Iv got a problem with 1 of my oscars hes got hole in the head behind his eye which is quite big. Iv been told to use ( esha Hexamita ) does any1 no anything about this?

I've never had a serious case of hole in the head disease so I'm not really in a position to recommend treatments on experience. However, any treatment is worth trying if your fish have the disease. Before you do any treatment, try and address why your fish may have developed this disease. It is your water in good condition? What type of food you feed it? Its not worth starting any treatment unless your tank water is an extremely good condition. What are your water readings, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH? Anyway, I googled the treatment he mentions and came up with a few websites, I chose the first one. It is worth mentioning that in some cases, hole in the head disease can be cleared up by a regular and increase tank maintenance, i.e. regular water changes. Obviously severe cases will need treatment.

http://www.eshalabs.com/hexamita.htm

Thankyou for finding out about medication. I have 2 tiger oscars, they are 3 years old and the tank holds 130 gallons. I didnt do a water change for quite some time but this was about a year ago. I change half the water once a month now, have 3 filters, 1 internal and 2 external.

I feed the fish live river shrimps and sometimes they like chicken chow mein (but only from a certain chinese ha ha) but they do like chicken!
They are 13" long, eat well and are happy.

I am gutted that one of them has this disease and would do anything to sort it out, but he has had it for the past year and it has only just started to get worse. Hopefully the hexamita treatment will do the trick.

Thanks again!!

My fishkeeping skills used to be quite poor. I used to overfeed and not do big enough water changes and never tested the water. Then my 9in oscar(the biggest one) got hole in the head (HITH). He had it quite bad, loads of holes in the head area and some quite deep. I did some research and asking about and discovered what i was doing wrong. I increased my water changes and decreased my feeding and also treated it twice. This stopped the HITH getting worse and if fact it got a lot better. Unfortunately it would not go away and after about 6 months the oscar stopped eating and died. Please dont assume your fish will die as i have heard of people whose oscars have had bad HITH and they have been cured. The best thing to do is keep testing the water and try to keep the nitrates as low as possible, ideally below 20. Treating the tank cant do any harm but its not a cure like say white spot treatment is. Let us know how you get on

Here are some photos of my fish with the hole in the head disease.

Here are some pictures of my fish, with the hole in the head disease.

I don't see any photos...

Sorry - the picture was too big! Try again!

still can't do it - will have to try and resize the image again!

3rd time lucky

Theres a product called "melafix" its very exspensive and i have never used it mysellf but the boys here in auckland swear by it,i suppose its worth a try.



Good luck Mate

just checked and its fairly cheap in the UK under 5 pounds.
please keep us posted.