I have a single tiger oscar in my 90g tank, the only other fish in there is a firemouth. I have read TONS of articles on this and I am an experienced fish keeper. I change the water every two weeks, 40%-60% depending on how dirty it is. The nitrates have NEVER tested over ~5ppm. I feed mostly hikari gold, but also give vitamin enhanced whole krill, formula two frozen cubes and banana. My platys and guppies breed in my planted tank and I feed a few to the oscar after gut loading them when they start to over populate my planted tank. Also I will save chunks of raw fish we are going to have for dinner for a treat for the O.

So the oscar the hole in the head is slowly getting worse, he has a pea sized chunk on the forehead, and about 4 BB sized holes on each side of the cheek. I stopped using carbon about 4 months ago and still no improvement.

I think its time to try the dimetridazole and metronidazole treament?

Or should I start with OCTOZIN? Any idea where to get this in the USA?

seems you are doing everything right but still have HITH. Dose the oscar and fire mouth get on,any bulling? stress can be a factor. how long have you had them. also do you heat new water when doing your maintenance?

Ebay is a good place to look for octozin. I cant help as to where to buy in USA but you could buy from uk and pay postage. Its not cheep so make sure you order the right amounts if you go this route

if your nitrates are never over 5 and you only change your water every 2 weeks you must tell me your secret. i could also be considered an experienced fishkeeper and i know i have more than adequate filtration on my tanks yet having a nitrate level that low after 2 weeks is really quite a feat.

so whats your secret? i would really like to know?

btw welcome to the site

I have gone longer than 2 weeks with out a change. I dont over feed and if I see any wasted food I remove it, while Im in there I also try and remove any terds lying around I test the water with a LaMotte Nitrate Test Kit. I have barely enough gravel to cover the bottom and a powerhead pointed to blow the debris out from behind the rock work, its on a timer so it gives the fish time to rest.

The oscar has been with the firemouth since he was less than 2" long, I useto have a large OLD Jack Dempsey who died at 17. The jack died about 2 years ago and I have had the Oscar for almost 4 now. So the O and the firemouth get along just fine, the firemouth will flare sometimes at the oscar but he seems to not notice it.

I do see some odd behavior from the oscar occasionally but I assume its somewhat typical... He will spit water from the tank, sometimes cause a huge splash, and one night he even jumped right out of the tank! (I fixed the lid so it cant anymore) But I was so startled at 4am, from the noise I thought someone had broken in to my house!

Either way... Should I get the stuff on ebay or try for the perscription stuff at my vet? My vet deals with exotics, birds, rabbits and reptiles, but I never heard of any vet dealing with fish, I think they would have no idea what I am talking about...

I have used a private vet before, and I agree they were not the best fish doc but some do specialise in this area. with koi carp prices a vet bill isn't much compared to the cost of a fish. most vets if not all would want to see the fish, this is your main concern. getting it there and home alive. a vet would be the best option but way up the cost. have you tested for other trace elements? why dose it jump at lid? dose this stress it when it hits its head? If you are certain your waters fine then meds may help, but as I will tell anyone if the water isn't good you will wast the med money. i am sure you have double checked so I would go with meds that I could buy then go vet if it didn't work.

you could also try lowering water level so it dont bag head. it wont look good but you could rule out hitting head stress.

i may be late... but having good water parameters is always resulting to healthy fish. i just wonder why there is still a problem. stress is one factor but stress is also minimized with good water... so better check...there must be some problem along the way

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/pr...play.cfm?pcatid=4821

Thanks for the link, I will try that before I talk to the vet.

Its really not helpful for people to be repeating and repeating good water parameters. I KNOW they are important and I do water changes. I have read pretty much every article I could find on the web about HITH before I came here. I know it must get repetitive with people asking the same thing over and over to find out they feed their O nothing but gold fish and change the water once a year, but please, read the original post!

The only thing I have noticed stop the progression of the HITH so far is feeding banana and soaking food that isn't already vitamin enhanced with selcon.

Hi. Like you I had HITH at some point I treated it with Hole in Head guard. It worked really good and the holes were starting to disappear in a couple of days here is a link to the med.

www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=4821

Hope it works for you too.

the active ingredient in octozin is dimetridiazole..8.5%....and is only a three day course....metronidiazole/flagyl is the most effective treatment for hith by far ..but your biofilter will get obliterated with it............

biggamehunter wrote:


x2...

the two most common hith meds are metronidiazole and dimetridiazole. however i find metronidiazole usually only helps with severe cases that have been worsened with bacterial infections (many severe cases are), and not minor ones. metronidiazole is also pretty hard to come by, generally you need one of them prescritption thingies. dimetridiazole, on the other hand, really doesn't help much. it stalls the hith so the fish can recover, but doesn't do near as much help as metro.



what's your diet? HITH occurs when the fishes immune system is weakened, which occurs when the fish is stressed or already/just recently ill. stress can occur from lots of stuff, i notice several cases of HITH pop up when the fish has been feed a rather unstable diet.... e.g. same old thing every day. what are you feeding?

-art

(btw, check out this chart of an oscar's natural diet, goes to show just how varied it is: fishbase.com/TrophicEco/FoodItemsList.ph...mp;species=ocellatus )

-art

EDIT: changed dimetridiazole really does help to dimetridiazole really doesn't help... woops

nice link art..........we could add a few to that list as well !!!!