Let's talk about stress coat

[Cinnebuns]

Does stress coat/aloe vera help fish with their slime coat?  Does it help stress?  Will it promote healing? 

These are questions I've seen discussed only a few times. My experience so far is beginners use it as a "medicine" and more experienced aquarists, and even experts like @Corytell me it's just a dechlorinator, nothing more. This is what I have been telling people as well. It is infact a dechlorinator, but there are claims that the aloe does help. 

Having been hit by a few beginners lately using stress coat to help their stressed out or sick fish I decided to look up to see if there is any research myself. I was hoping to find information confirming that beyond dechlorinatong water, stresscoat does very little. That isn't exactly what I found. 

Now, I admit, I read these at 3am and found myself skipping parts. That's also the ADHD acting up. But I found these 2 studies. Both seem to suggest that aleo vera and/or stress coat DOES promote healing in injured tissues on fish. The findings on the slime coat however seem inconclusive. This is assuming I read it right haha. 

Here are the 2 studies I read:

(Quick note, upon copying this first one I noticed the link has the word patent in it. I'm not sure what that exactly means but I'm curious if that means the study was biased to get them a patent?  I'm not sure)

https://patents.google.com/patent/US4500510A/en

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5591633/#!po=38.3333

So, what are your thoughts?  What is your experience?  Any other studies to share?

[Ricklax96]

Thanks for finding those and posting it. I always assumed it was just a dechlorinator as well and never really bought in that it was some magical healer. That being said, I did use it recently when a fish jumped out of the tank and and somehow ended up under my stand. I had to use the fish net to get him out from under and back in the tank. He was covered in dust and had a pretty bad scrape on his side. I immediately dosed stress coat and he healed up quickly. Who knew there was some science behind it all lol

[Cinnebuns]

On 1/12/2023 at 12:13 PM, Ricklax96 said:

That being said, I did use it recently when a fish jumped out of the tank and and somehow ended up under my stand.

That is exactly a similar incident I had that made me curious tbh. My hillstream loaches are the most annoying to handle. Since they basically can walk on solid surfaces they are constantly getting stuck on decor as I pull it out. Usually they either end safe in the bucket or I notice in time to gently push them back into the water. One fell onto the carpet tho. That likely didn't feel good although I suppose in nature they do climb rocks lol. Still, if it was a more sensitive fish it might have helped to give it some stress coat. I'm slightly considering keeping some on hand now. Which is funny because I've been kinda anti-it until the past 2 days. 

[Ricklax96]

It was honestly awful. I had a big SAE and he went right up and out onto the floor and started flopping. Managed to flop under the cabinet. My wife came and got me and I couldn't figure out where he was til I heard him flopping and bashing himself on the underside of the cabinet. If you fish, the sound of one flopping on dry land in unmistakable lol I thought there was no way he'd make it. Had a pretty bad scrape on his side. Dose the stress coat cuz I figured it couldn't hurt. Here we are 2 weeks later and he's totally fine lol