Oscar HITH or just sensory pits?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
I agree that in the 1st pic the right nostril looks inflamed, and especially in the 2nd photo there appears to be HLLE.
If it were me, I'd double or increase my water change schedule enough to bring nitrates down below 10ppm.
Could you post other water parameters such as pH, Total Hardness, conductivity, and other mineral content?
These parameters should be available from you water dept (suppliers) web site, if your in a large city, or urban water distribution area. You go to your areas Water Dept web site, and click on a water quality type tab.
If your water is hard, with high pH this in combination with high nitrate (I consider 20ppm high) is often a chronic problem for oscars and other large, long lived, soft water cichlid species that have not developed immunity to hard water bacterial species.
 
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General hardness 15 ????
General hardness at 15 grains is considered very hard (if it''s what the measurement means ....15 grains ( ?,)
if its 15 ppm,, or 15 mg/L that's considered soft.
We always need to know what the measure is, because different labs offer different types of measurement.
For some people, grains is relevant, for others, ppm or mg/L has a clearer meaning
When living in the U.S. my tap water averaged 7grains hardness , which equaled about 250ppm general hardness, and 7.8 pH. It was considered medium hard,
and I'd see many HLLE scared oscars brought into LFSs, probably because not enough water changes were done to keep hard water bacteria at bay, in tandem with high nitrates.
Some aquarists don't consider 20ppm nitrate to be high, and alone might not be, but in tandem with hard water, or some other stressor, can be chronically damaging to certain species
If its 15 grains, my thought is that that's quite hard water for an oscar so more water changes are needed.
It's usually some kind of stress, that weakens the immune system, allowing HLLE infection to take hold.
If 15 is ppm, that's considered "soft" so not bad,.... but then some other stress factor may be the cause
 
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The pictures aren't the best.
I have oscars with carbon in the filters.
I would just suggest more frequent water changes as well as changing higher % of water. Oscars are pretty resilient as long as they get vitamins and tank gets proper water changes.
First photo in your post looks normal.

I also include occasional garlic in their food.
 
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