Phew

Recently (for the last month) I have been treating my Oscar for what I thought was the onset of HITH. Now I know what you guys are thinking, he must have been living in ditch water and such but honestly, his tank is spotless and I dont overfeed. He is however, housed in a 240ltr tank, the bare minimum for such a fish and there was a plec in there too (now rehomed) so I suspect that the whole high nitrate argument has some merit to it. And before you "tank police" pipe up Im aware I may have been asking for it and hope to get into a 300ltr or similar all to himself soon. Anyway, after running two courses of meds and lowering the ph the lesions have drasticly reduced but he went off his food for four full days which had me concerned. I was trying to get him onto a new dry food, NLS Extra Large as I know many folks that keep big fish swear by it. Well, today he seemed to be back to his old self and took a few of the pellets and seemed to ponder on them while crunching them up and decided, yep, I like these and thrased about looking for more. Im delighted to see him on the mend as I know this fish, and he was unwell for sure. Just figured I would throw this little bit of positive news out there. Looks like Homer is gonna make it .

Jay

Great to hear that Jay i still think out of all ur fish hes no 1

great to hear it jay,not to many survive the hith,oscars are very prone to it from nitrate,you should put up a pic...

happy days jay
well done
love oscars myself
what size is homer?
have an albino in our tank,"oscar de la hoya" is about 10" now and eats everything
he nearly jumps out of the tank at feeding time

rgds

That's sweet Jay.

Kev.

Cheers guys. Oscar de la Hoya...brilliant . Yeah it was rough watching him go through it. Ive had him since he was barely 2" and have him over a year. He is touching 10" now and and it would have killed me had I lost him. This is the thing with big fish, you get attached to them. Heres a couple of pics of the big guy. He is still a little washed out and not all the lesions are completely gone but im hopeful he will be 100% in the next few weeks.








Jay

Good news Jay.
Glad to hear your baby is on the mend

Cheers Justin. If anyone is considering mabey keeping an Oscar I spotted some fantastic specimens in Seahorse during the week. Now they are small, about 1.5" but Ive never seen such bold patterns and colouration on Oscars for sale here. The ones that really caught my eye of the Tiger variety like my own one and they even had a few with a beatufil grey/black pattern which are simply stunning. There were some albinos there too. If anyone is thinking about keeping one from a small size and rearing it themselves I would strongly recommend you take a look at them.

Jay

That's great news Jay.
What did you treat it with? It seems to have worked.

I remember reading about temperature and hole in the head, but i cant remember the details. I was looking up something else at the time so didn't pay to much attention.
Might be worth investigating.

The grey/black one's you mention are probably the wild or original form, before they developed the tiger,albino..etc

Good to hear the good news Jay. Its when u put in so much time lookin after yer fish and then it is not lookin good for them it is amazing how worried we can get. Hopefully he is fully on the mend now.

Mick....

Top notch Jay, if it were Nitrates they must have been 500 600mpp or higher.

Good to see you sorted it and saved the auld warrior.


Mark

platty252 wrote:

That's great news Jay.
What did you treat it with? It seems to have worked.

I remember reading about temperature and hole in the head, but i cant remember the details. I was looking up something else at the time so didn't pay to much attention.
Might be worth investigating.

The grey/black one's you mention are probably the wild or original form, before they developed the tiger,albino..etc

When I realised I had a battle ahead of me I rehoused the plec, a nice foot long common, and absoluteley scrubbed the tank. I cleaned the filter(405) and performed a major wc (80%). I first treated with Metro+ which contains metronidazole and after a while I began to lower the ph a little. When this course finished I then used Spirohexol (anti heximata) and kept the temperature constant. During the course of the meds, all wc's ceased so I kept feeding to an absolute minimum. After about 26 days I placed carbon in the filter to remove the meds and did another 80% wc. I had hoped by then that all visible signs of the infection would be gone but there is still a little bit of scaring which seems to be slowly looking better. Im now getting him to take a new food, NLS for large carnivores and its still a little touch and go but he is getting used to them. I want him on this food as it is full of all the vitamins and minerals that some believe a lack of is a major factor in the developement of HITH and HLLE which both affected my Oscar. It also cantains garlic which Im told will build up in his slime coat and is a deterant to the flagellates that may or may not be a factor in the infection too. There is ongoing debate about the causes of HITH and HLLE and this is what the problem is. It could be a matter of high nitrates, flagellates, stress, vitamin deficiencies and some folks even think that running carbon in the filter will strip out nutrients that help prevent HITH and HLLE. So what happens is you end up trying to get on top of all these things as there isnt one definate answer as to what actually causes it right now. At the end of the day, prevention is better than cure when it comes to this. He still isnt out of the woods yet but Im confident I have the upper hand now and I hope to see him lesion free in the next few weeks and with any luck, minimal scarring.

Edit..I will look into the temperature thing again. If it helps at all, its worth a shot.

Yeah the wild colouration is indeed black/grey but I had never seen the wild colouration on a Tiger morph. Absolute cracking Oscars. If I had the space...

Jay

The Metro+ and Spirohexol seem to have done the trick.

platty252 wrote:

The Metro+ and Spirohexol seem to have done the trick.

Defo. Pricey stuff but worth it.

Jay