CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

08/02/00 i just lost one of my babies today. i don't know what he died from and i need some help here. i have two five year old oscars, one 11" albino and one 10" red tiger, they were in an 80 gallon tank. we had to move last week and they have to share a 150 gallon tank with some smaller fish right now. there is a divider between the two colonies and the oscars have 100 gallons of the tank. i have 2 penguin 330 pumps in there now. the tank cycled for 23 days before any fish were put in it. before the fish were introduced i checked for 7 different factors in the water and had it tested by a fish dealer as well. temp was 82, amonia 0, ph 8.2. i went over to feed my babies last night at about 6:oo p.m. and they looked fine. they were swimming around with their fins dropped and ate fine. water was a little cloudy but not enough to worry me. this morning i went over around 10:00 a.m. and my tiger was on the bottom dead. he didn't have any discoloration on him that i noticed. i teated the amonia levels and they were high (around 9) so i changed out about 30% of the water and added another pump to airate(?) the water. the albino seems to be fine, fins are dropped and he was swimmimg around the tank. i watched him for about 5 hours and he never settled on the bottom or sucked his fins up or anything, but now i am scared to death of losing my other baby. i have had both fish since they were two and three months old, so this is very devestating to me. i am so sad. do you have any ideas what may have caused his death? all the other fish in the smaller part of the tank are fine. they seemed to have handled the move good. when i moved them a year ago we had a problem with amonia levels then but i bought the 80 gallon tank and never had another problem with it. please help if you can. thank you.

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your oscar. Had a question about the 23day cycle, did you have any old filter in there or something to build a good bacterial culture or did it cycle with just pure clean water and clean tank/filters? Best advice I can give is "frequent" water changes till at least a bio-degradation system builds. My first guess would be oxygen. As you know water holds less oxygen when it is "dirty" etc and also when temperature is higher. How big was the oscar thta died and how was it's general health? I find the bigger fish will die off first in low oxygen situations and high ammonia etc. The ammonia is bad enough but if you pump a whole bunch of oxygen in there it really helps. Do you use any activated carbon? Well, take care and I hope your other fish remain very healthy,

Joe
www.cichlidfish.com

hi joe thanks for the reply.
the tiger oscar was 10". he was the smaller of the two. the other oscar is about 11 1/2" and he is the albino. the thing about the red tiger is that he was disfigured at a very young age by the albino. they grew up together.
do oscar's die of lonliness. i saw one in a fish store once that had been seperated from it's mate and it stressed itself to death. very sad. anyway back to the tiger, his mouth would never close right and one of his gils was also disfigured. but he was a very hearty fish. good coloring, ate like a horse, very friendly, never had health problems, besides moving stress. regarding the tank, i used some of their tank water and their pump system in the new tank to help set up the cycling system.
another thing, the oscar's have shared the same tank for the past five years and allthough they killed off the other three oscar's that started out with them they have not fought each other since they were about a year old. they got along quite well together and i had hoped they would mate until i educated myself in their breeding habits and found out this would be a very rare thing to happen. they were not even aggresive enough to eat live feed. they will not hunt when i put feeders in with them.
anyway thanks for the info and any other info would be helpful. do you think i should try to get another fish for the albino (who's name is gil, by the way) and do you think i could try something besides an oscar or is this just bad thinking all the way around?
talk to you soon, thanks again, kait

Hi Kait,

Well, 10" is pretty big also. What I can tell you is that in my opinion certain traumas in an oscar's life may weaken their overall health for a LONG time, maybe for life. About fish dying of loneliness, well I think indirectly you could say that. I had an albino oscar that died on me some time ago. Unfortunately it was partly my fault, I did a 95% water change and forgot to put in Chlorine remover. The tiger oscars were just fine, the albino died Now the albino was never accepted as part of their group. In fact I think the rest even kept him from eating his fair share, really liked him though was a very smart fish, had more brains than the rest put together. I think that "loneliness" can really stress out a fish and in turn STRESS just like in humans can produce detrimental biological changes. I don't know what you heard about breeding them, but it is not very hard. If your oscar is a male I recommend you get him another albino female of about 8". If it's a female, get a male of the same size or bigger. You mentioned the oscar that died couldn't close his mouth right and a gill was disfigured. Most likely his gills had damage which made them more inefficient, that's why I say increase in oxygen really helps, since some of the fish may have healthier gills than the others. So just monitor ammonia closely and general water quality and keep lots of air in there. IF they DON'T chase feeders something is wrong I think. Have they ever chased after feeders and ate them? What kind of feeders and what size? Tell me more about this since I hope your fish is ok since if they don't chase feeders may mean they're not in good health. As far as companion, again I'd recommend another albino oscar and try to make a breeding pair if possible. My pair kiss and flirt all day take care,

Joe
www.cichlidfish.com

joe, my oscar is doing really well. i took your advice about oxygen and went and got another pump just to make sure that gil is getting enough. they have never chased feeders, ever and rarely ate them. i have always pellet fed them because my first pair of oscars, ricky and lucy, died from bad fish. (they were very aggresive feeders) the store i bought them from had to pay out on about 14 fish that died from that batch of feeders, so you see my fear. gil actually cohabitats with little fish and so far i don't think he has gobbled any of them. i probably overfeed him, aout 15 pellets twice daily, little fish get fed three times daily, lizard gets fed once daily(haha). i am going to try to send you pictures of gil soon. i am very interested in this sexing stuff you are researching for all of us. i think you are just too wonderrful for having this website and for replying so quickly and thouroughly(?).
stay groovy, talk to you soon, kait

Hi Kait,

Great to hear your oscar's doing well now! I'm still a tid bit worried to tell you the truth, that your Gil doesn't try to eat live feeders. Is the oscar really slow moving etc? I just want to make sure it's just not used to feeders and that it's not physical condition that's keeping it from chasing feeders. You might want to treat for internal parasites just in case. And YES, please DO send some pictures, if you notice the other threads, JAY has posted quite a few pics of his oscars. Been pretty active on here lately, lots of new posts. Sorry about the sexing pics, havn't posted them yet. I just got my vid-camera back last Sunday, but mixed up my tapes so have to search through using fast-forward on 6 tapes to find what I need. I hope this weekend will do the trick. later,

Joe
oscars.cichlidfish.com

hey joe,
i am going to wait to send you pics until i can get my other tank set up. i can't get good clarity with the tank gil's in now. just to let you know, gil is a pretty active fish. he jumps and darts around his tank quite frequently. he is still very persinble with me, lets me pet him and play with him., loves to chase the scubbie i use in his tank. he just won't chase other fish and getting him to eat them is out of the question. as a matter of fact the seperator that i have in his tank right now has big enough gaps for most of his nieghbors to swim through and he cohabitates admirably with them. wierd, huh?! hey chuck if you are reading this, have you ever heard of this behavior? i still have the same number of fish total that i started with (minus one red tiger oscar) and even more of the little guys are starting to venture over to gil's side of the tank. he is never agressive with them, but come to think of it he was pretty agressive with the tiger. what do you know joe? my other two tigers (ricky and lucy) were very agressive oscars sometimes biting the hand that fed them. do you think it has something to do with the fact that he'e albino?
stay groovy, kait

Hi Kait,

Well, as long as he's active and he is eating something I wouldn't worry. I did find though that one of my males seems to have become disinterested in goldfish. Won't eat them. Not sure if he's so stupid he things they're part of his last batch of fry that died or too lazy to chase or what. May have gotten used to the easy life, eating food that doesn't run away from you Another thing I noticed is that if a male is really busy defending his territory or his woman he may not eat, especially goldfish. Seems like he's afraid while he's chasing food some other bum is going to take over his turf, so he just sits there attacking the others if they try to go get fish on his side of the tank

Joe
oscars.cichlidfish.com