Herbal remedies

About herbal remedies. The contemporary ground-swell of allegiance to herbal medicine was bound to have effects in fishkeeping. Did it begin with the use of aloe vera extracts as an all-purpose balm for fish, which originated in the Great Aloe Vera Fad of the 1980s? Does it have spiritual links to aromatherapy? Or did Jack Wattley start it with his garlic cure for hexamita in Discus?
 
Melaleuca species. Since the late 1990s a trendy industry has built round the use of extracts derived from several species of Melaleuca. The pleasantly fragrant oils of  M. alternifolia, or Tea Tree, have been perfuming hair-care products for thirty years. To get the mildly zany flavor of it all, google "Melaleuca". There is a long list of claimed curative properties of Melaleuca oil at Thursday Plantation, for one example.
 
Though many accounts of Tea Tree oil concern topical application of the essential oil itself, not a 1% solution dispersed in the volume of water of your aquarium, a Melaleuca product won a citation for "best new product" in 1999 from the Pet Industry Distributors Association, who are as well-positioned as anyone to detect and reward a smart marketing move. The manufacturers gained a U.S. patent, based on their process for rendering the oil-based Melaleuca extract water-soluble, with an emulsifier. Not an easy trick. The result foamed up so much though, that a Dow-Corning anti-foaming agent had to be added to the brew. The Melaleuca species in question is not M. alternifolia, but Vietnamese "cajeput," Melaleuca cajuputi, and M. leucadendron, according to the patent specifications, which were tracked down by a member of  AquaBotanic and posted at the site 30 March 2003. Aquarium strength is 1% cajeput oil, pond strength is 5%. The manufacturers claim that their product "also caused rapid repair of damaged fish tissue and fins. New growth was seen in as little as four days of treatment. This evidence led to the granting of a United States patent." Everyone should be well aware that U.S. patents are not granted on the basis of any claims of efficacy, whether proved or unproved.  Whether or not concentrated Melaleuca extracts have all the properties claimed for them, Doc Johnson at KoiVet reports enhanced healing ofsurficial ulcers and body sores in koi treated with Melaleuca extracts, though no bactericidal action.
 
Other herbal "protections" exist. Fish exporters in Singapore, for example, add a dry leaf of the Ketapang tree,  Terminalia catappa, to the water in each shipping bag, and they feel that the leaf cuts losses during shipping. Hobbyists in southeast Asia use it for blackwater extract, according to this 2007 blog and the Aquariumwiki.
 
Terminalia catappa, the "Sea Almond", is a member of the tropical mangrove coastal ecosystem. Tannins and black dye are extracted from dried leaves and other plant parts. The plant has many traditional medicinal uses, treating dysentery and even leprosy (which is a mycobacterial disease). The tree occurs naturally over extensive areas of tropical southeast Asia, as far as northern Australia and some western Pacific islands. Ketapang has become even more widely planted throughout the Old World and the New as a tropical shade tree, so its leaves are reassuringly familiar and conveniently at hand to the fish farmers of Singapore.
 
In a trial published in ISHS Acta Horticulturae 678, dried Terminalia katappa leaves were ground and soaked in water and were found to eliminate Trichodina skin parasites at 800 ppm.
 
Most of the Terminalia species (of which there are perhaps 200) are chemically rather active. They produce gums and resins, dyes, and tanning extracts. Lethal concoctions can be brewed from the roots of an African species of Terminalia, and contact with the sawdust of some Terminalia timbers have produced rashes. Some others produce arthroquinones, my quick check reveals. So it's not impossible that there is some genuine bacteristatic effect produced by Melaleuca extracts or a Ketapang leaf placed in shipping water. All to the good, then, if you feel that bacteria exist to be eliminated! Plants produce a wide range of allelochemicals, necessary to protect them from constant degradation by every fungal spore or bacteria that passes by. These alkaloids and terpenes (and phenols in aquatic plants) have often been demonstrated to be mild but rather non-specific inhibitors of bacteria. Diana Walstad, who reports these conclusions, adds, "The allelochemicals responsible for the inhibition were identified as tannic acid, gallic acid [that's another humic substance] and ethyl gallate, all common phenolics found in many aquatic plants." (Ecology of the Planted Aquarium, 1999, p. 44.)  So there's no reason not to suppose that Melaleuca alternifolia is similarly protected. Still, the chemical identification of the pharmacologically-active ingredient in a leaf or bark does require some pretty intensive laboratory detective work. That can be expensive, too.
 
Naphthaquinones. Naphthaquinone,s which are produced by a wide variety of flowering plants, have a broad spectrum of biological activity. Kordon identifies proprietary napthaquinones as the active ingredients in Ich-Attack and Rid-Fungus, which Kordon sensibly restricts to their activity in suppressing single-celled external parasites and repressing Saprolegnia and other fungi. 
 
"Holistic" effects of herbal ingredients. Sensibly, the enthusiasts of herbal medicine commonly sidestep any specific identification, relying in preference on a holistic synergy of all the unrefined "natural" ingredients acting together. So, when a stricken fish has pulled itself together, it's hard to disprove the efficacy of this or that herbal tea. And mean-spirited too, I warrant.
 
You can imagine that I detect unskeptical faddism whenever I hear wide-ranging properties ascribed to whatever plant that's in current favor. At the very least, be wary! As for me, I try to keep an open mind about all this, but you can tell I'm just not very sympathetic. You see, commonplace Garden Sage, Salvia officinalis, has bacteristatic qualities too. So I might brew some sage leaves overnight and add the liquor to the tanks, if I were of a mind to kill some bacteria at random... or maybe some cold-brewed Sleepytime Tea. Or St-John's Wort for the tetras: that might cheer them up.