hey yall..
just did some tests and results are ...

ph 7.4
amonia 0
nitrate 20
nitrite 0.25

temp 27c
55 g tank

new bout 4 month oscar hes still eating but acting slugish and sitten round the bottom a bit...... weird...
should i do a 25 % water change ????? cheers guys !

I guess it couldn't hurt but those readings itself are no reason for your Oscar to behave sluggish.
My Oscar became quite lazy and doesn't swim that excited around the tank, since he was 5 months.
Guess he was growing up, he's been slow since then, except during feeding time!

cheers for the fast reply....
just for the records what would u recomend for tank readings??????

IMO try to keep your Nitrates below 40.
But it seems your allready doing that...

doing water change wouldn't hurt your fishes.... just
keep an eye with that nitrite... it should be zero

x2 nitrites should be 0. as you have a nitrite spike means a day or so ago, if you tested, you would of had an ammonia spike too. looks like your tank has just cycled or has suffered a small filter over load ect. if your tank setup is new ( month old) it looks normal. dont change anything just keep check on water. maybe just a small water change.

if your tanks many months up and running, have you just cleaned your filter again it will be ok. dont do anything

if your tank is months old and you have not done anything recently i would say your filter may need cleaning or is to small.

Hmm I'd say oscars are extremely hardy. But what sort of filtration are you using? They are poop machines so heavy filtration is good. Wcs help to reduce nitrite. And when you test, are you using the test sticks? Because sometimes they give innacurate readings. But the test tube ones are good! Sorry going a bit offtopic here haha. Oscars sulk a lot too. Are sure he isn't just sulking because you rearranged things or fiddling about with the tank?

thanks everyone for the fast replys.
brutis seems to be happy now for wateva reason ....haha um question watsthe best way to clean ur filter pads and how often should this be done ???

i thing he was just being lazy or something....i didn move any of his furnature around so yer he must have been sleeeping or chillen lol ...cheers yall !!

when u clean the filter pads, use the water u remove in a water change. then bacterias that live in the filter pads wont die.
I clean my filter pads once a week.

If you have heavy filtration for just one oscar I'd say once a month - Just squeeze the filter pad in tank water and not tap water, if not you will kill off all bacteria which you do not want. It depends how much you feed and how often you clean the tank out. Because if you do it too often you're not giving the bacteria enough time to build up again in the filter pad so your tank would probably go through a mini cycle which could stress out the fish.

Another thing you could do is when you do your wcs look at the filter pad and see if it's really mucky if it is, then you know you should squeeze it out.

The advise given is good. You need to keep an eye on the nitrite levels. Good results are ammonia and nitrite 0 and nitrate 40 or less. Test your water before a water change and if nitrate is above 40 then you need to do more or bigger water changes. I would do some extra water changes until your nitrite is zero.

Do you have enough filtration. Filters have a tank size rating but this is for community tank only. Oscars are messy and you need double the filtration, so for a 55g you need total filtration reated for a 110g tank

hey everyone...brutis is happy as now..... eating out of my hand already hehe...
funny thing there was plants in the tank when i put him in and he decided to rip them to shreads...wat the...... guess he wanted to give it a speical touch lol...