead), but i couldnt stand the thought of decapitating him.

I put him in a cup of his tank water and added drop by drop of my best vodka. I figured if he was gonna go by vodka, I'll use my best stuff.

He stoped his convusing which he had been doing for the past week, and literally fell asleep. It looked very peaceful, but then again I'm not a fish so I cant tell if it was or not.

I'm guessing that if fish feel pain the way we think about it, that alcohol is probably not a good way to go. I think it would have a corrosive effect on the slime coat, etc...

There was a poster here (forgive me, but I've abandoned trying to recall who posted it) who had to euthanize a large fish - was it a koi? That poster used soda water, which contains CO2 in such high amounts that the fish suffocates immediately.

I still believe that a very quick reduction in temperature would combine a limit to oxygen and a general numbing effect. That would be no more tank water than will cover the fish in a small container, and into the freezer.

I suspect that decapitation is even less painful and more quick, but I'm one of those who would have a hard time with the concept.

Yeah that's not something I like doing either. I've been sport fishing for big and small fish, but for the trout, I really hated decapitating them when they were still alive. The twitching of the head could last for many minutes and it was really unsettling. I tended to let the trout run out of air in the bucket and die before I cleaned them. Slow I know but I really hate drawing blood on them when they are still flopping.

As for pet fish... I've never put any down. Most of my fish die pretty quickly if I can't heal them. I've also learned that even if the fish is suffering, there's still a chance it will get better. My old skunk loach was in a really bad way for a month or two, all grey with fins decaying and belly sunken... he looked terrible. I considered putting the poor thing down. But after some heavy internal parasite treatment, he slowly got better and regrew his fins, and now he's almost his old self, just a little skinnier than he used to be.

Many aquatics shops over here stock 'Koi Calm' by NT Labs, which is clove-oil based. Primarily used by the industry for relaxing koi for ease of handling, it can be used with any freshwater fish - with an overdose leading to quick and painless euthanasia. I have no idea whether NT Labs ship to other countries, but some mail order companies may offer this product.

Emma