i got my oscar a few days ago. he wont eat and all he does is sit at the bottom of the tank. i have a 50 us gallon tank with a penguin 350 biowheel filter. i checked the water and its fine ph is 7.0 and the other levels are fine too. so i started to starve him. he is only 2.5 inches. you'd think he would be very hungary since he is a baby. sometimes he swims but very little and other times he goes on his side the temp is 78 degrees. what should i do to make him happy and playful?

Kyle

I concur, baby Oscars are normally hungry all the time. When you say you have tested the water and its fine, exactly what are the readings? Have a close look at the Oscar, is it breathing heavily at all?

Don't know if this helps but I just introduced a new baby
O to my tank. He is already very picky about what he eats.
My other baby O's eat evrything from pellets to insects and worms. The new one I got at a different lfs than the rest and I think the guy there only fed his Oscars freeze dried krill so he won't eat anything else even when I starve him for a day or two. He seems to sulk a lot on the bottom of the tank and when feeding time comes he ignores every kind of food I throw in except the krill. So maybe your Oscar is already picky about eating certain foods. What do you feed him?

well i have HBH oscar grow pelets, wardley shrimp pellets, freezedried blood worms, live guppies that i have been breeding very well so i dont risk my oscar to desease, and frozen brine shrimp. he wasnt eating untillast night. i had a couple guppies in the tank from before i couldnt catch with the net. too hard in this tank so i left them. and when i woke up they were gone and he was swimming pretty good and happy. then i doubted that he ate them so i put one small one in there and he chased it and ate it. it made me happy. but he will only eat the brine shrimp, bloodworms, and live guppies, he wont eat either of the pellets.

he isnt breathing heavily. ph is at 7.0 nitrite is at zero. amonia is at zero and nitrate is pretty low around 20. i have a good biological system going right now with the bio wheels i wish i could find my camera so i can take a pic for ya.

if he eats the guppies thats beta than nothing but u hv to get yr Oscar onto pellets as there is good nutriats in those pellets starve him he will eat when he gets hungry fish can stay without food for a few days.

I have a guestion about one of my oscars.
This is the second time this is happening.
About one month ago I noticed on one of them
that the end of the tail fin and part of the top fin
was white (not disease white) but looked like it was singed(sp) as from a heating, iron, frying pan you see what I'm trying to say. Anyways, it ended up going away but it showed up again yesterday. The fish appears fine? The end of his tail is irregular but not torn or shredded.
Just wondering if you ever experienced this.

Difficult to say without a photograph and even then it would probably not be easy to diagnose reliably what had happened. However, I have seen this sort of thing before. What you've got to remember is that fins are extremely delicate, they do get damaged quite easily. If it doesn't look like the only kind of disease, I would imagine that some kind of damage happened in the tank. Maybe the Oscar has brushed against something, another fish may have nipped it in. If it grows back that I shouldn't worry too much.

If you are worried at all and it keeps recurring then do a water test to see what the water quality is like. Poor water quality can be the cause of many ailments in fish.