Hey,


I am a new member to this wonderful website...need some help.

About my Tank

Size : 50 Gallons
Number of Oscars : 4 (3.5 - 4 inches long)

Have had Oscars for around 2 months. Since about 2 weeks, my oscars would just stay at the bottom of the tank and pretend to sleep. The only time they would come out is during feeding time. They eat properly and do not look uncomfortable. They fight normally during feeding time. On noticing no change in their behavior I just did a 50% water change to get rid of any wanter related issues... still waiting for the results. My Oscars have also become afraid of noises and people. The aquarium is located in the living room. They are afraid of me as well, whereas they would play with me around a month back. By the way I am planning to upgrade to a bigger tank after viewing so many posts on the site. I also have a sucker cat fish which seems to be active and shows no signs of problems.

Questions -

1> Are they just being lazy or is something wrong?
2> My fish store advised me to add table salt which I do. Is this OK for Oscars?? If so, then how much table salt should be added?
3> I do a 20% - 30% water change every week, is this fine?
4> How many times should Oscars be fed in a day?
5> What should be the duration of the feeding time?


Please help

v_2rahjo wrote:

hey there and welcome to OFL.
Oscars can be acting lazy for no apparent reason, the so called sulking.
But seeing there has been quite a change in behaviour i suspect something is wrong with your waterquality.
Like you said yourself you need an upgrade, for 50Gl is ample enough for one oscar.
4 oscars will need a huge tank, like 200Gl+.
To be sure we need some testresults from you.
We need results for ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and pH.
Do you have a liquid test set allready?

Adding salt could help in some specific cases but we got too little info to advice on that.
I change 50% of my water every week, eventhough i only got one Oscar and run a 180Gl tank.
At the size your O's are they should eat 2 times a day.
What kind of filter do you have, what's the flowrate and how long has the filter been running?
Some answers for you, but even more questions.

Ok so you realised your tanks way to small for 4 oscars, thats a good thing cos you was going to run into trouble very soon.some answers to your questions.

1 the only way to know when to do a water change is by testing for nitrates. your going to need a test kit. its far better to get a complete kit for
ammonia
nitrite
nitrate
PH

these tests are very important and will give us a lot more information than you already have.

2 do you need to add salt? NO why add salt? what are you going to achieve other than give the shop guy so money. salt can help with some problems but we don't know if you have any at the moment.

3 is 20-30% water change ok? you won't know unless you test your water. the aim is to keep nitrates below 40pph. so a test is needed to know this.

4 young oscars need feeding twice a day, small amount each. about all they will eat in 2 mins then remove any left over. don't leave uneaten food in the tank.

my advice is don't buy the salt get a full liquid test kit. click the link below if you are unsure what to buy. API are a very good brand.

www.oscarfishlover.com/oscar-fish-advice...it-master-freshwater

I forgot to ask, do you have kids knocking on the tank glass? is the room very noisy? also as noddy asked some filter info may help.

Hey Noddy thankyou so much for the suggestions.... I do not have the test kits available with me right now.... will get them by tomorrow and update you on the same. By the way I use water filtered through "reverse osmosis" in my tank cause i am not sure of the quality of the tap water.

About the filter.... i donno what the technical name is but the filteration set has a sponge in it. Do you think i should upgrade my filter as well??? If so which one??

hey i forgot to mention one more thing. The change in behavior occurred around the same time when i added 2 flower horns in the tank (Crap advise given by my fish store) The flower horn ended up beating the oscars and i had to return them within 4 days... since that time my Oscars have started behaving like this... but it has been more than 2-3 weeks for the shock to settle down for them.

Thanx for your advise Marcus..... will check my water quality tomorrow after purchasing the kits.... about the kids.... got no kids in my home ... hmm.. noise... the room does have a TV which runs for around 5 hrs aday but the volume is not very loud.

Will stop adding salt from now.... thanx a ton for the amazing advise. Was adding salt cause my fish had ick about a month back.. .and the fish store advised me to add salt always

you just answered your own problem. flower horn and oscars don't mix. who told you to mix them? you are way overstocked and need to add another 200g+ to Noddys tank suggestions.

if you are using RO water are you adding any tap water? 50%-50% of each. RO water takes all the nutriments out the water.

does you filter have a name? markings? may be post a pic of it if not. you need to know how many gallons it can handle before buying another.

without your water readings its a little hard to give you acurate advise but from what i have read i beleive your probelms to be water related. like marcus pointed out a test kit is a must. my recommendation for now would be to do a 30% water change and get a test kit asap.
good luck to you

That could have made things a little worst, but if you got pristine waterconditions the fish should be in their normal behavioural mode by now.
My O ate out of my hand within a month...
I had a 10" Vieja bully my O.
After i rehomed the Vieja my Oscar took over the territory within a day.
Behaved normal very quickly.
Oscars need large filters to cope with the bioload.
You're tank is very heavily stocked and you need a very big filter to keep them healthy.
Plus religious waterchanges nevertheless.
Get back to us with those results, please.
When do you plan to upgrade, for your fish are gonna bust your tank real soon!

Hey... researched about my filter... it is a biological sponge filter.

Output rating : 1650 L/H

Plan to upgrade the tank asap. Should i be cycling the new tank before introducing the fish in it? Or is there is short-cut?

Marcus - I was not doing a 50-50 mix of RO and Tap water. will do it from now.

Will get back with the ratings

Question -

Do you suggest I let this mood swing pass before upgrading my tank?

When setting up the new tank you can swith the filter and transfer the fish right after that.
That is if the old filter is cycled properly.
You will need additional filtration though, if you are gonna run a bigger tank.
That filter could be added to the new tank and the benifical bacteria will seed in the new one as well.

I would upgrade asap if you want to keep all the fish you have already. oscars grow 1" a month, with flowerhorns in there too you need as much space as poss. you will need to treat the tapwater 50% with conditioner too. you get away with less than 50% too. why do you use RO? where are you from? country?