oscar fish

[crazyman229]

ya i will get at test set
i have had tanks for years and this is this just weird to have death of oscars
and ya 6 is to many for this tank i know so 4 should be ok now
but i will test my water tomorro

 

[crazyman229]

ok i have a test strips and it says high nitrates
so what would the recommended amount of water to change and how often???

 

[gomezladdams]

Do a 50% change right now.retest.Keep doing 50% every day or every other day till youre down to 10ppm nitrates.Then keep it there

 

[crazyman229]

ok
50% is not tomuch a shock

 

[twhittle]

ok
50% is not tomuch a shock

No No No! The more the better. It will not "shock" the fish anymore doing a 90% water change than a 10% water change. In fact it will be better. I have always done a 75-80% water change on my tanks. Also, the test strips are notoriously inaccurate. I would buy the api liquid test kit. It tests for more than just nitrates and is much more accurate than the strips. If you keep 4 oscars in a 110 for life, eventually you will need to do 75-80% water changes every 3-4 days to keep the nitrates below 20 ppm.

 

[crazyman229]

ok but what about the cold water that i am putting in will shock them
the water is pretty cold

 

[Steve p]

ok but what about the cold water that i am putting in will shock them
the water is pretty cold

Depends how cold you are talking about, If its within a couple of degree's it should be no problem. However if its a greater difference than this one way over the problem is to store the clean water in a large rubbermaid (or two) and use a heater to bring it up to tempreture before you add it to the tank.

Steve

 

[crazyman229]

ok now i am down to 3 oscars i tested the water and nitrates and good
all is good the only thing that is not so good is that i have hard water

will that kill my oscars this upsetting me start with 6 now down to 3 what am i doing wrong

 

[cheyennefb]

just gotta ask.... r these ur first fish?... if you answer yes- well then just be ready because we all do something like this at somepoint... just be happy they arent 300dollar fish... if you answer no- once again we all do something like this at one point or another... so dont stress.... i always found oscars to be hardy, but thats my opinion. where did you buy them from, and did they all come from the same batch?

 

[crazyman229]

no i have had fish for a long time and this i sthe first time that i have had problems like this, is the hard water my problem and if so how do i fix it