Hi people,

I have been a proud owner of 2 Albino Oscars for about 1.5years now, and they have been healthy as anything until about 2 weeks ago when i installed a different light "Bigger Light" to brighten up things in the tank.

Pretty much after that i noticed they have not been them selves as in not eating and swimming all over the place, also they stay at the top alot now.

I tested the water like i usually do and everything seems to be fine. I Also
did a 40% water change yesterday.

I looked at the disease thread and found "bacterial infection through trauma"
Now could that be because of the major change "Lighting" to the tank?

please help I NEED A CURE~!!!!!!

Id love to put up pics but dont know how to use the attach thing.

I don't think your lighting should be a problem, but you could turn off those new lights you can check if the change in atmosphere might be the cause of the problem.
See if you notice a change for the better.
I'm sure some of the others will chime in soon with different advice.
Pictures can be uploaded in Photobucket.
Copy/paste the Imagecode into your post and the pics will show.

Well yeah ive taken the light out for now, anyway heres some pics.

It looks like a fungal infection to me.
This may be caused by feeding sick feeders or due to bad water quality.
What are the actual readings of your nitrate-nitrite and ammonia tests.
These result may help to pinpoint the problem.
How often do you change water and how much?
How big is your tank and what filters do you run.
Loads of Q's to help find an answer.

while waiting for answers on Noddy's load of questions, i suggest immediate
large water change, increase temp to 29 deg celcius, & add pure salt
to soot and comfort the fish/es. without knowing the water parameters,
it is difficult to give remedial work.

I don't think it could be something they ate cause I only feed them pallets, and blood worms
now and then. It might be the water, I'll get it tested again tonight and post it up for you guys.

I change about 50% of the water while gravel vacume around ever 2 months, is that ok or too long?
reason I kept to that routien was that every seemed to be fine... Until now!

In the mean time when mean pure salt do u mean the salt we put on our food? Sorry about the noobie question hehe.

Ok, you need to be doing a 50% water change and gravel vac every WEEK!

You also need to use a liquid test kit so you can monitor your water conditions.

What filter are you running? And how often do you clean that?

Alright I'll get the test done first, then I'll do a water change. I usally clean the filter every 3 months under tank water not the tap to keep the bactieria thing happening.

Should I put the salt in as well? And wat kind of salt?

What filter are you running?

As for the salt, get aquarium salt from your LFS! And please don't have them test your water... They LIE! Buy a API water test kit. this wil cost about $30 USD!

Thats a fungal infection. Get a treatment for fungus(remove carbon and replace with more filter media-the stuff in the baskets). In the meantime you need to do daily 50% water changes. Get a test kit (the bottle types) and test every week. Ammonia and nitrite should be zero, nitrate less than 40. If nitrate is above 40 you are either feeding too much (only feed what they will eat in 2 mins once a day) or you need to do bigger or more frequent water changes

Clean the stuff in the baskets in the filter in a bucket full of tank water

Nickisue wrote:


im using a Fluval 304. The last time i cleaned it was about 2 months ago in tank water.

One of the Oscars gave up 2 days ago. Ive been concentrating on keeping the other one alive and hopefully get it back to Normal again.

ive done A 80% water change few days ago and a 50% the day after that. The fish looks already so much better.
Tested the water before and these are the result

Nitrite 0
Nitrate 6.0
PH 0ppm
Ammonia 0ppm

Wat im going to do is raise the Ph up to about 7....ran out getting some tomorrow, i also put in some Stability to get the good bacteria going again.

at present time Oscar is getting alot better and starting to swim around but still not eatting yet.