Please help! I have a tank with two oscars, their pretty big now... I have a division in the tank but my albino oscar ripped the net and attacked the other oscar, he's hurt bad! He's loosing his skin/scales on both sides of his body, it's literally hanging and you can see the flesh, it looks bad:( . Does anyone have any advice for me? Will it survive? Please help!!!

wow! that albino oscar sounds mean lol.

can you post any pics?

Hi, I'm a newbie, in my limited experience, this is what I consider you could do:

If injures are really bad, and it's within your possibilities, consult a veterinarian.

If you have a Hospital tank running, get the injured Oscar in it, turn the lights out, provide as good as possible oxygenation -if you have HOB in it, lower a bit the tank's water level to create shallow water for your fish; injured Oscars tend to lay down, maybe even tilt a bit, don't worry about it, it's normal behavior when stressed; and keep stable warm temperature.

Otherwise, if you must keep the injured Oscar in the actual tank, secure that side of the tank -cheap egg crate, used for cover in fluorescent ceiling lamps would work fine, just perform some drilling for water circulation, and provide as good as possible ideal water conditions.

I believe Oscars tend to heal from fight injuries quite fast. Unless your fish show signs of bacterial infection, don't jump the gun for antibiotics.

In the meantime provide a high-protein diet combined with spirulina based food -to boost tissue replacement and help immune system, just feed sparingly, several times a day -to keep optimum water conditions.

You may have two Oscars that won't be compatible to share a tank. This is not unheard of, although not too common either. A radical re-arranging in the tank aquascaping might help in the future -e.g. adding two or three driftwoods, stones, changes in substrate... anyway let's focus on healing your Oscar.

Hope your injured pet recovers well soon.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

wow!!! Thx a milli for the advice!!!

Is your fish ok?

It appears 2 of my oscars had a run in with each other last night as well. My smaller white one has the better portion of his lip completely ripped off and the orange one has some skin ripped off his underside...I am worried as I am a first timer with fish and it looks terrible

Unless the injuries are really bad most bullied oscars will recover quite quickly (you can add something to treat fin rot or sores). The best divider is a piece of glass held in position with suckers.

The thing to be aware of when using a divider is filtration. If you have only one filter you either have to have the intake on one side of the divider and the outlet on the other, or you need to have at least some of the outlet going into the opposite side of the intake side. If you have the outlet and the inlet on the same side you can find the water quality can be poorer on the other side as there will be a poor flow between the 2 sides

Thanks for responding:)

Do you suppose this will continue if I don't put the divider in? Could this be an isolated incident between the 2 of them? We have had these for about 6 wks now and up to this point havent had a problem at all.

Thanks for the helpful info. I appreciate it

It is difficult to say if it will carry on, but it seems likely that it will, things may settle down though. Sometimes you can separate them and reintroduce them and they can get on fine, its a question of suck it and see. Just dont let your injured fish get too badly injured

We have since gotten a larger tank and seperated them and so far all is well....Thanks so much:)