skin disorder?

[iexiak]

i have had my oscar for about a year and a half now, and he has been acting very funny recently. he has only been showing one side of himself, and has been keeping low to the tank except or feeding time. the other fish seem protective of him when i come around, and will swim between me and him.

well today i took my water to my lfs and they said my ammonia was a little high and that my nitrates were a little high, and suggested doing a 20% water change. So i changed the water in 1/3 of my tank, but while i was doing that I finally got a nice look at the opposite side of my oscar.

on his "forehead" is a sport, that looks like it has been ripped off. it is round and can not be bigger than .25 cm. picture:


then on the back of that size is a section of scales that appear to have been ripped off.


and then this is a section of scales on the side he usually shows, that seems like it could be infected.


please help, my oscar has never been in this kind of condition before!

[iexiak]

bump for an answer.

[brian1973]

They look like wounds from fighting, your stocking is terrible and probably the reason no one has responded. You have large aggressive fish crammed into a 29G tank, some one is going to get hurt. And please dont reply with they get along great because that is BS, I had 2 oscars in a 90G and they fought not all the time but they did, and that was in a 90G tank. Now I have 1 oscar and a large pleco and they too fight often.

[iexiak]

maybe i just got lucky then. yes they fight a little, but they each have their "territory" and i have never seen wounds on them before.

yes my tank is to small, i know this. i will get a bigger tank when i can afford one.

thanks for telling me that they are wounds, i really hope they arent some sort of infection.


also to be honest with you...maybe i should have posted that i was keeping more fish in my tank? all of those threads get fast and courtious responses. i have been on this forum long enough to know that i overstocked my tank in the beginning, and long enough to know that i havent overstocked it nearly as bad as i could have.

but i digress, i really do appreciate the help that this forum has provided, especially the wonderful amount of links to other websites that are easily had.

[jo3olous]

maybe i just got lucky then. yes they fight a little, but they each have their "territory" and i have never seen wounds on them before.

yes my tank is to small, i know this. i will get a bigger tank when i can afford one.

thanks for telling me that they are wounds, i really hope they arent some sort of infection.


also to be honest with you...maybe i should have posted that i was keeping more fish in my tank? all of those threads get fast and courtious responses. i have been on this forum long enough to know that i overstocked my tank in the beginning, and long enough to know that i havent overstocked it nearly as bad as i could have.

but i digress, i really do appreciate the help that this forum has provided, especially the wonderful amount of links to other websites that are easily had.

You do realize when you overstock your tank and BREAK rules of thumb to the max. And you overstocked your tank WORSE than you could have. You have a semi-Aggress tank with LARGE fish for crying out loud. I would not argue with Brian over this, you will lose over and over. As I just said in your other post, I really hope you get tons of good luck, because you'll need it if you are sincere about keeping these fish alive healthy happy and fun to care for. But realize when you do everything wrong with a tank like stocking, setup, etc. you will run into problems not commonly seen, thus creating more confusion and chaos, along with a bit of irritation on both ends, yourself and the repliers.

The one good thing out of this is that we are all learning first hand from you what happens when you overstock a tank, etc etc

[iexiak]

its been overstocked for a while, survived a move of 100 miles, and my failures (i boiled the rocks when i moved the tank to clean them...doh). i do sometimes take my water to the lfs to get it tested, but ive never invested that much thought into worrying about the absolute cleanliness of my water. i do water changes when i can and my fish have lived great up until this point.

and yes theyre aggressive fish, but you have to remember that they are also intelligent. The jd uses the oscar to hide behind whenever someone who isnt me enters the room, and the pleco pretty much just sits wherever and acts like nothing else matters or exists. I know it seems weird that they would not be very aggressive towards each other...but they never have been before. my oscar occasionally knocks off one of my filter heads...and i think im going to chuck this up to that. though im not going to say it isnt fighting...and certainly if it is fighting then its a sign that its time to move on up. hopefully soon they will get more room...

edit: they do bit a little at each other sometimes, but ive never seen them actually bit each other...and have never had any damage to my fish which is what caused me to be so worried.

[DesignsOnYou]

Just wanted to comment on something you said in your other thread. You mentioned that we ignored this thread for 2 days before anyone commented. Well, first of all brian responded the next day, 24 hours later. Also, I check the forums fairly regularly for new posts and this one didn't show up as unread for me, or I would have read it. I also know that I couldn't get on for most of the day yesterday, my computer said the server was unavailable. Maybe not everyone had this problem, but it's possible that some of us didn't respond because we either didn't read the thread and/or because we couldn't get on. I'm sure some of it was because you do have 3 giant fish in a tank that's too small for them, but that's probably not all of it. I'm not trying to be harsh, just letting you know that it wasn't necessarily people just ignoring your fish, although how much can you complain about free advice? Anyway, I hope your fish gets better. You could try a combination of melafix/pimafix in case it is an infection. Someone might have a better suggestion, but that's all I can think of offhand.

[brian1973]

as designs mentioned this was the last thread I was able to view or respond to yesterday. I personaly would wait it out but I do not like dosing unless I am 100% positive of the need. Also you are overstocked worse than anyone I have seen post since TAL's 3g tank thread. We arent talking a little overstocked here, you have fish that throw the inch per gallon rule out the window and the fact you havent seen worse problems is suprising. You can not compare your stocking to someone overstocked with smaller fish because the bioload is so much higher from all the fish you have. I understand you didnt understand the stocking needed when you bought the fish which is fine and your hopefully sincere on getting a larger tank, but when you come back and say they are fine been there for a year plus, etc etc that, to me, means you dont really care anyway so whats the use in responding to a thread if your going to get defensive about the issue, I was by know means attacking you but simply informing you that saying they dont fight is BS rather you see it happen or not, so dont tell me that because I know better, it will get worse regardless of what you believe. I also remember you posting you had another small cichlid in the tank what species is it? Oscars can be passive fish at times and there fore become the target of fish that are trying to prove something.

[MissFishy]

I'll refrain from getting into this except to say that you are seeing the first signs of trouble with your stocking. Your aggressive fish are getting larger and more aggressive and obviously starting to attack eachother. This compounds with your water quality. As the wounds on the fish happen the water quality doesn't allow them to heal properly and will make them infected. This is a question of what is the humane thing to do with these fish is. Continuing to keep them together NOW, despite what may have been working in the PAST, seems like it is the wrong thing to do as they get larger and more territorial. A 29g is just too small for even one oscar to have any "territory". It's time to upgrade and trade in some fish. Do what's best for them, it's not moral to keep them in a tiny tank while they attack eachother as they get older, larger, and more aggressive.

[iexiak]

idk i still dont think its them fighting. i have never noticed something like this before. Normally i would walk into the room and my oscar would be at the front of the tank begging for food. now he is sitting on the bottom looking sad, but he seems able to swim around fine.

i bought a test kit, which i thought was going to be a 3 part thing for ammonia/nh3/nh4 but apparently it isnt. its made by api and tests all 3 at the same time. it appeared to have 0ppm of any of those, so i guess my filters are doing their job...Tomorrow im going to go back and buy separate ones so i can get a better idea of when to do water changes.