In aquaculture and biological research, anaesthetics are widely used to minimize fish stress and injury during handling procedures such as sorting, morphometry measurements, blood sampling, tagging, transportation and vaccination, promoting the welfare of the fish (Wagner, Singer, & Mckinley, 2015). Some considerations such as efficacy, cost, availability and toxicity are important in order to choose the proper anaesthetic (Akbulut, Çakmak, Aksungur, & Çavdar, 2011). There are two types of commercial anaesthetics: natural and synthetic (Purbosari, Warsiki, Syamsu, & Santoso, 2019). Synthetic anaesthetic agents have been widely used in aquaculture including tricaine methanesulfonate (MS-222), quinaldine and 2-phenoxyethanol (Façanha & Gomes, 2005). However, they have some limitations given their high cost and associated toxicity (Velisek et al., 2006). Among natural agents, clove oil is the most common anaesthetic used in freshwater,