About a week ago, my Oscar stopped eating. At first I thought it was ok becuase I read that they sometimes do this. Then he had what looked like foamy bubbles sticking to him, so I bought a formula for clearing any fungus or parasites from the tank. Days later I went to change his water, he jumped out of his tank, luckily he landed into the water I was about to put him in...about two hours later when I put him back in his tank he again jumped out,this time he wasn't so lucky in this landing. He fell a pretty good distance, but I managed to get him back in his tank. Every since he has taken to lying on his side, breathing really hard. After lying on his side for a while, he then swims erratically around the tank running into the walls. After this erractic motion he goes back to lying on his side and breathing hard. What should I do?

welcome to the site, wish it was under better circumstances that you found us.

Okay, the first thing you must do is test your water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrates and pH. Without knowing what condition your water is then, it really is very difficult to advise you any further.

Hopefully you have got some test kits, we always recommend liquid test kits. I favour aquarium pharmaceuticals, although there are many other makes of test kit on the market. If you haven't got any test kits, I would recommend a 50% water change making sure that you use a water conditioner.

Could you also tell us how big your tank is, what kind of filtration you have got, and how you have been going about tank maintenance i.e. water changes, filtration cleaning etc.

Unfortunately it doesn't sound good, your Oscar is obviously breathing heavily for some reason, this could be stress due to illness, or maybe toxins in the water that is stressing it out. One last thing, is your tank well oxygenated? In other words, is the water coming in from the filtration system causing disturbance on top of the water?

My Oscar was a gift to me that my brother gave to me. He's little now, so my brother gave him to me in a two gallon tank that has a bubble stone, but this week when I get my new apt, he will have a 50 gallon tank because unlike my brother, I recognize he won't stay little for long. I clean his tank about once a week or a week and a half depending on how dirty it looks. I always use put "start right" into the tank when I clean it and let it set for a little before returning him to the tank. I keep the temperature at 76-78 degrees. I know his tank size isn't ideal, but I leave in a dorm so the earliest I can switch the little guy into a bigger tank is next week...I love my Oscar, but I wish my brother would have did more research before buying him...

Do you at least have some sort of filtration? You need to get him in a larger tank with good filtration immediately.

if i read this right you have a juvenile oscar in a 2 gallon aquarium? the first thing you should do is water changes every day of 50% to get rid of the toxins that are building up in the tank.
the next thing to do is to get the bigger tank up and running asap. be sure you also have adequate filtration to go with the tank.

x2......

due to space restriction and bad water condition, oscar
tries to scape the situation. i suggest you do what
necro recommends to save your fish.

Please read the section on cycling a tank so he has the best chance possible of a long happy life with you. If you're lucky you'll have him 10-12 years