Fungus on my oscar? How to treat.

[duanes]

This shot above is the flow of a river in Colombia where oscars may be found, they are receiving about an @ 100% water change every minute. So a 60% water change on a 125 per week is hardly overkill.
I do a 30-=40% water change every other day on a 180, and consider my schedule wimpy.

 

[C. Breeze]

View attachment 1458149
This shot above is the flow of a river in Colombia where oscars may be found, they are receiving about an @ 100% water change every minute. So a 60% water change on a 125 per week is hardly overkill.
I do a 30-=40% water change every other day on a 180, and consider my schedule wimpy.

Yeah, but the water they’re constantly getting was already used / pooped in by however many fish, villages, logging operations etc are upstream of wherever that Oscar is hanging out. Just because it’s seeing new water go by doesn’t equate to the quality of the water being “good” And certainly doesn’t equate to continually improving environment, or even an environment being maintained at peak condition.

natures “water change schedule” is, or rather can be, way more generous, but it’s really just a lot more of the same- those fish don’t see/ recognize change in there water composition/ quality the way they do after a water change in a tank.

I always appreciate and try to factor in what the native environment is like where a fish is found, especially since I keep plenty of wild and f1 type fish and would rather see the successive generations stay as true to type as possible rather than becoming”tank fish” and I truly appreciate the wealth of experience and knowledge you bring to all these discussions, Duane, but the concept of nature’s 100 percent water change is one that I’ve always struggled with.
Take for instance a typical south East or south central AK salmon stream. Silver salmon go all the way up to a lake, marsh, bog and spawn there. Then die. At the extreme headwaters of the system. The following spring after break up hundreds of thousands of carcasses are released into the stream. The entire river from its source to its mouth is choked with carcassses rotting- and the fish all go nuts on the “flesh bite” then it’s the smolt bite, then the egg bite. But even when spawning starts in July the river is still full of rotting fish. obviously those systems not only
Can absorb and handle that level of decay and in fact rely on it- but my point is the resident non anadromous fish are getting moment by moment “100% water changes” full of dead rotting fish, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.

 

[duanes]

As you can see by the plant growth on the banks, water in rivers and lakes is constantly being purified by terrestrial and aquatic vegetation using nutrients , tropical rains also replace water at times daily.
Where I live in Panama, I test the unpolluted places where I collect fish, and I have never yet, had a nitrate reading above 5 ppm.
And when I worked as a water chemist on the US great lakes, Lake Michigan nitrate level hardly ever exceed 1 ppm, tested on a photo spectrometer that read into the hundredth place.

And as far as rotting corpses go, with the hordes or vultures, and crocodilians, at least here, they only last a few moments.

 

[C. Breeze]

And those vultures and crocs pump that bio mass straight back into the system they just “extracted it” from.


I think you and I are in agreement as to what constitutes a healthy system- and what it takes to achieve one,
Indoors outdoors or in nature.


Depending on time of year my water change schedule in my glass tanks either matches/ is similar to yours or is 10% daily.

But I also keep vats outside that have minimal input, and maintenance and no filter or aeration where the fish grow like crazy and breed like It’s a free for all. . With the massive amounts of plants that those vats pump out we can be almost certain that the PH is swinging “wildly” throughout the day, even as the temperature swings 10 degrees back and forth- so I don’t know why the fish grow and breed so well in what seems like a horrible place but it seems like if they’ve got low nitrates they can handle almost anything a lot of them.


I appreciate the discussion. Thank you

 

[DonnyB]

I get it... been keeping large cyclids for over 15 years successfully..... learnt all about wcs by year 0.1. As a long time keeper I tire of the copy and paste WC / tank size answer. btw I did nothing - fungus gone over night. Strong immune system. Clean water. well taken care of fish... I guess thats why fish and reptiles can shed and regrow scales so quickly, getting rid of parasites, disease and infection from scrapes and cuts.
oscars are clumsy animals.... if theres a rough or sharp rock or anything in your aquarium... even a little bit they’ll find a way to eventually damage themselves.

 

[DonnyB]

There is no aedequate way of duplicating nature; when it’s natural. However as a fly fisherman I can confirm that us humans manage a lot of that water to a point where many streams can’t support fish anymore.... all over the place. Finding a healthy ecosystem sustaining healthy populations of wild fish is getting increasingly difficult.

I’d rather be my captive oscar than a wild Atlantic salmon these days. Sadly.

 

[C. Breeze]

There is no aedequate way of duplicating nature; when it’s natural. However as a fly fisherman I can confirm that us humans manage a lot of that water to a point where many streams can’t support fish anymore.... all over the place. Finding a healthy ecosystem sustaining healthy populations of wild fish is getting increasingly difficult.

I’d rather be my captive oscar than a wild Atlantic salmon these days. Sadly.

I spent /d a ridiculous foolish amount of my life witha flyrod. Following a dog is Another one, fooush ridiculous amount of time following a dog in the woods.

 

[DonnyB]

I can’t imagine what is ridiculous about either one of those things

as this is a thread of fish lovers like myself - they all go back swimming and healthy

 

[LBDave]

As you can see by the plant growth on the banks, water in rivers and lakes is constantly being purified by terrestrial and aquatic vegetation using nutrients , tropical rains also replace water at times daily.
Where I live in Panama, I test the unpolluted places where I collect fish, and I have never yet, had a nitrate reading above 5 ppm.
And when I worked as a water chemist on the US great lakes, Lake Michigan nitrate level hardly ever exceed 1 ppm, tested on a photo spectrometer that read into the hundredth place.
View attachment 1458156
And as far as rotting corpses go, with the hordes or vultures, and crocodilians, at least here, they only last a few moments.
View attachment 1458157

What was the temp of the rivers in the pictures where the oscars live?

 

[duanes]

What was the temp of the rivers in the pictures where the oscars live?

I didn't monitor while in Colombia, but I did snorkel there, but it was interesting how cool the rivers seemed (my perception was maybe mid 70sF).
But because they began in sometimes snow capped mountains not that far away, I shouldn't have been that surprised.