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My 1 inch oscar's belly is really swollen up. Do I have a serious prob. or is it nothing. All i have feed him is a small peice of cucumber, shrimp, beef and mainly cichlid pellets.

Well it sounds like bloat to me. How long has it been swollen... if they grossly over eat they can stay swelled up for some time while they digest their food... if it has been the same over a period of a few days you might have something to worry about. Bloat is usually caused by 2 main sources; feeding cold or frozen food, and abdominal dropsy.

You should never feed cold or frozen food to fish because they are cold blooded and they can only be as warm as the water they are swimming. So frozen food usually stays frozen for long periods of time. I would rase the temp up to 82* F and start to feed a vitamin rich diet, in much smaller portions so they are easy to digest.

If it is dropsy then you should treat like this: 1 g of tetracycline to every 100 lires of water for 4 days.

Add 1 tbs of kosher salt to every 5 gallons of water, and raise the temp to 80-82* F, keep this treatment up for a few weeks or until the fish is back to normal and healthy for a few days at least

Hope that helps, let us know how it goes. Others might have some differant ideas and treatments to suggest as well.

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Adam

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Adam@cichlidfish.com
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Thanks for the advice Adam. I returned home from school today and everything was back to normal, no meds required, I think it may be because I feed him the shrimp strait from the fridge. From now on I will let it warm up for a while.

Hey that is great to hear... glad things worked out for you. It is definately a good idea to let any cold or frozen food come up to room temp before feeding to make it easier to digest... to help this happen faster you can soak the food in some tank water for about 10-15 mins before feeding... just dont soak food that will disintigrate in water like pellet food and home-made mixes, those should just be allowed to thaw normally.

------------------
Adam

Come see my website!
Adam@cichlidfish.com
Got ?'s about HITH? Read this to learn more!