Question for Oscar Keepers/Experts. I ask for your input.
- Thread starter Redearsunfish
- Start date
I have had two oscars and they both got HITH. I would like to think the water quality was good but it was when I first started keeping fish so it could have not been that good.
Because of this, I will most likely not ever keep oscars again.
Because of this, I will most likely not ever keep oscars again.
The first thing is make sure you acuire healthy stock. Are you considering young fish or older fish? Growing fish need to be feed more often than adults. I would recomend using pellets. Newly acuired fish would do well on NLS Thera A sized appropreatly for the size of the fish and no live food you haven't either grown your self or quarenteened and treated for IPs. Of corse water as clean as possibile and very low nitrates below 10ppm. If you should come across HITH metronidazole is the med of choice. I'm not really saying anything here that shouldn't be applied to all cichlids in general.
I'm really surprised about all your Oscars getting hith. I've owned a few and I watched my dad own plenty and only a few got hith. And it never killed any of them
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How often were you doing PWC's? I do 2 a week. Every Friday and Monday. I usually do about a 30-35% water change each time.
Another thing is to make sure you have adequate filtration. It is another example o where bigger is better. I run 2 canisters and an internal filter on the tank that I keep my O in.
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As said in an earlier post melafix is always my go to treatment for everything Everything from water changes to adding new fish. I use it on a weekly basis even when everything in my tank is running smoothly
From seeing your posts on this site over the years and your OCD/Passion for overfiltering, I'm surprised you've had HITH issues
I wanna see you take the plunge again though. Stop trying to talk yourself out of it and fall in love with a nice single species Oscar tank all over again
I wanna see you take the plunge again though. Stop trying to talk yourself out of it and fall in love with a nice single species Oscar tank all over again
I think the most important aspect in preventing HITH is water quality, like what most people have said. As long as you keep your water parameters in check by doing a weekly water change and you house your Oscar in an appropriate tank size, you can avoid HITH. Feeding a quality food like NLS or Hikari along with other variety food like shrimp/tilapia/etc also keeps it healthy. Though I'm sure breeders have a higher quality Oscars, I don't think it would really make much difference in regards to an O getting sick. For me, environment and care affects health more than genetics. But that's just my opinion and I'm no expert by any means. 
I hope you do get an Oscars, I don't think you'll regret it. They're really a great wet pet! Out of all my fish, my O is definitely my favorite. I got mine as a 2" little bugger two years ago and he's now a big boy at 12"-13". Very fun watching them grow and seeing them wiggle all over the tank every time you come near.
Oh and, as for feeding, I fed mine twice a day until it hit 6" then for the first year and half I was feeding it once a day. But I was also doing a 2x weekly water change. Now I feed mine once every other day.
I hope you do get an Oscars, I don't think you'll regret it. They're really a great wet pet! Out of all my fish, my O is definitely my favorite. I got mine as a 2" little bugger two years ago and he's now a big boy at 12"-13". Very fun watching them grow and seeing them wiggle all over the tank every time you come near.
Oh and, as for feeding, I fed mine twice a day until it hit 6" then for the first year and half I was feeding it once a day. But I was also doing a 2x weekly water change. Now I feed mine once every other day.
While genetics does have some to do with the health and a strong immune system when I mention chain stores like Walmart they keep their fish in absolutely squalid conditions so they are already behind the 8 ball before you even buy them.
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In my opinion Aquanero and Grishtargan have covered all the major bases, as such I'll just reiterate with a little bit of my opinion and understanding on preventing HITH.
The very first thing to consider is as Grishtargan said is finding a reliable source for an Oscar. Remember Oscars have been in the hobby a very long time and as such have probably been extensively subjected to inbreeding thereby weakening the overall captive bred O's genetics causing issues such as susceptibility to disease. In order to get the fancy colored O's of today it's my understanding they where line bred. Meaning O's exhibiting certain characteristics where bred to others exhibiting the same characteristics many times their own siblings in order to emphasize these characteristics and increase the likely hood they would be past on to the next generation of O's. Some of the O fry would exhibit the characteristics and the process was repeated, now keep in mind that the other O fry from that breeding probably weren't destroyed but instead given away or sold as wild colored O's. Meaning that even O's not exhibiting fancy colors could possibly be carrying the same concentrated weakened genetics, just maybe to a lesser extent. Now I could go on in more detail about the how and the why this happens but I think you get the drift, generations upon generations of this occurring has probably severely weakened the genetic line of most captive bred Oscars. As such my suggestion is to go with a true wild Oscar such as you can get from Jeff Rapps/TUIC as the first place to start in hoping to decrease the likely hood of your O getting HITH, otherwise getting good genetics from a captive bred O is comparable to a crap-shoot.
Here's some links to identifying in my opinion pretty impressive wild Oscars, this way you'll have an idea of the potential a unassuming wild Oscar juvenile has the potential to become and will be able to understand the different locality identifiers used by Jeff and others selling True Wild Oscars. This is because many wild O's look similar when juveniles but can look incredibly different as adults.
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=4819
http://www.canaryzoo.com/fish%20oscar%20varieties.htm
As far as water quality I'd expand on Aquaneros post if it was possible but I think he covered it eloquently.
