Sick Oscar?

[Fish milk]

Hi I have a 5" (approx) Oscar over the the past week he has been sulking sitting on the bottom and breathing rapidly (mouth opening and closing constantly)He will come out of it and swim about but then goes back to the bottom, He did go off his food but never stopped eating completly at the moment he is eating fine. All the other fish (silver dollars and sharks and a plec) are fine the water is as it always is nitrate 25 nitrite 0 ph 6.8 we have hard water but the water at the shop is the same as ours. I do weekly water changes and he gets a variety of food cichlid pellets, blood worm frozen cichlid meat the ocasional bit of liver and other pellet food he greeds from the other fish. W e have had him about 3 months. Any help will be gratefully apreciated.

 

[Ben]

what tank size is he in?

 

[sylvia]

What size tank? What about ammonia? Have there been any recent changes to his environment or water quality and are there any signs of HITH or internal parasites (stringy poo)?

 

[Fish milk]

The ammonia is at 0. There are no changes to his poo and cant see any holes in his head . The only change is we removed 5 black widow tetras out of his tank as he was getting big enough to eat them, even though they did often swim together.He is in a rio 180 at the moment we are getting him a bigger tank once our loft conversion has been completed.

 

[fufanu360]

he could be jsut pouting, he wants a bigger tank

 

[Vip]

this might sound stupid but how many air rocks do you have in your tank because oscars need alot of airation, Also did you change anything in the tank in the last 3 weeks? like a rock or somthing?

 

[Fish milk]

No change of rocks or anything, we have a thing (technical term )on the end of the filter which blows bubbles in to the tank.