I came home from work today and noticed lots of tiny white spots covering one of my Oscars. The other Oscar is completely spot free.



Is it Ich?

If so, what action do you recommend me taking?

sorry, the photo it doesn't show anything. Ick is easy to spot,the little white cysts resemble grains of salt. They can cover the body,and also their fins. The fish may only have two or three cysts, or it might be absolutely plastered in it. If indeed you suspect that your fish has got it, try turning the temperature of the tank up to around 30°C and leaving it like that for around 10 days. You can also treat the tank with a white spot treatment, this should kill any free swimming parasites. Hopefully, the heat treatment should do the trick. I would actually advise you not to treat the tank while the temperature is quite high, you can always add that after where it has come down a little bit, just to be on the face side.

Sorry about the picture. It's not easy to get a good shot on them. I found this picture online of another Tiger Oscar that that has the exact same white spots on him as mine does.



The site where I got that picture from said it was Ich.

I currently have the tank on 82ºF (28ºC). I will raise the tempreture to 86ºF (30ºC) like you said.

that is an extremely good picture, I might look into using that photo on one of the article pages. Fingers crossed for you

Ich....

Keep up the water changes, maybe add a bubbler, since warmer water has less oxygen. There's a great article on this site about ich, here's a link to that: http://www.oscarfishlover.com/index.php/ick/Treating-White-Spot-aka-Ick.html

Good luck,
Art

Thats white spot alright.

As said turn the temp up to 30oc and leave it that way for about 6 days after the last spot has been seen

Watch out for infections, as the cysts burst it leaves a little hole in the skin and an infection can set in. If this happens turn the temp back to normal (about 27oc) and add something that treats fin rot or fungus