Galic Foods

[woody88]

I feed my fish brine shrimp in garlic and no 'bookworm' is gonna put me off. My clowns and my trop fish love it.

Like you said, they eat seaweed in the wild and that's a plant so it must contain lipids!

 

[sorgan]

Isn't galic what the welsh speak

 

[-Nemo-]

Garlic is great for fish... where did you read/were told otherwise fishy?
On occasion soak my fish's food in freshly crushed garlic, they love it!

 

[fishy55599]

ive heard it on Ur when i asked about feeding, somebody says it can cause liver damage?

 

[fishguy2727]

Again, how much garlic does it take to do harm? In waht form? Too much of anything can kill, even water.

 

[woody88]

Again, how much garlic does it take to do harm? In waht form? Too much of anything can kill, even water.

Well said!

Isn't galic what the welsh speak

LOL

 

[fishy55599]

Again, how much garlic does it take to do harm? In waht form? Too much of anything can kill, even water.

doesnt say

 

[Donya]

I feed my fish brine shrimp in garlic and no 'bookworm' is gonna put me off.

Simma down thar woody lol.

It looks like "wombat" is Dr. Ian Bricknell from the Aquaculture Research Institute at University of Maine. Some profiles say he is the director but I don't know whether that is current or if he was just the director in the past. A bit more than your average bookworm I'd say. However, that said...

Like you said, they eat seaweed in the wild and that's a plant so it must contain lipids!

The lipid thing is the one aspect of the discussion that bugs me, since it's all about the alleged evils of "terrestrial plant lipids." Not being a botanist, that term is more-or-less meaningless to me, and I suspect meaningless to a lot of other people reading and commenting on that other thread. Obviously yes, seaweeds contain lipids too, so I would like to know what terrestrial plant lipids are the problem and whether there is any overlap with algaes and other "ok" foods. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't - without more detail I have no way to know offhand (well, without a massive heap of possibly fruitless searching anyway). I'm planning to have a look at the articles referenced and also the refuting(?) articles referenced in the link a few posts up. Hopefully those articles will shed some light on the specifics of "terrestrial plant lipids."

One thing to add more generally though, regardless of whether the literature is yay or nay for garlic: along the lines of what fishguy2727 was mentioning, there is a difference between foods that have garlic as a minor ingredient and foods that have been soaking in the extract untill dripping. Whether there is benefit, no change, harm, or not enough research to know requires looking at the studies done. However, even if something shows benefit in small amounts, that doesn't mean more is always better. Consider Iodine - trace amounts are fine in food/water and beneficial to inverts, but dumping the whole jug in is another matter completely. Anyway, I'll get back to this once I've had a bit of a read and a few more cups of coffee (and a WC one of my tanks is overdue for), since it seems like this topic has had enough arm waving strewn about on the web already.

 

[Donya]

Ok, I said I would post back after reading the articles. I have looked at the articles and can now add the arm-waving with a bit more confidence. Well, I've looked at MOST of the articles anyway. The Internet is being a punk so I haven't looked at all the pro-garlic ones. Looked to me like the pro-garlic articles were mainly concerned with freshwater environments and possibley non-fishy environments though, so I question the relevance of those to marine tanks.

Regarding the heart/liver-related articles cited by Wombat (presumably Dr. Bricknell), they concern three plant extracts: rapeseed oil, lineseed oil, and olive oil. Basically what I get from those articles is that it's a bad idea to raise or maintain your fish using those as a staple diet or large component of a staple diet. The studies do report liver and heart complications in the fish, but one also reports no such illness (although it does report other effects, such as decreased growth rate). The statement about marine fish lacking a certain enzyme present in freshwater fish is supported by some of the articles (two enzymes actually), and this has to do with production of fatty acids. The mechanism one article seemed to be putting forward was that if you screw up the fatty acid levels via a bad diet, you get liver and heart problems. That all seems reasonable to me. However, I am not seeing a direct tie to garlic as an addative from any of those articles. These articles are using the plant extracts as a primary diet or a large percentage of a mixed diet (such as 50/50 with fish meal). As far as I'm aware, nobody is using garlic that way, although I don't know by weight how much garlic oil you'd end up with from soaking something like flakes. There are some chemical breakdowns of what all was in the tested oils, but nothing jumped out to me as something to go hunting after as a connection to garlic specifically. If anyone would like to go on that hunt and can't get a hold of the articles for whatever reason (I did have to get them through my university library), I can PM or post the tables.

This doesn't mean that there is nothing behind Wombat's statements, just that I don't see an obvious generalization from those articles to what he was saying. I don't see any resolution to the issue one way or the other from the cited materials. Similar to what StandbySetting said, until I run accross some more relevant articles (maybe they exist, I have no idea), garlic will still be in the category of aquarium voodoo for me.

 

[fishy55599]

okay, so it might be fine to feed now and then but not too much of it?

 

[fishguy2727]

Even constantly could be fine. As long as half the food you are feeding isn't garlic they should be fine (even highly benefited from it).

 

[Donya]

okay, so it might be fine to feed now and then but not too much of it?

I see no conclusive answer in the literature to this question, so my philosophy at this point would be the conservative "don't fix it if it ain't broke" view: if you see no obvious need to try substance X (e.g. you have existing foods that are working just fine to grow fish without it), there's no need to add X or buy products with X in it. Additionally, if you can't determine by weight how much you're adding, soaking really absorbant food in garlic extract starts to become like dosing Iodine without having a test kit - the literature is completely inconclusive as to what level is detrimental and you're also flying blind with no measurements.

After some additional thought this morning, any antibacterial/antiparasitic properties of garlic would actually provide reason for me NOT to use it as part of a staple diet for fish without a really good reason to do so, even periodically. Periodically without reason would be worst actually from that standpoint. This would be for the same reason I wouldn't periodically dose a perfectly fine tank with antibiotics or other antiparasitic meds. Even if the livestock isn't compromised in an obvious way, from the standpoint of controlling bad microbes and other parasites, it's generally best not to pull out meds unless there is an obvious risk (e.g. preventing an injury from becoming infected) or immediate disease-related need. Otherwise you start to wander into superbug territory. The probability is low of course since you could wipe everything out on the first go and never have it reintroduced, but if that doesn't happen, unnecessary exposure is a good way to inadvertently select for resistant strains.

Regarding reasons to use garlic or other extracts for that matter, if I had a fish that for some reason refused to eat anything but food containing or soaked in garlic, that would obviously present a pretty good reason to use it regardless of any possible fat deposits on the heart/liver. At that point it's choosing between a dead fish and a live fish. But, the microbial side of things would still give me reason to try to treat that as a temporary solution and ween it back to a regular diet as fast as possible.

So I guess I've ended up about halfway onto Wombat's boat with regard to garlic, although for different reasons.