Garlic and Fish again

Brian, you might want to try soaking the food longer. Also, you
should only put enough in there to absorb completely into the
food. I make a large batch of it at a time, and then freeze it.
Then I take a chunk out and stick it in one of those floating food
corrals, and let it melt and feed the fish.

Just one technique. There are many I'm sure.

Sounds like your wife, and my wife would get along GREAT!

I'll have to try it in my fresh tank.... My mom is a vitamin freak, so I shouldn't have much trouble with the source.

Wonder why raw garlic doesn't work, but liquid form does...

Wonder why raw garlic doesn't work, but liquid form does...

I think that's a very valid question, one that deserves more looking into.

I agree with Carl.

Adam

I'm still a fence sitter when it comes to garlic, but I'm slowly getting pushed over.  My father-in-law called me about a month ago worried about one of his fish.  He came home from work to find one of his fish covered in ick.  My first suggestion was No-Ick, but then I remembered garlic.  He had garlic pills in the house so he tried it.  Next day everything's clear... he was surprised.  I've tried it once.  My flame angel had a couple white spots one evening just after I got him.  I don't have garlic "supplements" in the house, but I've always got whole garlic cloves laying around.  So I throw a clove in my press and squeeze it into my food cup.  Mix in some brine shrimp and feed the tank.  The angel is clean the next day.  The infection wasn't bad and could have cleared up on it's own (why I'm still on the fence).  So I start searching around on the chemistry of garlic to find reasons why it might work.  Here's my thoughts on it. 

GARLIC CHEMISTRY:
Garlic has two sulfur rich compounds naturally occuring in the clove.  Alliin, an amino acid, is found throughout the plant cell inner matterial.  Allinase is a protein enzyme found in the cell wall.  Normally these two don't see each other.  When you crush a clove of garlic (or cut it or do anything to break the cell walls) the alliin and allinase react together very quickly to form allicin, pyrovic acid and ammonia.  Allicin (and to a lesser extent, pyrovic acid) is what gives fresh garlic it's smell.  Allicin is also very short lived (especially when heated) and reacts with it's self and other "sulfur compounds" to form diallyl disulfide, diallyl trisulfide, s-allyl cysteine, s-allylmercaptocysteine and other "stinky stuff".  The sulfides are oil soluble (and smell like garlic) while the cysteines are water soluble (and have no smell). 

Allicin is a fairly strong antibiotic.  It's 1/50 the strength of penicilin and 1/10 the strength of tetracycline.  It's also a good antifungal, antiviral and antiparasite compound.  This is why garlic was used way way back in the greek empire times as a healing sauve for wounds.  Unfortunately, as mentioned above, it's a very unstable compound and is really only present in fresh, unprocessed garlic.

The byproducts of allicin, listed above, are also reported to have antibiotic properties, although much less potent then allicin.  Less real science is known when it comes to these compounds.  Everything I could find was put out by someone selling one of the products and wanting to bad mouth the other and praise themselves.  You can find a study to support almost any position.  Kyolic is a mix of the cysteine (water soluble) compounds while the garlic liquid oil extracts are almost all diallyl sulfides.

Take a look at the ingredients on your galic oil.  I've never found one that listed garlic extract (or oil) as the first ingredient.  They are mostly vegatable oil with a small amount of garlic oil (diallyl sulfides) mixed in.  If anyone knows where to find an oil that is mostly garlic please tell.

SUMMARY
(jeez, I'm so wordy I needed a summary)
I would suggest that it's the allicin that possesses the greatest possibility as an anti-ick fighter.  I don't really like the idea of adding vegatable oil to my tank so I will press a bunch of fresh garlic into a container and let it sit for a couple days before mixing it into my food and then freezing.  After a few days I should have a good mix of both sulfides and cysteines (and even a small amount of unreacted allicin).  Just my thoughts.

(thanks for getting through this.  Anyone have other thoughts?) 

Edited by jfinch

Skye you can post  my thoughts on this subject-

Garlic has been shown to fight fungus, viral, bacterial  issues. What manner of fighting it is is unclear to me--the long post on this page was quite scientific sounding-I cannot really get the  chemical pathway info-what that guy said was good.

In the health field garlic is  now being recognized  by the cardiologists as a way to bring down  blood pressure and  cholesterol.
How it works is  not something I know. I think raw, oil in capsules, kyolic or  any other kind will do the same thing. Even if people just eat it cooked it works seemingly.

The thing that makes people pick one garlic or the other is whether it will make them smell. People dont want to have bad odor and  everthing but  kyolic garlic will  cause this. It is funny though that if 2 people eat food with garlic-they cannot smell each other afterword- but if one person eats it and then joins a crowd he and they can smell it on the person who ate it.

Go figure--but the vampire story didnt stick around this long cuz it was based on nothing. You cannot know if it is true unless the teeth are sinking into your neck--and then it is unlikely you will be telling the truth to anyone else LOL

Allinase..those darn enzymes must be good for something!

I have worked with folks from a company called Enzyme Biosystems and there are many other companies now looking even more into the value of these types of compounds, some of wich come as a byproduct of bacterial fermentation. Fermentation is the very thing we like to have happening in our aquariums!

Adam, is there a count of the number of enzymes currently known to be working in the human body?

No, I was suggesting that the active compound was allicin, not the enzyme allanase, although I have nothing other then the fact that allicin is a good antibiotic to make that judgement.

Alliin (reacting with allanase) ----->  allicin (not a very stable compound)

allicin ---------> diallyl disulfide (and all the other organosulfur compounds)

To better understand, here's the chicken wire diagrams of the molecules:

Alliin:

 

Allicin:

 

Diallyl disulfide:

 

As for spelling, I'm terrible!  I think I've spelled them correctly, unless you're in England then it's diallyl disulphide, not sulfide.

pyruvic acid.  CH3COCO2H