Unidentified Spots on Oscar

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TiggertheOscar

TiggertheOscar

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Feb 4, 2010
100
0
6
48
Yorkville, Il
Hi everyone, thanks for taking the time to check this out. Hopefully someone can identify this for me and I can prevent it from happening anymore.

My Oscar seems to acquire these "spots" on his body, they appear to be discolorations as opposed to growths. My feather-finned cat has had them as well as my fire eel. They always seem to go away after a day or so, but they have me quite concerned about the health of my fish and quality of my tank.

Here is a pic of todays "spots". I f more pics are needed or any other questions I'll be glad to answer.
Here's the spec's of my tank and inhabitants:

125 gallon
Filtration
2-350 biowheel HOB's
an FX5
a powerhead with a large sponge
Fish
3 Oscar's 7-8"
2 Bala's 6"
a 9" fire eel
6-7" feather-finned cat
a common pleco
Tank Readings
ammonia:0
nitrite:0
nitrate:15-20
PH:7.8
I feed them frozen bloodworms and ciclid gold floating pellets once a day,
and I do 30% water changes twice a week.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me in this matter

spots1.jpg
 
Well, the cichlid gold is a terrible food. You should probably throw it away right now. It's just fillers. It could be malnutrition, but with how ridiculously overstocked your tank is, even with nitrates being so low, other metabolic waste products are building up. This may then cause stress which opens the door for infections like this. Don't feel bad, just do what you can to correct it. I'd avoid meds, try fixing the environment first.

Try doing 50% changes twice per week and buy a higher quality food. All that corn and wheat goes straight to polluting the tank while providing little nutrition. And reduce feeding to every other day for a week or two to lower the waste production.

And get rid of about half your fish. Dang, you've really packed that box full, my friend. :(
 
You probably hear this all of the time, but I will mention it anyway. I plan on getting a 320 here pretty soon. I am getting married in may, so money is a bit tight as of now. But for 800$ I can't pass this deal up.

To be honest, I was going to put my albino oscar in a 75 by himself with a few smaller fish, but my fiance says no. So then I thought maybe the bala's could go in the 75, accept they will get way to large for that tank. The only fish I can get rid of at this point would be the pleco, but where do i take him? none of the lfs's around here will take fish! it's a little ridiculous.

As for the 50% WC, I did this last week, and I was afraid I was going to lose a couple of the little guys because of the difference in PH, the tap 7.0-7.2, and the established tank is close to 8.0. I have live plants in the tank to help keep the water clean. Along with a dozen or so snails and clams too.

I will work on the stocking of the fish, but I still need to know what this is and how to treat it. If it's my fault for having too many fish in the tank, then so be it.

But from the looks of your setup, I only have one more fish than you do, with the same size tank...
 
No, bud. My 125g only has one oscar, five little sunfish and an L200 green phantom pleco. That would be about one third of your fish mass. If you read my stock list again, you'll notice most of the critters are babies in my 55g. And your three Oscars add up to at least fifteen of my little sunfish.

125g is an ideal size for two Oscars alone. That's it. Just two Oscars will easily max out the filtration/waste accumulation capacity of a 125g. Seriously.

The 320, I suspect will solve your issue pretty well. Your fish may be stressed until then, but with the upgrade, the remaining fish will do well. I suspect all of your fish will hang on until that happens.

For now, you can add sodium bicarbonate to your tap water bucket by bucket to do bigger water changes. The amount will vary be area, but my water has no hardness whatsoever and I only needed to add about two teaspoons to get some buffering action in there. Also, the more water changes you do on a regular basis, the better adapted your tank will be and it won't swing as far when you do them.

but my fiance says no.
Click to expand...
You need to put your foot down RIGHT NOW. I made the mistake of letting my soon-to-be wife have some say in my fish activities, and now that we're married, she's somehow taken it upon herself to control my every move. Yours needs to understand NOW that the fish are YOURS and she is privileged that you even ask her opinion. I know it seem benign now, but her power will grow until she just tells you "no" for every suggested purchase. Give her an inch and she'll take the whole mile. So the next time she tells you you can't have that 75g for your Oscar, gently inform her that you ARE getting it, you're going to get it as affordably as possible, and she will have to deal with it. You'll lose a few cuddle points, but preserve your hobby indefinitely. You'll only have to assert yourself once. She'll get the picture.
 
I don't mean to be an ass. So my apologies. It just seems as though every forum you read or try to get knowledge from always criticizes people for having too many fish, as if this is the main cause of problems associated with illnesses and such.

None of my fish are full grown as of yet, the crap machines are the oscars, and you'll never find their crap layin on the bottom of my tank. The plants thrive on the fertilizer, and I vacuum everytime I do a water change. There is a reason that the readings of my water are so close to perfect, I pay very close attention to the quality of the water. There is plenty of swimming room, and they very rarely get aggressive with eachother.
Thanks for your reply, but my question remains the same...
 
BTW, you mentioned hardness of your water, My tap water is extremely hard, so I have a bunch of peat pellets in my fx5 to try to take the edge off. Could this possibly have something to do with it?

Oh and the 75 is already setup, ready for fish if need be. it's just been seeded with the water from the 125 after a WC, and now it only has a couple rams and a pictus cat in it...Do you honestly think that the absence of the one oscar will make that big of a difference? I mean this is seriously the only issue I have ever had with this tank.
 
Thats Hilth.. hole in head man.. Common disease for Oscars... treat them with metro now...

Hole in head doesnt necessay start on the body.. but it moves up and down the fish... Its hard to explain how they get it.. but they do..

http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/prod/240591/product.web
 
It doesn't look like HITH, zerojquan85. At least, not quite.

Hmm. I've never had to deal with hard water. There is a chance that, with all these plants, your water column is lacking trace minerals like iron that fish use regularly. This is starting to get scientific. Hopefully a water hound can step in with more H2O chemistry knowledge.
I will tell you that shortly after adding live plants to the back of my HOB filters, my Oscar got HITH which went away after I removed the plants, but all this happened in relatively soft to neutral hardness water.
 
I am not familiar wit HITH, but I was under the impression that it took place mainly in the head region of the fish , if you notice this particular case is on the rear side of the fish. And it seems to go away after a day or so then he's (they're) normal again.
I am taking the Albino Oscar out of the tank today and putting him in the 75. Somehow I will find a place for the pleco and the bala's asap.
Does the fact that my fire eel has shown signs of this make any difference to you? Cause both the eel and the feather-finned cat have had the same thing, virtually overnight and it was gone.
Thanks again for your help here.
 
Sorry if I missed it, but what is causing your PH to be higher in the tank? If this were my tank I would start by identifying that, removing it, and doing more frequent water changes. you have enough filtration to easily do 50% water changes without worrying about depleting bacteria.
 
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