If you play loud music near your aquarium perhaps you ought to start offering your fish a diet rich in vitamin E.
A new paper published in the journal of Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Toxicology and Pharmacology says that high doses of vitamin E can help reduce stress in fish exposed to high levels of noise.
The scientists exposed Fathead minnows, Promephales promelas, to different levels of white noise and supplemented their diet with different amounts of vitamin E to see whether it could protect the inner ear from the noise.
One group of fish received a diet containing 14.5 mg of alpha-tocopherly acetate (vitamin E) per kg, the second received a diet of 50 mg/kg, while the third got a high dose at 450 mg/kg. After feeding the fish the supplemented foods for a month, they were exposed to blasts of white noise at 142db for two or 24 hours.
By monitoring the auditory brainstem response, using a technique called ABR, the scientists were able to see how the minnows responded, and how they well they recovered from the exposure to the loud noises.
The results showed a link between vitamin E and noise in cyprinids, and the team says that at high levels it's capable of protecting fish against noise exposure.
For more details see: Scholik, AR., Lee, US., Chow, CK, and HY Yan. (2004) - Dietary vitamin E protects the Fathead minnow, Pimephales promelas, against noise exposure. Comp Biochem Physiol C Toxicol Pharmacol. 2004 Apr ; 137(4): 313-23