Question about reintroducing a beaten fish.

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Stratoquarius

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Oct 22, 2011
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So I picked up a new fish yesterday (a young oscar around 2.5") and after watching him closely for about 30 minutes I saw he was completely fine. I went into the other room for a few minutes and when I returned there was my vieja ripping the scales off of him.

so now the fish is isolated and hes healing quite nicely already I put salt in with him to help the wounds. I am thinking of putting him in a 20g long for say a month or so and feeding him up til he is the same size if not bigger than my other fish, would it be okay to reintroduce him to the tank? or should I just bring him back to health and then give him back to the pet store?
 
I'd say make sure the oscar is larger by at least an inch than the fish who beat him up... When you reintroduce I'd do a water change and a tank layout change, this will confuse the vieja and give the oscar the best chance of a peaceful introduction.
 
Thats a good idea, you see the vieja is the most peaceful fish I have. my male HRP, nicaraguensis and Madagascan, all around 1" or more bigger than him were fine with him, and the normally peaceful Vieja had a big problem for some reason.
 
Well, that's a cichlid for you. Even peaceful cichlids will try to establish a pecking order with newly introduced fish. If they feel their space is being invaded, they will react. For example, as peaceful as discus are, they can be brutal to newly introduced discus. Your fish may calm down once it puts the oscar in its place. Or it may just hate it forever. My psittacus hated my chocolate cichlid and no amount of rearranging or tank upgrading helped. Eventually they had to be separated.

The only method I've ever had work is the rearrange method. If the fish are small enough, you can even move them into big buckets or coolers while you rearrange the tank and do a major water change. Then introduce the oscar first, followed by your other fish.
 
I've done that before, reintroduction of the fish, back when I kept cichlids, but generally it only worked for me while the fish were sub-adult. So, I think it might still work..perhaps trying to place the oscar back in at night
 
thanks guys, these are all great Ideas and I will try them. A new question, I just finished setting up the 20 long, its using a filter thats been running on another tank so fully mature, I used half water from my main tank and then half new water.

my question is, How much salt should I add to 20gallons of water to help speed up healing but without damaging the fish?

also the tanks been sitting unheated for about 2 weeks but now its back to normal temp.
 
As long as the water is really clean, you don't even need salt IMO. My giant male psittacus injured himself pretty severely on a jagged driftwood corner about five days ago, it was a deep cut behind his eye with flesh and skin hanging off. I did large (75%) water changes every day for four days and it is almost completely healed without any additives to the tank.

With a mature filter, you don't even need old tank water. Fill it up with 100% new water, add your dechlor, bring it up to a matching temperature, and put the fish in.
 
Thanks Ryan I didnt know that. I am planning on water changing the tank as often as I can, judging by what you said, its possible that the fish recovers quite fast? since I introduced him into the tank he has been sitting around mostly but he has made an effort to swim around a little. Not too sure how long before he starts eating. unfortunately this little guy lost one of his eyes in the attack but he seems to be dealing with it just fine. i've had a few fish over the years lose an eye and all of them turned out okay. so I'm hoping this guy has a speedy recovery.

Ryan any chance you can show a pic of your parrot after the attack, and then now?
 
Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of him. The day it happened, it was really clean, white flesh. Then it turned pink and swollen for a few days while it healed, and now there's a dark area of skin around the wound where it appears new skin is growing over. Fish do heal really quickly if you keep the water clean and get them eating. It took my psittacus about two or three days to eat again because he was stressed. Once he started taking food again, he was more like his old self.

Oscars don't seem to handle stress too well. Adults will often lay on their sides and sulk if you move them or if they get sick/injured. It may take him some time to come around considering he was moved from the store, attacked, then moved again. My opinion is just to keep the water clean and monitor him. Also, what temp do you have it at? Get it up in the mid-80s and it'll increase his metabolism and hopefully stimulate his appetite a bit.
 
yeah its currently at 81 degrees and he does seem to be moving around a lot more as today goes on which is good. Yesterday he looked like he was going to drop dead any second, with skin hanging off and white flesh exposed and his eye gone. today he actually doesnt look all that bad. just needs to heal up his fins back to full length (the rays are all intact luckily) and the patch of lost scales on above his left gill plate is just looking like a light white patch now, so things seem to be healing quite fast.
 
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