Hi All,
I have 3 oscars, all two years old. Recently one of my oscars got cotton wool disease so I treated the tank and this has now cleared up. I still dont know how the disease occured as the water quality in the tank was perfect - that goes for nitrate, nitrite and ammonia.

Anyway, since then none of my osacrs have been eating and this has gone on for over a week. They are usually fed on Hikari Cichlid Gold and they usually love this. I dont know what has changed or what to do but I am starting to panic as like I said they havent eaten for over a week.

Yesterday I did a 50% water change, replaced the substrate and changed my carbon and nitrite pads to get rid of any lingering medication.

I have a 450ltr tank with a full Jewel setup. Like previously stated, my water quality is perfect, I have kept fish for four years and have never had this problem, any advice would be welcome.....

Cheers

welcome to our community

Okay, I'm going to get a little bit repetitive here, we normally say this on every problem regarding health issues. Can you actually post the results of the water test? Ammonia, nitrite, nitrates and pH.

Have you only got the internal filtration? Are the Fish breathing heavily at all? How warm the water? Do they look interested at all at feeding time?

I must say that your tank isn't really big enough for two Oscars, I suspect it's probably the 90-ish gallon version of the Jewel. Is it the one with the slightly concave front?

We get asked this question all the time. I'm willing to bet that every person who has ever owned an Oscar has at one time experience their fish refusing food. It's happened to me on more than one occasion, one time, my fish wouldn't eat for maybe two weeks, I not can honestly tell you why, all I know is it went back to normal after a while.

Hi OFL.

Thanks for the quick reply and I must say I am very impressed with what you have achieved with this site, very helpful!!

I have 3 oscars in my tank and I am aware that the size of the tank isn't what is recommended for housing this amount of oscars, but in saying that I have had no previous problems.

Your guess is correct, I have the Juwel vision 450 tank witht the standard filtration system, but please understand I have only developed the eating problem since medicating the tank.

My nitrate is 0 ppm mg/l, nitrite 0 ppm mg/l, ph 6.6 and ammonia 0.25.

Can medicating the tank have affected their eating or could it be pure coincidence, and is it a major concern if they have not eaten for over a week. As I have never had a problem over eating before I dont know if I should be worrying so much about it..

The tank temp is 29oc, they arent breathing heavy and at feeding time they take a look at the food but make no attempt to come for it.

Thanks OFL!!

In a cycled tank you should get a test result for nitrate- not zero. Please read the section on the home page about cycling. What are using to test the water- strips or the bottle types

You said you replaced the carbon and the pads in the filter- was there anything else in there that you left in?

Do you clean the media in the filter in used tank water or tap water?

Oscars should be fed a variety of foods- again check the site for different foods to feed your oscars

I see that you have stated that you have Zero nitrates. Are you using anything in your filter to remove nitrates? The amount of Oscars you have got would mean it is absolutely impossible for you to maintain nitrates of Zero, even if the fish are not eating, they will still produce ammonia through their respiration.

I would suggest that you remove any charcoal from your filters. Also gradually reduce the temperature down to 26°C. Very high temperatures can cause oxygen depletion which can actually put fish off their food. Having said this, if you were suffering oxygen depletion I would expect your fish to be breathing heavily. Anyway, it's worth a try.

Your ammonia is a tad high. This could be down to the water changes, did you switch your filters for any period of time? You would have had to with the filtration system on your type of tank. I would suggest that for two or three days you do not attempt to feed your fish at all. Then maybe in three days, put two or three pellets in and see what happens.

Because this is a very common problem, we have yet to actually determine why Oscars in particular do this so I can't actually give you any kind of advice that is proven to work. If your fish are still active and moving around and I don't think they are actually ill. Fish that are suffering from illness normally become rather subdued, don't move around much, and will often breathe heavily.

any owner of a fish would get concered if there babys (oscars) arent eating but ive read up on shit before and oscars can easily go over three weeks without food google sum stuff just use a variety of foods i feed my o six different types of food

FadeToBlack wrote:


Did you change all the pads at once?

Hi All,

Thanks for your advice on this topic and sorry I didnt reply. My oscar started eating again but since this problem, the problem has got worse.

The oscar in question developed a hole in his head which gradually spread and now covers his whole head. I am not sure if this is HITH or something different. I have treated my tank with anti internal bacteria solution which seems to have stopped the spread. I was advised by my local aquarium that it was ulcers.

Although the spread has stopped my fish spends most of its time lay on its side at the bottom of the tank and swims in a more upright position. He is eating normally though and always comes up to feed.

I will attch a photo and all advice is welcome, really dont know where to go from here....

All other fish in the tank are fine...

Many thanks

can you re-test your water and post results please, also a pic please

Best way to post a pic is to upload the pic to pohotbucket and put a link in the post

I have added a photo but cant test my water this evening. In the mean time do you have any ideas from what I have explained

Thanks

Your fish has HITH, the most common cause of this is poor water quality. The best cure is the best water quality. You will need to do lots of extra water changes (say 3 large a week) to cure the HITH. Be warned it can take months to cure HITH

The best advice for keeping oscars and to stop HITH developing is to test the water weekly, if the nitrates go above 40 then you need to do bigger or more frequent water changes

I thought it was HITH but my local aquarium disagreed with this. Glad to know what it is finally. Are there any medications that can be used??