Exploding eye oscar

wataugachicken

wataugachicken

The Dancing Banana
Jul 14, 2005
5,451
1
0
Charlotte, NC
So my oscar is having eye trouble again. About 3 months ago he had a very quick-developing eye infection that damaged his eye to blindness in about 3 days. It basically went from mild swelling to cloudiness to loss of the lens of the eye. At this time I did not treat with anything because it happened so quickly. He was moved (along with filters and decorations) to a 120g tank from a 55g, so I thought that the large amount of clean water would be enough, and it pretty much was. The eye healed over, though he can't really see out of it.

Now it is starting to swell again. One eye is fine and normal, but the bad eye is swollen up more than a half-inch. I can tell it's hurting him because he's acting grumpy and chasing the other fish - which is not normal at all for this oscar. The others - severums, bichirs, black ghost knife - have no symptoms of anything at all. While I don't have parameters (expired kits), I do feel that the water is not the problem. I do weekly or twice-weekly 40-60% changes, the tank has been set up for more than 3 months, and was cycled with established filters. I have also treated with Jungle Fungus tablets which say they treat popeye. No result, really. Oh, and he won't eat anything except frozen foods, which means the antibiotic gel food failed.

The only option i have here now is to catch the oscar, move him to a 30g tank, and try to treat this.

What do i use?
 
can't you take him to a vet? and see if he can get some injections? my friend is a vet, and in her practice she has a lot of people who bring her sick fish etc - she always provides antibiotics and injects the fish herself if the owners cant do it.
 
also, i don't think you should move him to a 30g that seems small and he may just get even more stressed
 
move the oscar and treat with antibiotics.. prob has an internal infection.

I used maracyn and marcynII broad spectrum. one of my angels had a very similar issue.. blinded then infected weeks later. the eye healed over and she is fine..tho I do try to introduce food where she can see it.
 
Lupin just posted this
The temperature must be lowered to 74-76. Your case is bacterial infection with extreme finrot in question. Bacterial infections tend to progress better in warm temperature.
Click to expand...
in another person's thread. I wonder if I'm doing more harm than good to my oscar by changing the water too often. The tap is at 83, while the tanks are about 78-79. Am I just making the infection worse with every dose of warm water?
 
wataugachicken said:
Lupin just posted this in another person's thread. I wonder if I'm doing more harm than good to my oscar by changing the water too often. The tap is at 83, while the tanks are about 78-79. Am I just making the infection worse with every dose of warm water?
Click to expand...

I think clean warm water is better than dirty cooler water.
 
It does indeed sound like your oscar is suffering from an internal infection. You may or may not have success in treating this. My oscar went through something similar over the winter, and I was forced to do an eye removal surgery to save her.
The fact that your oscar is still willing to eat anything is a good sign. The hard part here is to determine if it is bacterial or parasite based. (if bacterial, is it gram positive or gram negetive bacteria? different medications treat for the different bacterial types) The only way to find out if medications are going to work is to try treating for both bacterial and the parasitic infections. Because these medications are not safe to mix in the tank together, you'll need to treat the frozen food with one and the water with the other.
What kind of frozen food will your oscar still accept? Once I know what foods you are working with, then I can explain how best to treat it with medication before offering it to the fish.
If the infection has penetrated the optic nerve, there is no real way to treat it other than removal, which should be done by a qualified vet or aquatics specialist. There are a number of them around, and I can provide some links to reliable sources if you need.
The food should be treated with metronidazole, the water should be treated with a combination of fungus eliminator and methylene blue. This is as potent as medication can get and still be safe for such a thing. Please be careful not to overdose.
Because the water needs to be treated, it will be safer to move the fish to quarantine. Whether 30 gallons is enough depends on the size of the oscar. An oscar up to 6 inches can be kept in 30 gallon quarantine safely if the work of daily water changes is being done. During medication times, this means premixing medicated water in a bucket and using that water for the daily water changes.
If the fish is over 6 inches, 55 - 75 gallons would be a minimum healthy size tank for quarantine and would eliminate the daily water changes. My oscar quarantine tank was 120 gallons, my oscar was 15 1/2 inches and 12 yrs old.
Do not add salt to the water while using these medications.
If after the first treatment the eye appears to have worsened, please consult a qualified vet. The optic nerve leads directly to the brain. If the infection is allowed to get bad enough and deep enough, it can kill the fish. It is possible to save the fish by removing the eye and cutting away any part of the optic nerve that shows sign of infection. This is a very delicate surgery and should be performed only by someone who knows what they're doing. The fish requires anastesia for the procedure, and it is very easy to kill a fish this way.
If its of any comfort, my fish recovered from the surgery completely within about 6 wks. A lot of after-care will be needed if surgery is the only option. At this point I can only offer a 50/50 chance for you with the medications.
Best of luck to you. If you need more help, please ask.
 
the oscar will take any frozen cubes. we currently have beefheart, bloodworm, and a color enhancer i throw in sometimes. his picky appetite isn't a result of the illness, that's just how he is. he'll also eat earthworms when we have them. i bought some silversides, but i guess they didn't wiggle enough (being dead of course) so he ignored them.

my boyfriend managed to "soak" a bloodworm cube with some tetracycline gel yesterday and the oscar ate it, but he wouldn't eat the gel drops by themselves. as i mentioned before, i dosed the tank with fungus cure tablets, but it does seem to have gotten worse. the poor guy looks like he's 1/2 oscar and 1/2 black moor.

i'll be doing a large water change this evening after work.
 
well, we moved the oscar to the 30g and treated with maracyn. he got a little scraped up while trying to avoid capture, but it's not like his eye fell off or anything. yet. : (
 
For the record, we're treating with marycin in the water, and tetracycline in the food. For a spoiled, wet teenager, he's actually taking this pretty well.
 
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