In aquaculture practices, fish are often exposed to several stressors such as handling, weighing, tagging, artificial spawning, blood sampling, vaccination, measurement and transportation (Aydın & Orhan, 2021;Tarkhani et al., 2017). Immobilization of the fish in all these practices not only helps to reduce stress but also prevents physical damage (da Silva et al., 2021). Therefore, anaesthetic agents are important tools in aquaculture practices, and several drugs are available for fish anaesthesia, including tricaine methanesulfonate (which is the only anaesthetic approved in the United States and Canada) and clove oil (the most widely used herbal anaesthetic), among