Garlic kills invertebrates?

[Leah]

Interesting I use garlic extreme often as well and as a result I don't have a problem with ich or losing any inverts. I must say garlic isn't exactly natural to or for fish. I guess there is always a down side to things! I have also wondered how good it was for my fish.
Think I may use a little less often.

[mitchelljared]

Well maybe a little unorthodox, but I just used my juicer and put in a whole bulb, juiced it, and then put it in a little container. I add about 1 mL to a decent sized food batch. So the garlic is in its most raw form. We started the whole garlic adding routine when we noticed ich in the tank. Since then, about 3-4 weeks ago, we haven't seen it since. The fish seem much healthier too. The peppermint shrimp death could have been anything really. But the cleaner shrimp's death was very odd. He had shed his shell about 5 days prior, and was hiding behind the rocks till his new shell grew back. Then after that he started coming more out in the open, and we thought "oh good, now he's going to start doing his job and cleaning things." But I then fed the tank, using the same routine I always do...and then we looked in the tank about 10 mins later and cleaner shrimp was laying dead on the sand. So strange. The bubble coral also shrinks a bit...and now he's showing some of his septa (think that's the right word)...there's a daughter colony, budding at the base and that one is okay, inflated. But it's main base doesn't seen to react well to the garlic.
Sorry to go all into it...I don't think pics would help much either. Maybe a teeny teeny bit of garlic is okay...I just don't think I'll be using so much as a mL for a bit. This is a good discussion. I can definitely attest to garlic being good for ich problems, but just watch your inverts.

[banditpowdercoat]

I use 2 drops per food cube. A ml light be a little bit to much???

[edikpok]

From my readings about garlic - one should not feed garlic soaked food to inverts and corals - only feed it to fish. I usually put 2-3 drops of garlic + 3-4 drops of Selcon per cube to strengthen the fish. Corals - I feed with non soaked mysis.

Cheers!

[naesco]

Originally Posted by mitchelljared

Well maybe a little unorthodox, but I just used my juicer and put in a whole bulb, juiced it, and then put it in a little container. I add about 1 mL to a decent sized food batch. So the garlic is in its most raw form. We started the whole garlic adding routine when we noticed ich in the tank. Since then, about 3-4 weeks ago, we haven't seen it since. The fish seem much healthier too. The peppermint shrimp death could have been anything really. But the cleaner shrimp's death was very odd. He had shed his shell about 5 days prior, and was hiding behind the rocks till his new shell grew back. Then after that he started coming more out in the open, and we thought "oh good, now he's going to start doing his job and cleaning things." But I then fed the tank, using the same routine I always do...and then we looked in the tank about 10 mins later and cleaner shrimp was laying dead on the sand. So strange. The bubble coral also shrinks a bit...and now he's showing some of his septa (think that's the right word)...there's a daughter colony, budding at the base and that one is okay, inflated. But it's main base doesn't seen to react well to the garlic.
Sorry to go all into it...I don't think pics would help much either. Maybe a teeny teeny bit of garlic is okay...I just don't think I'll be using so much as a mL for a bit. This is a good discussion. I can definitely attest to garlic being good for ich problems, but just watch your inverts.

If you are making your own garlic extract out of a fresh garlic bulb, take care that none of the bulb bits get into the reefs tank.
If a bulb bit falls on a coral it will irritate but not kill the coral.

[fishytime]

Ok lets clarify something here....garlic itself doesnt really do anything for your fish medicinally....it is used as an appetite stimulant....fish like the smell of it....Im currently adding it to my food because I have a lawnmower blenny that show no signs of being interested in eating with the rest of the crew....if and when he decides that salad isnt the only thing on the menu, I will likely stop soaking with garlic(but continue soaking with selcon... because we all need our vitamins)

Upon digging a little farther, some people have reported that their inverts seem to react poorly to garlic, so I suppose it is entirely within the rehlm of possibility that garlic could be to blame for the shrimps demise....its also a possibility that your bottle has gone "bad" as suggested earlier.