CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

Hi, I have now been treating my 8" tiger oscar for months after it developed a cloudy and then swollen eye. The eye has now gone down but its obvious he is blind in the one eye. It now swims on a slant (with its good eye down) and twitches violently quite often. I haven't been able to get him to eat anything for almost 10 days - usually feed with Hikari Cichlid Gold pellets, but have also tried bloodworms. Im not sure if hes not eating becaue he cant see the food or has no appetite.
I guess im fighting a losing battle now but I am prepared to give any suggestions a go at the moment.
Thanks in advance.

Marko

Cloudy eye's are most often a symptom of poor water quality.
My first suggestion would be to test your water, make sure the nitrate readings are low.
Second look at your filtering, is it enough for the bioload of your tank.
I am not familar with your tank size, or the amount of fish, etc so I can't really make any recomendations without the proper details of tank size, amount of fish, water quality test results, filter size's and or types, water change scheduals, etc.

Thanks Fuzzy for your reply. The tank is approx 200L (50Gal) and he is on his own. I am using an Aqua One CF1200 but the carbon filter is removed during treatment. I havent recently done a water check but when the problems started becoming visible all the parameters were good except nitrate which was around 10ppm. Since then I have been doing water changes twice a week (at least monthly before then). So I assume nitrates are very low now. I will take a water sample and post the results tomorrow. I am really worried about the fact he has not eaten for so long now.

Marko I forgot to ask, what are you useing for meds?

Fuzzy, I originally started treatment with Melafix when the eye was cloudy and then tetracycline and salt when the eye became bulging. The eye has gone down now and in fact now looks smaller than the good eye. He now seems to be swimming around a bit more but the twitches appear to be getting more frequent. He took one pellet lastnight...

Marko, then would I be correct in assuming that your fish possibley had popeye, and not just a cloudy eye. The fish's eye will tend to look cloudy with popeye, plus bulge out.
There is a rare aliment caused by ichthyophonus hoferi. This is a parasite, similar to the common Ich.
There is no treatment I know of for this, it is often called the tumbling disease since that is one of the signs of how fish act when they are inffected with it. They swim and seem to tumble, or swing (maybe twitch) themselfs in the water.
I might suggest doing a search on ichthyophonus hoferi, and then see if the symptoms appear the same as what your O has.

Here's one relevant link:
http://www.vetcare.gr/IPNV_first_isolation_Greece.htm