Help with depressed or sick Oscar

Hi All,

I am concerned about my Oscar seeming depressed or sick or something.

A bit of background, about 4 weeks ago, my daughter went up into my office to greet our 2 Oscars. She couldn't see the one, but I assumed he was just hiding away.

A short while later while vacuuming I found him on the floor under the couch. He must have jumped out over night. I used to have a canopy on the tank but because theres no covers on it, it became mouldy and the moisture made the plywood warp so I removed it.

When checking on the tank, I realised they also smashed the heater to pieces (must have been a few days ago) and the tank was dangerously cold. I brought the tank back up to temperature and replaced the heater.

Ever since that day, the remaining Oscar has not been himself. The 2 of them used to swim chase and fight with one another constantly, but they were together for over a year and a half.

He started leaning towards his side or stayed in the bottom of the tank almost lying down.

In the meantime, I went to go get 2 juvenile Oscar's again to keep him busy/company as I assumed he missed his friend. The local fish shop assured me it will be fine, he may put them in his mouth but wont eat them. Turns out the guy was wrong, he ate one of his new friends. Since then I have replaced that one and so far the 2 little ones have survived.

However he is still not better.

The only other tank mates are 2 plecos and a kribenses that somehow slipped through the cracks when we removed the old community fish and put the Oscars in a year and a bit ago.

The tank is a 250l tank (yes I know eventually I will have to get something bigger).

The tank has a Dophin C-1000 canister filter filled with bio balls and ceramic rings.

I do 50% water changes every 10 days, dosing with Seachem Prime before adding the water.

pH is 7.6, Nitrites are 0 and Nitrate is 1.5 mg/l (ppm).

Temperature is about 28 degrees.

I feed Hikari cichlid excel and cichlid gold and vibrabytes

I have included some pictures of him. Excuse a bit of the debris floating around the tank just did a water change after testing my parameters. Still have to settle down and clean the glass. He is about 20cm long.

Is it possible he is just depressed because his arch enemy/friend committed suicide? Is there anything I can do or check?

Thanks in advance!





This is what the tank looked like before his friend passed:

 

@RobertS
This is actually such a sad story. I'm sorry to hear about your oscar I don't have any experience with them but I'm sure some members will be able to give some advice. Keep strong

 

First you will need a lid, Oscar's are notorious jumpers. Second you'll have to get a heater that has some sort of cover as they love to smash heaters. Thirdly I would take back the juvenile Oscar that's left l. Oscar's will eating anything that they can fit in their mouthes. You got given bad advice unfortunately.

Reason why it flops on it's side is due to stress. They are social fish so most likely it's missing its tank mate, but replacing its tank mate isn't going to help though. I would suggest doing a proper water change and adding some seachem anti stress to the water.

Now that the fish is alone I would suggest interacting with it more as they are very sociable maybe the attension would would help with the stress.

Sent from my FIG-LX1 using Tapatalk

 

Try to get eheim heaters they are strong and in most cases work with the bigger fish i have found, as mention above adding juveniles may not be great idea as the remaining oscar will take territory of the tank ( had times when it works but in general it does not ). i sometimes use mirrors to interact with the fish but don't over use it as it can make the fish over aggressive in general and long run. hope all works out.

 

I've never had oscars but a friend of mine has and they are very social fish in the way that bears are social . They will just as well form strong social bond and try kill their partners/tankmates at the same time. I would try re-scape his tank-take him out for a few hours into a heated bucket/tub and re-do his tank with new wood/rock or decor. My friend does a 'remodel' of his oscar tank once a year to give his solitary guy a new home to explore. Perhaps a change of scenery will help and perhaps hunting for a similar age/size tank-mate to try out with him. Shame, its such a loss and its so unfortunate, but you're doing what you can for your pet and thats wonderful. Good luck

 

As jojo said re-scape can do the trick aswell u don't need new wood or decor just rescaping the current decor will also do the trick. if u do add a tank mate a egg crate divider can help ease things. with my large cichilds i did rescape every month or so for them and it helped a lot.

 

@RobertS ,

Im sorry for your loss

Lots of good advice given above..
Most LFS's sell heater guards , they relatively cheap and will protect your heater against the little brats

If i understand correctly and from the first picture, you already have a youngster with him, personally, if they getting along now, i would rather leave him and see how things go than upset the apple cart again and take the youngster back and find another bigger oscar
I have also found that sometimes its more difficult to introduce 2 bigger oscars together that a smaller one to a bigger one.. but then again with oscars its always a gamble

Keep checking your water parameters regularly as, as the oscars get bigger from now on, you filter is probably not going to cope with the bioload especially taking into account the 2 plecos as well and you going to need to upgrade your filter and if possible the tank

If i may suggest, if its 2 common plecos you have, they going to get huge and the bioload /mess they make is
unbelievable
Consider taking them back to the petshop and swapping for a smaller species of pleco or catfish of which there are various interesting but smaller species

Finally, keep up with those water changes every week
All best