Is my oscar sick? (pictures)

[Rocksor]

So are you saying that it's normal and I shouldn't worry about them for now? And just keep up the clean water?

Did you test your nitrates using a liquid test?

 

[pocky]

This is OP. I cleaned out the gunky canister and did a huge water change twice over the past 2 days. His sensory pits look less white.

 

[Rocksor]

This is OP. I cleaned out the gunky canister and did a huge water change twice over the past 2 days. His sensory pits look less white.

That's good that the water changes are immediately helping. It seems to be the source of the whitening/enlarging of the sensory pits.

 

[32Bit_Fish]

I have a 12" Oscar with some other small fish in my 75G BB tank. I know I'm over stocking the tank. But I do 80% w/c twice a week. The water started getting cloudy when I do 80% w/c once a week. My Oscar never had any health issues. So large w/c once a week is a minimum.

 

[Jexnell]

There is something either wrong with your tank or the testing of nitrate. It should not be yellow on a cycled tank. There should be a tint of orange. Re do the nitrate test, and make sure to shake bottle number 2 of the nitrate test for 2 minutes vigorously. The contents of bottle #2 will clump up over time in as little as 7 days of non-shaking and produce false nitrate results.

Thanks for this info, I didn't know about shaking before hand. Redid the test and it was at 40, so did a fin lvl water change today and will everyday till it gets down to 5. I just moved not even 3 weeks ago so they got a 100% water change there. My AQ110 has two bags of the biorings whatever they are called in it, that with the water changes every 3 days I assumed the test was right.
Tho I did have an extra Oscar in there for a week and a half. A friend if a friend shows up with a 10in Oscar in a bucket and is like you have to rescue it.....I ended up taking it to a petco cause it was attacking Toni's gill plates trying to kill her.

 

[tarheel96]

The sensory pits show up very well using the flash on a camera with regular oscars. Here's my oscar in mid 2015. He's 5+ years old now ... no hith. Weekly fin-level water changes. Absolutely No feeders.
You can see how the sensory pits do get scraped often.


Every oscar's pattern is different like fingerprints.

 

[pops]

going back to the nitrate test, when doing it, test bottle # 2 needs to have the piss shook out of it before adding the ten drops to the test vile. beat on desk or what ever for a good 2 to 3 minutes. the crystals need to be broke up and dissolved. way back when I was guilty of not getting it shook enof. So I am speaking from experience, Nitrate should never be 0.

what size tank he in?

 

[Jexnell]

Asking me or Op? Mine is in a 55g. In my area 150g tanks with everything go for 300 on Craig's list. I have 1/2 of that so far. Being on SSD and having to live on 800 a month is rough, but I will get there.

 

[jhook]

My Oscar lives with a school of Roseline sharks

I was thinking about getting some of them when I upgrade my Oscar tank to a 300g. How well do they get along? Does the Oscar ever eat any of them? That wouldn't be my favorite way of giving live food at >$6 a pop.

 

[Jexnell]

jhook I got the sharks the same time as the Oscar. So they have grown up together, she learned at a young age that she can't catch them so leaves them be now.
Every now and then she gets spunky and chases one but it don't even last a full lenght of the tank, they are so fast its no chance of catching them.

A member was selling some bigger ones here a few months back.

I love them they really do a lot of tank cleaning, more so than the catfish I think.