Hello, I'm new to this forum. While in high school and college I owned 3 different oscars, two which were buddies and lived together and got quite large, until both died from a disease brought in on some feeder fish. I then owned a dear lovely female named Isabella, an albino tiger, and she got to be enormous, and as friendly and full of character as it gets. I just loved that fishy! When my husband and I met, we decided to move quite a distance and I had to part with my fish.

Six years later, I finally have gotten over my heartbreak of losing my fish, and decided on a spur of the moment that we should go purchase another oscar. After digging out my tank from storage and purchasing new rock and all the goodies, we finally got to the fish store yesterday afternoon. I was so excited! There were many oscars in the store, and we actually decided on two oscars. A black and orange tiger and a blue tiger. Now, I go online to figure out when this new variety of oscar became available and read everywhere that it may have been dyed?

I called the fish store and the manager is not returning my calls. I am upset that I thought I was buying a variety of oscar, not a dyed fish! How sick! I'm keeping it no matter what, but I do not understand why they are selling these fish without disclosing that they are dyed! And, are all blue oscar's dyed? I only paid $14 for this fish, so I don't understand how the price could warrant such a practice! Is this true that this blue fish of mine is dyed? Are there any issues I should be aware of regarding it's health? I can't find much information on dyeing of oscars on the internet, so I hope someone on this site is familiar enough with this practice to give me some solid advice.

Aside from this drama, I look forward to exploring this site and reading about all your wonderful oscars!! They are truely an amazing fish!

Welcome to the site. Best thing to do is post a photograph. We can only give you opinion to whether they are dyed or not. Dyed Oscars do lose their colour after a while so they may not look fantastically vibrant. However, if your Oscar is very very bright, there is obviously a good chance is dyed, I have not seen many naturally bred Oscars this colour although I think you can get them.

Of course you could approach the fish store and ask their opinion. Obviously if he is in answering your call that does rather sound suspicious. I suppose it depends where they came from, if somebody gave them to the fish store they may not know. If they bought them from a fish dealer, they should know all about them and if they are dyed or not. Most of us on this forum believes that colouring fish artificially is totally unacceptable and needs to be stamped out because of the way it is often done.

u need to find out if he was dyed or not,due to the cruel ways they use to dye fish many dyed fish live a very short life and lose their color anyway.

I believe it is dyed. I took a photo to post of it:


This is horrible, I can't find any other words to describe it. How is this done? I'm just sick right now with discust.

theres a few ways how its done and its really cruel i suggest u google it to get the full details,but i warn u u are not gonna like it.

Welcome to the site. Here's a couple of links to check out. It's an awful practice all in the name of greed.

www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/campaign.php
www.badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article3.html

Hi and welcome

Hello and welcome to OFL!
Crossing fingers for your Oscar to grow up to a normal healthy Oscar with no further side effects.

That oscar is definitely dyed. Could you post a bigger closer pic of the fish in the dyed fish section for others to see and for them to have a better idea of what not to buy.

Hopefully your oscar will turn out ok and live a long life. My advice would be to avoid that shop in future and also to advise any other fish keepers you know to do the same (and if the manager phones you back tell him that). Financial means is the the best way to try to stamp this process out

My camera is out of order at the moment, but I will definately take a better picture to post in the dyed fish section as soon as I can.

I'm still very upset, although my fish seems to be doing very well. It's a very active character, already trying to uproot my plants. At this point, I just hope it survives.

I have told many people about this situation already, including my brother in law who is (now was) a very good customer to the salt water section of this store. He is also discusted and will be telling anyone else that is looking into getting fish. I do plan to print off a couple signs to hang up at this mall warning people of the dyed fish they sell, along with a picture of mine. Yes, they will probably just tear them down, but maybe it will scare them into not selling any more.

Thanks everyone again for all the advice and well wishes. I hope that I can post months from now and let you all know that this fish is still alive and well with no side effects.