Australia's Science Forum

Hiya,

I'm sure a few of you have been in the same situation.....our front office girls called me this morning because one of the goldfish they have is looking very poorly, upside down & can't swim properly, so they wanted to know how to kill it humanely. I did a quick google to get details etc, & found this method using clove oil.
http://www.loaches.com/disease-treatmen ... in-the-sky
Apparently freezing is quite nasty (I've done that in the past, & now I feel a sick at the thought of what I did )
You can get clove oil from a pharmacy or health food store, so I'll get some, put the poor thing out of its misery, & let you know how it goes.

Not looking forward to this.....but if it's quick & painless I'll feel better.

I regularly anaesthetize fantail guppies with clove oil, so we can see the red blood cells running around their tails. We have a "sleeping chamber" where we place them to go to sleep, which has a couple of drops of clove oil in a ice cream tub of water, and then a "recovery chamber" of clear water for them to wake up in. Every so often we have a irrecoverable sleep, which is why I take them to the prep room to "recover", but pretty much the fishies have a big sleep, with wierd alien abduction dreams, and wake up happy afterwards.

Just checked my chem store and I have 5 bottles of Oil of Cloves.

Apart from an anaesthetic for fish what else would it have been used for in the past?

When I started in science we had lots of beautiful (and very old) tiny bottles, too.

I knew of it as a home remedy for sever toothache, and have tried it - YUK!

Just did a very quick google search - many interesting uses, but other than as an anaesthetic, nothing that seems to relate to school lab work.

It was always used as a toothache remedy, stops pain almost immediatly, but you still have to make an appointment with the dentist, its not going to fix problem

My daughter once told me she had an upside down fish.
She was told to feed them frozen peas and they will recover.
She did and the fish was swimming the right way up in no time.
I don't pretend to understand how this works, just passing on the story.
J

My son,who works part-time in a pet shop,told me our fish was swimming upside down because it had too much gas in it's belly. Don't know if thats true but the fish soon fixed itself up. I wonder if the peas are a remedy for this?

I love you crazy people!

I have been gently telling Bubbles that it is okay to 'let go' but he is not a quitter and although has been struggling for a couple of weeks now, will not go belly up. Not sure what to try but I am much reassured that I can give him a little sleep if he deteriorates further.

There's always something to learn here.



Searchie

Yep, tried the peas, which worked for a while but don't seem to have any effect any more. Apparently the peas are to relieve constipation, if that's the problem (fish laxatives ......who discovered that accidentally one day )

If the problem is genetic or physiological I've read there's nothing to be done, but I reckon it's just bloating in the gut which pushes the swim bladder further back, which causes him to float bum up. He seems pretty perky in general, & we're trying a bit of fasting for 2 days because that's supposed to help too, & also a pich of epsom salts is another good remedy & will unblock him in a flash.....or in a poop to be more accurate

Anyway, he's still here & he seems happier, so no need for the final treatment yet. Thanks for all the info