Oh good god, that poor thing! I don't have the faintest idea what to do. Is there uethanasia for fish? If so how does one go about it? I would be sick over this and I am so sorry for both of you.

(Please note this is a sad thing below but maybe best)

Oh, wait I think I did read about putting the little fishie into a bag and chilling it. This sends it into a hibernation sleep then you can slip him deeper by putting him in the freezer.

It would put him out of his suffering. Again, I am sorry.

Put him in a bag and put him in the freezer.

My friend who originally owned the fish told me he had a good long life...to smash his head with a rock for a quick death and give him to the heron. Sigh. So...the freezer may be the best idea but...I went online for a few hours (!) and think it's tail rot. I diluted a little salt in the water and medicated it. If it's still alive tomorrow we're giving it a 10 minute salt bath and re-medicating. Maybe I'm nuts, I just can't kill it and it doesn't seem in distress. Thanks for the thoughts and wish me luck.

Stop! Get a bottle of oil of cloves and put 25 drops per gallon into the fishes water. Mix it well. It will put him into a sleep deep enough to euthanize him. Keep him there for 30 minutes so he doesn't wake up. Eventually you can put the fishie into the freezer in a plastic bag without all the thrashing and chaos of trying to do it while he is aware and frightened. Sandy

Sandy thank you for adding that very helpful tip. What a sad thing to have to do to any pet.

What Sandy said. Use the clove oil first. You can pick it up an pretty much any pharmacy, even the grocery story pharmacy.

Clove oil is an oil, so if it doesn't mix well, you may need to put the drops in a jar or something and shake it up well to mix, then put it in the bucket with the fish.

This is much, much more humane than just putting in the freezer while still alive and conscious.

TriCide Neo works well for tail and finrot. And also for the ulcers. You could get some and try it. But it seems that this has gotten very bad very quick and might be beyond help. I have tried to doctor fish and kept at it and then finally had to resort to euthanasia after all. Most of the time now I find it easier to go ahead and put the fish out of it's misery than to prolong the inevitable.

I want to thank all of you for your help. I have to say, this was one of the worse experiences. The blood was breaking out on his back. Since I don't know if he was in pain I decided your were all right. He's in the freezer waiting for burial right now. The clove oil is amazing and so glad you all suggested it. Much, much more humane. Thanks again.

I had done some reading up on humane euthanizing of fish several months in the past (had a koi that I inherited that displayed a sudden change in disposition - it was dead within a week of unknown ailment before I had to follow through with a method). I've found several options which all have their pros & cons, so choose which would be most agreeable with you - cause not all of them are agreeable to everyone. Since I found the thread after-the-fact, maybe the information can help out someone else in the future.

Clove Oil: I've read that quarantining the fish and then dosing the water with some clove oil can be a quick and apparently painless way to send the fish to a better place. It usually doesn't mix too readily with water since it is an oil, but I've read that mixing it with some vodka beforehand makes adding the oil much easier than without. I have read that some people have seen their fish react to the oil (frantic movement, twitching, etc), but that they succumbed fairly quickly - but cases like this were not that common.

Freezer: Usually, cold weather puts a fish into hibernation because the change in temperature is a gradual process that the fish has time to adapt to and be ready for. When you put them in the freezer, the change in temperature is abrupt and unexpected - which "shocks" the fish and effectively causes it to shut down (I'm not explaining this as well as I've read, FYI). The fish doesn't die immediately, but it's said that it doesn't feel any pain or discomfort during the ordeal.

Blunt-force trauma: This is the task that your friend was talking about - using a rock, or a hammer, or some type of club to crush the fish's skull and destroy the brain. This can be an extremely quick way for the fish to go, but it can also be fairly unsettling to those with weak constitutions ("This'll hurt me more than it'll hurt you" kind of way). If you are capable of doing the deed in one hit then it can be very humane cause the fish would be dead practically instantly - even though the fish's body might not know it yet (which can be unsettling to the squeamish). If I remember right, the optimal strike-point is on the crown of the head, just behind the eyes.

"Executioner" style: Bar-none, the . . . messiest . . . way to accomplish the job. You better have a strong constitution cause this is exactly what it sounds like - you assume the role of executioner and decapitate the fish just behind the gill flaps using a heavy knife, an axe, or some other sharp implement that can do the job *in one strike*. Using more than one strike is just cruel, so be sure that you can do the job before you even attempt it, and also be sure that your hand-eye coordination is up to the task so that you don't miss. Obviously, this style would work best on goldfish and smaller-sized koi - I personally would hesitate to use this on a large (9"+) koi.

I've had to do this deed twice so far, and each time I chose the executioner style because I was forced to use the quickest means necessary in both cases. The first time, I found a 6" goldfish lying on it's side on the water's surface - with it's stomach ripped open and the guts trailing behind it in the water (this was in the middle of the day - the fish had looked fine less than a 1/2-hour earlier). I don't know how it had happened, but the fish was still alive so I did the deed as fast as I could (using a hand axe). The second time, I found a couple goldfish in the skimmer net trapped with a snapping turtle. One of the fish was already dead and partially eaten, another fish had been roughed up and the fins were shredded, but she was otherwise unhurt and still alive (The shredded fins have since grown back and she's still alive and well). The third fish was still alive, but the front of it's face had been bitten clean off, leaving only a pair of eyes. So again I had to do the deed in the quickest means necessary. Now, I'm not a bleeding-heart vegan animal-rights kind of guy - I'll dispatch varmints and destructive pests and sleep just fine afterwards - but it was unnerving having to take that kind of direct action with a fish.

I'm sure there are other options available - there is an anesthetic called Finquel that I've heard works extremely well for humanely euthanizing a fish - but the above were the most common options that I encountered.