Hey!
I've got a beautiful 5 year old Lutino Oscar female who has started showing beginnings of bloat. Her mate died of the same issue back in February, I think because we didn't catch it quickly enough and I was too nervous about transferring him to an epsom salt bath due to his size and having never done it before - I don't want to lose this one so I'd love some help!
This is her second morning without food, nothing passed so far but it may be reducing very slightly. It's nowhere near as pronounced as the male's was when we noticed it, which seemed to be overnight. With peas and fasting we did get his to go back to normal, but then it suddenly came back a few days later.
Parameters are good and I do regular 40-50% water changes (weekly or bi-weekly depending on my schedule). She is the only fish in the 125 gallon tank, API Filstar XP-XL running on it with a spray bar as well as a bubble wall she likes to play in for additional aeration. There is a piece of driftwood in the tank, remaining from being a shelter for a plecco no longer in that tank.
She is swimming actively except for occasional short periods of pouting in or around her big PVC tube (lol, which was for the plecco but she ended up claiming it for herself), definitely begging for food and normally she's a pretty picky eater. I know that's a bit of the problem, as it's hard to vary her diet since she has for most of her life only been willing to eat pellets. She is a bit more adventurous than her partner was, but she won't take any cubes of bloodworms, bring shrimp, etc. I haven't tried flakes or much in the way of freeze dried food with her though.
She currently gets Hikari Cichlid bio-gold+ with the probiotic, medium floating pellets (won't eat sinking - the picky princess) and I've been limiting the amount of those, since usually she's not immediately interested to eat more than one or two pellets, but then likes the activity of following the rest around lazily and picking them off here and there, so wanting to reduce waste and not risk over feeding. Admittedly I've been lax on pre-soaking her food, and if I can get her through this I will definitely be going back to doing that and trying to push more variety on her - she can go ahead and be a bit peckish until she tries the bloodworms or other options. She will however eat peas thank goodness!
I just noticed her temp has gotten a bit low - I had the inkbird set to 80, since our house this time of year has put tanks in danger of climbing too high if the AC isn't blasting. The tank is at 79 right now, so I'm going to slowly work it up to 82 as I know the chillier water will contribute to constipation.
Aside from that I am going to try the pea trick since I know she's hungry - boiled/softened frozen pea, de-skinned and squished a little.
What I want to know is:
A) How many peas and how often? I want to give her enough to get the laxative effect but I'm wary of adding too much more matter into her GI tract when she's not poopin. I'm going to be starting with 1 pea today but I'll keep checking this thread in case y'all think I should use more. And do I give her one then skip tomorrow or give her one per day?
B) How long would you let peas, otherwise fasting and increasing the temp do their trick before deciding it's time for epsom salts?
C) She is LARGE and doesn't fancy being moved or handled, not that I blame her, so since she happens to be in the 125 on her own I'd ideally like to dose the tank instead of trying to move her back and forth into a more concentrated bath. Is that doable for a 125? If so what's a good safe dosage - sadly I've seen info all over the map on that. And once she's better what should I do in terms of water changes to get rid of the salt - just do a 50% this week, another next week, and slowly remove it that way or does it need to be cleaned out more drastically?
Thanks for any feedback! Jupiter and I appreciate it!
I've got a beautiful 5 year old Lutino Oscar female who has started showing beginnings of bloat. Her mate died of the same issue back in February, I think because we didn't catch it quickly enough and I was too nervous about transferring him to an epsom salt bath due to his size and having never done it before - I don't want to lose this one so I'd love some help!
This is her second morning without food, nothing passed so far but it may be reducing very slightly. It's nowhere near as pronounced as the male's was when we noticed it, which seemed to be overnight. With peas and fasting we did get his to go back to normal, but then it suddenly came back a few days later.
Parameters are good and I do regular 40-50% water changes (weekly or bi-weekly depending on my schedule). She is the only fish in the 125 gallon tank, API Filstar XP-XL running on it with a spray bar as well as a bubble wall she likes to play in for additional aeration. There is a piece of driftwood in the tank, remaining from being a shelter for a plecco no longer in that tank.
She is swimming actively except for occasional short periods of pouting in or around her big PVC tube (lol, which was for the plecco but she ended up claiming it for herself), definitely begging for food and normally she's a pretty picky eater. I know that's a bit of the problem, as it's hard to vary her diet since she has for most of her life only been willing to eat pellets. She is a bit more adventurous than her partner was, but she won't take any cubes of bloodworms, bring shrimp, etc. I haven't tried flakes or much in the way of freeze dried food with her though.
She currently gets Hikari Cichlid bio-gold+ with the probiotic, medium floating pellets (won't eat sinking - the picky princess) and I've been limiting the amount of those, since usually she's not immediately interested to eat more than one or two pellets, but then likes the activity of following the rest around lazily and picking them off here and there, so wanting to reduce waste and not risk over feeding. Admittedly I've been lax on pre-soaking her food, and if I can get her through this I will definitely be going back to doing that and trying to push more variety on her - she can go ahead and be a bit peckish until she tries the bloodworms or other options. She will however eat peas thank goodness!
I just noticed her temp has gotten a bit low - I had the inkbird set to 80, since our house this time of year has put tanks in danger of climbing too high if the AC isn't blasting. The tank is at 79 right now, so I'm going to slowly work it up to 82 as I know the chillier water will contribute to constipation.
Aside from that I am going to try the pea trick since I know she's hungry - boiled/softened frozen pea, de-skinned and squished a little.
What I want to know is:
A) How many peas and how often? I want to give her enough to get the laxative effect but I'm wary of adding too much more matter into her GI tract when she's not poopin. I'm going to be starting with 1 pea today but I'll keep checking this thread in case y'all think I should use more. And do I give her one then skip tomorrow or give her one per day?
B) How long would you let peas, otherwise fasting and increasing the temp do their trick before deciding it's time for epsom salts?
C) She is LARGE and doesn't fancy being moved or handled, not that I blame her, so since she happens to be in the 125 on her own I'd ideally like to dose the tank instead of trying to move her back and forth into a more concentrated bath. Is that doable for a 125? If so what's a good safe dosage - sadly I've seen info all over the map on that. And once she's better what should I do in terms of water changes to get rid of the salt - just do a 50% this week, another next week, and slowly remove it that way or does it need to be cleaned out more drastically?
Thanks for any feedback! Jupiter and I appreciate it!
