Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum, Right now i have 2 oscars and about 6 smaller fish, my oscars are still young and there is plenty of room in my 70gallon tank. I've had my oscars for about 3 weeks now with everything going fine and all fish are getting along.

But now my white oscar has ick which i am treating him and is gettig better and my tiger is now not eating and he isnt very active like he usually is, I don't see any physical symptoms on his body. Does anybody know what could be wrong? All the other fish are fine, the tank is clean maintained well, but ive done a water change to see if it helped but nothing has changed.

Right now I've isolated him into a 10gallon tank.

Welcome to the site

I suppose the first question to ask is that you cycle your tank before getting the fish? The next question is have you tested the water? I can't really say any more until you answer these two important questions

OFL wrote:



x2

Thanks!

And yes the Tank was set up and left for 2 days so that all the conditions were good before I added the Oscars in.

They were both fine for a few weeks, I've had Oscars before and I didnt have any problems with them. The 2 I have now are getting sick for some reason, while the other fish are all fine.

if im reading this right you set up your tank 2 days before adding your oscars? if this is the case did you use an established filter or was that also set up 2 days ago? also if you can could you please post your readings for ammonia nitrites and nitrates along with the tank ph. this could prove to be very helpfull indentifying what could be wrong.

Before you add the fish to a tank (the ones you intend on keeping) you have got to cycle it first. Basically, this means nurturing the correct bacteria in your filtration system. That is why your filter is there, it's not just to remove solid waste from your tank, it's also there to remove toxins. These being an ammonia and nitrite which are created by fish waste and also rotting food and may be dead fish that have been missed. You probably noticed that you have different material in your filtration, you may have different coloured sponges, or if you've got a canister, you may have little round balls, or stuff that resembles pasta. I don't know what filter you've got. Some of these are to remove solid waste, the others are the home for millions of these beneficial bacteria. But it does take a few weeks to grow the bacteria.

It takes approximately 6 to 8 weeks to cycle a fish tank properly. If you put fish straight into a tank that has not been cycled, dangerous toxins will build up. It won't necessarily have any effect on your fish immediately, it could be a few weeks before the fish start sharing signs of ill health. That's why we never recommend cycling a tank with the Oscars, unfortunately only with fish that you really don't intend on keeping long-term. Oscars are notorious for developing diseases later on because of poor water conditions.

What you need to get is some liquid tests. I highly recommend aquarium pharmaceuticals. The Master Kit is fairly expensive but it contains all the tests you need. However, you can buy them all separately. We really need to know the ammonia, nitrite and PH readings. The results of these three tests will give us a very good idea of what your situation is.

Alyta wrote:


i understand what you think. healthy fishes could take a few days or weeks before succumbed to illness due to poor water condition. clear water doesn't mean you have good water parameters. in the first day or two, they take their foods. as time goes on, they feel bad but have nowhere to go and stop eating. sometimes bad water indicators are: gasping for breath; darting; or not moving at all to conserve their strength

as every body have said, probably you do not have cycled tank when you introduce your oscar in it.

btw, welcome to the site

Hi again,

Alright let me try to explain a little better. We have an existing tank with like 2 small fish and decided to get a few more, so the first thing that happened was my husband cleaned the tank as it was due for its regular matenance. But because we decided to add more fish, he cleaned it thoroughly which I think is the root of our problems.

After he cleaned it spotless and left it to settle for 2 days before adding back our old fish, we then purchased new fish wihtin the next few days.

It didn't occur to me since we thought nothing was wrong and due to my lack of knowledge, but when you guys explained the need to cycle and to check toxin levels, I realised that the cleaning my husband did must have been so thorough that we lost our bacterial colonies that existed in our filter and gravel.

And after testing our water, we indeed have high ammonia levels. And the symptoms that Paul has described is what they were doing.

Right now we've tried to clean the water of waste etc, and will keep doing this more often to keep the levels safe. But is there anything else we should be doing?

And thank you very much for your quick responses, Im so glad there was a site like this I love my oscars so I don't want anything happening to them, next time I will think it through before changing anything. And this site will become the most useful resource for my husband and I.

Once again thank you

i believe there is a chemical at the petmart to boost
cycling process and to lower the ammonia though i have
not used any of them in my entire fish keeping (7 years).
do add small amount of pure salt to enhance oxygenation
and ripple a little the discharge of your pump to increase
water aeration. feed them sparingly for the mean time to
lessen bio-loads.

ooh kool, thankyou for that.

Hey Paul are Your Oscar's white and black? cos ive never seen any of that colour unless they are rare or something.

i got them as tiger oscar but grew up without
pigmentation. they look like white oscar soaked
in a gallon of white paint with black fins. they
have pangasius tank mate 17-18 inches long as
of today (1 white and 1 black).

your tank will take 40 days to cycle.......especialy if you have performed such a vigorous cleaning ,please see the link on the homepage on how to cycle a tank ..or look at the thread in the chemistry section thats pinned at the top ...these will help you understand the process