Oscars help!

LuxyBlue

LuxyBlue

Everything's Eventual
Feb 19, 2008
77
0
0
Dallas, TX
Hi all,

New to posting but I am a lurker. So here is my problem and question:

I have a 100G tank that used to host African cichlids for about the last 10-15 years, hubby wanted to make it an Oscar tank so we stopped buying fish a few years ago and just waited for our stock to die off of old age. ( As an aside, I loved my africans but hubby didn't :( ) Well, this happened a few weeks ago so we did a big clean last weekend, rinsed the gravel, rinsed the filter media, scrubbed the walls, etc. After 5 days of it being up and running I decided to get the baby Oscars to go in there. I drove them home and the little red guy was just laying in the corner of his bag and I thought it was just stress. So after 30 minutes or so of acclimation I added them. Red went straight to the bottom and laid on the gravel and albino went to a fake plant and nestled herself (I'm assuming "her" since I'm calling her Princess Picklepants) in. I figured its normal stress of moving and turned the light off and let them be.

After an hour or so I checked on them and they were still laying there so I thought I'll check the water. All good mostly: pretty hard water (it was an african cichlid tank) the nitrites are 0 the nitrates are under 40ppm, the ammonia is at less than 5 ppm. I did a 30% water change.

They are still very inactive. Could this really be stress or something else? I want to change the substrate as mine was a lot of crushed coral and shells etc to add hardness to the water for the africans. Our water is pretty soft.

Please be gentle, its been a long time since I've done such a big change in my tank and I thought I was semi-well versed. I could be being a total noob. I just don't want these adorable babies to die.

Thanks.

PS: This is a great board for info.
 
i am really hoping you mean ammonia is less than .50 ppm, but even so you need to reduce that down as close to 0 as possible and nitrates to under 20ppm (5-10 would be better) to ease the stress your fish. oscars can "sulk" for a couple days after moving to a new tank, so as long as the ammonia stops being an issue their behavior is normal.
 
So how much can I do in water changes each day without making it worse? My ammonia test kit is old and pretty crappy tbh. It doesnt give me that accurate of results, but yes its .5 to 1 ppm range, sorry for the confusion.

Could it be the substrate?


NitrAtes were the color of 20 ppm to 50 ppm. It was hard to tell between them they are so close on my test kit. NitrItes were 0.
 
water changes, done correctly, never make things worse.

dirty substrate can be an ammonia source, and crushed coral specifically is very prone to getting packed down with a lot of debris trapped inside it and rotting. african and south american cichlids do not have the same water requirements and if all you did was float the bag for a few minutes and let the fish out, they could be suffering from the sudden shock of very different water conditions. you should get rid of the substrate.

if your test kits are more than a couple years old, i suggest buying new ones, as they do expire. what brand/type of kit are you using?

it would help you to read the link i am providing, as your tank is no longer cycled since you did a big breakdown and cleaned everything, and because you did not have fish in the tank for a few weeks.

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84598
 
The oscars I recently purchased hid out for 2-3 days before really exploring, though they did not sit on the bottom. You have severely clened out a lot of bacteria from what I see.

I would be doing water changes to keep ammonia and nitrites below detectable. And definitely get a new liquid test kit.

Both of my Oscars have gone from 2" to 6-7 " since November....Keep nitrates very low to help prevent disease.
 
:iagree:
 
Thank you all for the responses! I have gotten the ammonia down to less than .5 and the nitAtes to 20 ppm. Tested my tap water and its coming out at over 3.0 ammonia in it already! Sheesh! So I switched water conditioners to one that does ammonia too. I remember Prime being a very good conditioner but I don't remember if it locks up ammonia and I cant get it locally.

They are doing much better altho still very shy. The albino is eating blood worms, brine shrimp and flakes greedily, but the red isn't. I will keep watching him. He swims around but hides more than the albino does. Maybe he has stage fright ;)
 
Yes, Prime will lock ammonia to a non-toxic form for the fish but keep it available for the bacteria. order online.
 
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