My Oscars Are Sick - Need Help Please

[jbarbaresi]

I recently added some clown loaches to my oscar aquarium. they had been quarantined for 10 days and showed no signs or ich or other illness. I left for a week on vacation and when I got back all 4 oscars and all 4 loaches had a mild case of ich, so I began treatment. I raised the temp of the water up to 86 deg slowly over the coarse of the day yesterday, and also added 1 tbsp of diluted salt to the tank every 15min until i reached a 1tbsp to 5gal salinity. I also lowered the water level to increase surface agitation to keep aeration up at the higher temps. I have now started to notice some weird blotchiness on two of the oscars, the large tiger has circular greyish white blotches that you can only see at certain angles in the light, and the smaller red oscar has lines in his sides of the same thing. I don't know if this is a fungus or just their slime coating being depleted from the salt treatment or what. These are the best pictures I could get due to their movement. Please let me know what you think it is. Thanks in advance. Ammonia = 0 Nitrite = 0 Nitrate = 10

 

[Lupin]

Your quarantine was rather inadequate. 10 days is too short. I'd extend that to 3-4 weeks next time. This looks like costia to me. And no, fungal infections are very rare. A lot of cases are mistaken for that but they're all false diagnosis. Formalin can cover both ich and costia but I suggest you keep on with the salt first and water changes daily by 20%. If after 10 days, nothing else works, remove the salt by doing water changes again and give it 2-3 days break before attempting formalin. Clean water and varied diet (no feeder fish) often help though to strengthen resistance and barricade infections from setting in so I doubt you will need formalin later on if the white blotches get away as a result of clean water aside from salt. Salt does not cause the white blotches. This seems a mixed infection.

 

[TwistedPenguin]

I was all set to explain and here Lupin already said it better
I think I know those 'blotches' you're talking about. I've always understood them to be where the cysts break out of the skin from. Yea, with Loaches especially extend the quarrantine. I learned that the hard way also. Quarrantined 3 big Loaches for 2 1/2 wks and put them in with an Oscar. 4 days later they all had ich :-/ Ich can sometimes hide in their gills (so I've read) so they don't always show outward signs after just a few wks of quarrantine. For the record I use twice the amount of salt that you did. What I finally started doing with Clown Loaches is starting salt/heat the day I get them for a full 10 days. It beats waiting 3-4 wks and wondering if they'll show up with it.

 

[Nabbig2]

Your quarantine was rather inadequate. 10 days is too short. I'd extend that to 3-4 weeks next time. This looks like costia to me. And no, fungal infections are very rare. A lot of cases are mistaken for that but they're all false diagnosis. Formalin can cover both ich and costia but I suggest you keep on with the salt first and water changes daily by 20%. If after 10 days, nothing else works, remove the salt by doing water changes again and give it 2-3 days break before attempting formalin. Clean water and varied diet (no feeder fish) often help though to strengthen resistance and barricade infections from setting in so I doubt you will need formalin later on if the white blotches get away as a result of clean water aside from salt. Salt does not cause the white blotches. This seems a mixed infection.

Yeah lupin covered it, I don't want to give you any wrong advice so do what he said. Keep us updated.

 

[Lupin]

Ich can sometimes hide in their gills (so I've read) so they don't always show outward signs after just a few wks of quarrantine.

Mitzi, you are correct. They reside in the gill tissues as a low level infection and come out once they sense their hosts are weakening. This is where the "dormancy" myth came from. There is no dormant period. The ich is just there biding its time.

 

[jbarbaresi]

thanks for all the help guys, i didn't realize to quarantine for so long i've always thought 7-10 days. i think the heat and salt are taking care of the ich as it should, there are only a handful of cysts left between all the fish this morning. i think by the end of the day today the remainder will fall off. how long does it normally take ich to divide and turn into the free swimming stage after the cyst has fallen off? my understanding is that the salt is supposed to kill the ich when it reaches its free swimming stage and the high temps are supposed to speed up the whole cycle.

as far as the blotches, there are no indentations or protrusions in those areas. its just like the scales are a different color and like i said you can only see them when the light hits those areas at a certain angle. they look almost like "hot spots", very weird.

i also wanted to add some more information in case it can help. filtration is 2 new eheim 2028 and two established fluval 405's until the eheims catch up. i lowered the water level to increase surface agitation and aeration in the tank which is what all those white streaks are in the pictures. it is a 150g tank with four 3" clown loaches, one 8" tiger oscar, one 5" leucitic oscar, two 3-4" red oscars, and a 5" sailfin pleco who is a pooping machine. they are fed hikari gold and staple pellets, freeze dried krill, shrimp pellets, and discus pellets every day, never feeders. i also throw in bugs and stuff i find around the house and nightcrawlers every once in a while.

i just started treatment with the heat and salt water on saturday and like i said the ich is almost cleared up (as far as the cyst stage goes) so I plan on keeping up the treatment for two weeks from yesterday. hopefully the patches will go away on their own. when i do the 20% water changes and mix in new salt i know i only add salt for the amound of water i am adding in, but do i have to add it slowly 1 tbsp every 15 mins or is it safe/better to add all at once seeing as how they've been acclimated to that mixture already?

 

[ward1066]

they are fed hikari gold and staple pellets, freeze dried krill, shrimp pellets, and discus pellets every day, never feeders. i also throw in bugs and stuff i find around the house and nightcrawlers every once in a while.

sounds like your overfeeding

 

[jbarbaresi]

sounds like your overfeeding

do you think? they get a small portion of each and its the whole tank eating all that stuff. they usually get a small slight bulge in their stomach by the time all the food has been consumed. water parameters seem to be fine.

 

[ward1066]

I dont think they need fed everyday until they have buldging bellies, that would produce a lot of waste IMO. Oscars are really messy and its easy to overfeed because they beg like dogs. Your filtration seems good, I would really make sure the substrate is really clean and increase the amount of water changed. What is your WC schedule and what is your substrate?

 

[jbarbaresi]

substrate is pool filter sand. my normal water change schedule is 15-20% on wed just to get most of the waste off the surface of the sand and then i do another 30% wc on sundays. nitrates stay between 5 and 10 ppm. during this treatment i will be doing 20% wc daily and replenishing the salt content accordingly.

the loaches seem to do a pretty good job of cleaning up after the oscars messy eating habits. they all only get fed once a day at night after my son goes down for bed.