Anesthetic effects of clove oil and lidocaine-HCl on marine medaka (Oryzias dancena).

Fish may be anesthetized for various experimental and practical purposes, primarily to immobilize them in order to facilitate handling. Marine medaka (Oryzias dancena) is a teleost fish used in marine ecotoxicology studies. Despite the importance of anesthesia in handling experimental fish, the effects of anesthesia in marine medaka have not yet been investigated. In this study, the authors evaluated the anesthetic effects (time required for anesthesia to take effect and recovery time) of two anesthetic agents, clove oil and lidocaine-HCl, on marine medaka. They anesthetized fish at different water temperatures (23 °C, 26 °C and 29 °C) and using different concentrations of clove oil (50 ppm, 75 ppm, 100 ppm, 125 ppm, 150 ppm and 175 ppm) or lidocaine-HCl (300 ppm, 400 ppm, 500 ppm, 600 ppm, 700 ppm and 800 ppm). The time required for anesthesia to take effect decreased significantly as both anesthetic concentration and water temperature increased for both clove oil and lidocaine-HCl. To anesthetize marine medaka within approximately 1 min, the optimal concentrations for clove oil were 125 ppm at 23 °C, 100 ppm at 26 °C and 75 ppm at 29 °C and for lidocaine-HCl were 800 ppm at 23 °C and 700 ppm at both 26 °C and 29 °C. The authors also compared anesthetic effects in marine medaka of different sizes. Both anesthetic exposure time and recovery time were significantly shorter for smaller fish than for larger fish. These results provide a useful foundation for the laboratory handling of marine medaka.