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Sedation
~ Anesthesia ~ Euthanasia
Sometimes you need to transport your
fish and you want to reduce their stress and metabolism, which will
result in less oxygen consumption and less production of wastes. In
this case you need to induce sedation. Whenever you want to
perform a [ simple ] operation on your fish (e.g. remove a nodule
from their body or a foreign particle from their mouth) you need to
induce anesthesia. In more severe cases, you have to humanly
destroy the fish since the disease has already progressed too much
and there is no way of recovery. In this case you have to induce euthanasia.
As you can see in the information that follows, the difference
between those three situations is just the concentration of the
chemical. This means that you have to be very careful when playing
with these chemicals since overdosing means you will kill the fish
instead of inducing anesthesia. Whenever possible ask your vet or
someone who has already performed those tasks.
Benzocaine
1) Anesthesia : Add 50-500 mg benzocaine / l.
This concentration
will bring anesthesia within 60 seconds.
2) Euthanization : over 500 mg benzocaine / l. In all
euthanization cases you should wait for 10 minutes after all
breathing stops before disposing the fish.
Carbon dioxide
This is a last resort since the dose is difficult to control and
it is easy to overdose and cause death by hypercardia.
1) Anesthesia : Add 200 - 400mg/ l (by bubbling the gas through
water) - Anesthesia should occur within 5 minutes
2) Euthanasia : bubble CO2 through water till death occurs. >
In all euthanizing cases you should wait for 10 minutes after all
breathing stops before disposing the fish.
Quinaldine sulfate (Quinate)
1) Sedation : Add 1-50 mg of Quinaldine sulfate / l
2) Anesthesia : Add 2.5 - 100 mg Quinaldine sulfate / l
(anesthesia occurs within 60 seconds)
3) Euthanasia : Add the same quantity as for anesthesia. In
all euthanizing cases you should wait for 10 minutes after all
breathing stops before disposing the fish.
Sodium bicarbonate
This is a last resort since the dose is difficult to control and
it is easy to overdose and cause death by hypercardia.
1) Anesthesia : Add 1 tablet of Alka-Seltzer / 20 liters.
2) Euthanasia : Add 30g of NaHCO3 and dissolve completely. Add the
fish to euthanize - wait 10 minutes after all breathing stops.
Tricaine (Finquel)
1) Sedation (for transporting fish) : Add 10-40 mg Tricaine /l
(you can raise it to 100 mg/l if fish are too many or too crowded)
2) Anesthesia : Add 50-250 mg Tricain / l. The optimum
concentration will bring anesthesia within 60 seconds
3) Euthanization : same as anesthesia; wait 10 minutes after all
breathing stops.
Temperature (Gradual freezing) In this case you should
place your fish in a fish transport bag add enough water (at least
one liter for small fish, more than 3-4 liters for a big fish) to
keep the fish from freezing instantly and put in the freezer.
Leave the fish there for at least 2 hours after the whole amount
of water has turned to ice. Only then you can discard the
fish.
References
Chris Andrews,
Adrian Exell and Neville Carrington.
"The Interpet Manual of Fish Diseases". Salamander Books
Limited, UK, 1988.
Dick Mills
"Tropical Aquarium Fishes", Tetra Press, Salamander Books
Limited, UK, 1997.
Paul V. Loiselle
"The Cichlid Aquarium", Tetra Press, 1994.
Edward J. Noga
"Fish Disease, Diagnosis and Treatment", Mosby-Year Book,
Inc, 1996.
Physician's Desk Reference (PDR) Medical Economics Company, Inc., 53rd
Edition, 1999. |
