How do I "fix" this Oscar fish's problems???

Question

My kids were given an oscar fish by a well meaning neighbor. When we arrived to pick him up he was already out of the tank in a bucket and water was being emptied out of the tank. So, I brought the poor guy home and had to fill his tank back up and put him in new water. I know that proper set up is to wait before adding fish, but that was not an option for Oscar. Now 2 days later his water is cloudy and I have observed what I believe is "hole in the head". Where should I start to help this poor fish? Do I fix the cloudy water or start treating the HITH which might cause cloudy water in treating? I have had several types of fish before but never an Oscar. He is an awesome fish almost 12 inches long. He is in a 45 gallon tank and we are going to up size but I want to fix the HITH first and of course his water quality. Any suggestions are appreciated. There are so many products out there, I want to know what the best to use is.

Answer 1

Thanks for the heads up Jon.  

What Jon has told you is basicly all correct, the only difference I would have from him would be the treatment of the HITH.  As he said first (and is right about) is that diet is a big contributor and feeder fish have been directly related to the cause of this disease.  Also water quality is a huge contributor to the disease, keeping a fish in water with a nitrate level of 40ppm or higher for any period of time will contribute to the disease.  The basic treatment you need to start with is a simple one, no medication needed.  You basicly need to keep the water quality very good, keep the fish from being stressed (not havig to compete for food and such), and also keep the diet good.  If you folow those steps for a couple months you should see the HITH disapear.  It is a slow healing disease, so don't get discouraged, and it could always leave scars on the fish depending on how bad it is.  

As Jon said, the cloudy water is a bacterial bloom, meaning your tank and filter are trying to establish benifitial bacteria, once your filter dose get established, the cloudy water will go away.  You will want to be testing the water though to make sure none of the parameters get to high for the fish.  This is especially important now becaus the fish has HITH.  

As for the diet, you need to keep the Oscar on a steady diet of  a quality pellet food.  There are many on the market that are very good and a enhanced with many vitamins that they need.  I feed mine Hikari products, but there are other brands that are just as good.  If you want to really enhance the diet even more you can always add more vitamins to the food your feeding the fish to make sure the fish is getting everything it needs.  I do this by getting a liquid multi vitamin, such as Centrum liquid vitamin.  I know it is for humans, but vitamins are vitamins, it is cheaper to get the stuff for humans than to get fish vitamins from the pet store.  Get the liquid vitamin (not flavored) and pour a little onto a plate, then take the pellets you are feeding the fish and roll them around in the liquid vitamin for about 5 - 10 seconds then imediatly feed them to the fish.  If you leave them in the vitamins for to long the pellet will turn to mush and disolve before the fish eats it.  This method works very well and if treating for HITH you should do this 2 to 3 times a week, after you can reduce to once a week and then even further to eventually once a month.

If you follow these two things (diet and water quality) it should clear up the HITH and no medication will be needed.  The medication that you and Jon are probably thinking of are products aimed torward Hexamita.  Hexamita (an internal paracite) was once thought to be the main cause of HITH, and some pet stores still suggest the Hexamita medications as the first step to treating HITH.  Now days after lots of research, people have debunked Hexamita as being a major factor.  

I hope this helps, if you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me.  Below is also an article that describes basicly what I have told you but goes a little more in depth, you may want to read it also for a little more info.  Good luck.

http://www.worldcichlids.com/diseases/Ad...

MFK

Answer 2

Well HITH is something you will have to treat and it's an indicator that he/she was not being fed the proper diet to begin with.  More then likely the people that had the fish before were giving it a feeder fish diet as this tends to lead to HITH.  However, the HITH is not as serious of an issue as what you have now.

The cloudy water is not related to the HITH.  It's a build up of beneficial bacteria and as you indicated, your tank is not cycled but you didn't have time to cycle it.  This is what I recommend you do.  Get a product called Prime.  Prime is a de-chlorinator, but it will also ionize the ammonia and nitrite that will build up in your tank while it is cycling out.  You'll want to be adding a capful of Prime every couple days as the binding of these toxic compounds only lasts a couple days.  This will keep the water chemistry from killing the Oscar.

Make no mistake, this is a higher danger to the Oscar then the HITH.  If you don't find a way to add live benefical bacteria, such are borrowing the filter media from an established tank, those nitrogen compounds are going to kill or severely weaken that Oscar.  Use the Prime to cope with these compounds for now.  

To treat the HITH, what I'd do is use the bucket to apply the treatments instead of adding the medication directly to the tank.  By doing this, you prevent the medication from interfering with the build up of the bacteria you need in your filter, and you can still treat for the HITH.  What you should do is fill the bucket with tank water, instead of filling with tap.  This will prevent your Oscar from going into temperature and water chemistry shock from the differences between the tap and tank water.  Dump the bucket when done, and just fill the tank with another bucket after.   Make sure to dechlorinate.  I don't know any specific HITH medicines, but if you need suggestions on that, I can look some up.

I see MFK is on answering.  Let me pass this to him.  He probably knows the proper treatment for HITH.