Great to be with you at last, hope someone out there can help. One of my oscar's jumped from its tank through the feeding slit and landed about 4 ft onto the hard floor. Found what must have been 4-5 min later he was stil alive but very distressed. Once back in the tank he was finding it hard to stay upright and looked very unwell. The other oscar was helping him out propping him up and slowley he seemed to recover. Hes now 1 week post accident and hes not great at all. Hes not really eating and is now tilting his head upwards and attempts to right huimself through small tail movments but he seems to be finding it harder to keep his ballance. He no longer turns on his side but only with his head tilted towards the ceeling. Hes pale in colour but this was something pre accident and has always been the passive of the two fish in the tank. He seems to have full use of his fins but like i said, they just dont seem to be doing what they should. Pls pls help and i would be gutted to lose my fish let alone how his brother would feel. Thanks and kind regards for any reply possible.

Welcome to the site. I wish you were joining under better circumstances.

Okay, assuming that the fish seems to have this problem after jumping out of his tank, I would put it down to some kind of internal injury and not an illness. There is a possibility that it is something to do with the swim/air bladder. Fish that have problems swimming, or can't hold position often have swim bladder disorders. Normally it is caused by disease, but 4 feet is a very long way for a fish to fall and since they are used to very little gravity, so to speak, it could cause them serious problems when they hit the ground. If indeed this is the case, there's nothing you can do afraid. It may not be the swim bladder, the fish may have injured itself some other way. Finding out what injury it has is virtually impossible. Has the fish stopped feeding and is it breathing heavily at all. Also, have you checked the water conditions, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH?

I would suggest that you monitor the fish for a few days. It may well improve in time. However, if the condition doesn't improve and the fish seems to be having problems, you may have to think about euthanising it. Anyway, let's look at this as a last resort and keep our fingers crossed for you

Is there coventional treatment for swim bladder that you recomend? Water seems fine and the other oscar seems very happy. Like you said il give it time and treatment if available and see what happens. Thanks so much for the quick responce btw.

There is no medication that I know of that will treat the swim bladder. Occasionally if the fish are suddenly exposed to large changes in water temperature, they can have the swim bladder problems. In cases like this, putting them in water and raising the temperature can help. However, this is obviously not what has happened to your fish. There is a strong possibility that your Oscar has received some kind of internal injury. Even if you were to take the fish to a vet, I really don't there would be anything he could do. I suspect he would be very unwilling to do anything since treating fish is extremely difficult and a lot of veterinarians just don't have the expertise.

I just think you are going to have to wait and keep your fingers crossed.

Poor little fish 'Tom' died last night and im feeling fustrated and sad that there was very little i could do for him. The other fish 'Simon' seems a little lost also in the tank now and i was wondering if it was possible on a later date to introduce another oscar into the tank to keep him company? Would this cause teritory fights or can this be acomplished with little strife? I do have a huge plec in the tank aswel since the tank was created and although the plec is somewhat the dominant fish in the tank, i dont think its much company to Simon..

Sorry to hear that

Sometimes such things just happen and there isn't much you can do but hope. Would think Penn was just right about Tom probably suffering from some internal injury.

If your tank is big enough, I'd think you could certainly try to introduce another Oscar. It's just hard to predict the outcome, they might like eachother or they might not. Didn't find anything about the size of your Oscars now, but would say if they are still small, I'd try that rather sooner than later.

Don't know the size of your tank or fish but must agree with metoo if you are going to add another oscar do it sooner rather than later.
Also when doing so it could be worth removing the original fish and redecorating whilst introducing the new fish and then put Simon back in.
Good luck

Sorry to hear about your fish


As far as adding another do it sooner rather than later. If you look at some old threads there is some advice about adding new oscars

I had two oscars die and I thought that my albinos killed them, based on their good health and the others injuries but wasnt sure. I added a tiger oscar of course the biggest albino I had was 4" I guess and the tiger was 2.5". At first they did scuffle a little but I held back and now the three of them don't even chase each other and I never see marks on them so my advice would be to get an oscar that is almost the same size. 1-1 1/2 inches smaller should be fine and see what happens but you have to have a plan in place if they just don't like each other.