Survey about Euthanizing.

I would euthanize if I needed too. I would probably go buy some clove oil and use that. However, in my tank I have yet to see a dead fish. One day they are alive and the next day they are completly gone. My loaches take care of the bodies before I realize they are dead.

supgourami said:

Do you believe that euthanizing fish is a good idea? Well, if they are really ill or injured anyways?

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Only if there at the point of no return and letting them live would just cause more suffering.

Euthanization is sometimes the kindest thing that can be done to a pet under certain circumstances, so I have no issues with it in cases wherein the critter is certain never to recover and is suffering acutely. Personally, though, I wouldn't have the stomach to kill one of my pets myself, so I bet I'd end up taking the hypothetical fish to the vet and asking them to help me. I bet I'd get some funny looks from people, but that's something I'm used to.

If the fish is suffering from an incurable condition, then yes, I would euthanize it, and I have done so on one occasion. I think the kindest way to do it is to hit the fish's head so that the brain is crushed and death is virtually instant.

sigh... I hate death. and I hate thinking about it... like the rest, euthanizing is only proper if nothing else could ever help the poor beast recover.

yeah, being faced with something like this sucks. But, since these little guys depend on us so much, if you truly belive that its either this or a painful uncertainty, then it must be done.

For a fish (havent had to do one, myself), ive heard that the clove oil methods and the crushing methods are best. Ive actually read here on AC that the freezing methods may not be reliable - people have frozen their fish for awhile (dont remember how long, but should have been long enough!) only to find, upon defrost, that the fish was still alive and was put back in water, proceeded to live on afterwards... So, if it were me and I wanted to be sure the fish was put out of its misery instantly and permanantly, Id want to do the crush. Well, I wouldnt want to, but you know what I mean.

I was raised with alot of farm and domestic animals and one of the things I had to learn was the painful lesson of being able to kill. And to take the responsiblity of slaughtering or euthanizing animals as painlessly as possible.

Freezing is not a good method. It's slow and painful and not certain. Bashing in heads isn't precise--if you're willing to be physical, a knife inserted into the midbrain and chopped straight down is a better choice and more certain. Well, until you slip and chop your fingers instead of the fish.

After alot of research, we decided on a combo method. 1) put the fish in a small container of water with clove oil to anesthetize them. When they're out of it 2) drop fish into cup of straight grain alcohol. The clove oil puts 'em to sleep, the grain alcohol kills them. The dwarf gourami I lost died while we were researching methods...after that we made sure we had the supplies on hand. We've only had to do one fish--an oto that had managed to get itself crushed against the wall while we were changing out equipment on the tank.
Clove oil alone isn't recommended, btw, as fish have been known to recover from massive doses...