User:Oscardiesel

oscar care I have been given a 38 gallon tank, a 10 to 11 year old Oscar, a 2 to 3 year old Goldfish and two Common Plecos. After work this evening I went and got the tank and fish and got them home.

I am doing this post as an educational post for those who wonder what stunting looks like and for those who refuse to believe than an Oscar needs no less than a 55 gallon tank by itself and frequent and large water changes.

This tank, all 38 gallons of it, was being filtered by one HOB filter rated for a 20 gallon tank and an under gravel filtration system. When I lifted the UGF plates up, there was a 1/2 inch thick layer of brown congealed waste, similar in consistency of old chocolate pudding that has been allowed to sit on the counter too long. Horrible stuff. The water was about the color of weak ice tea. Horrible conditions.

Out of curiosity, I did a water test on some of the water that I brought the fish home in. Ammonia is .5, Nitrites is 0. Nitrates are off the chart. My API Freshwater Master Test kit is calibrated for a maximum Nitrate level of 160 ppm. The color of the test tube went beyond that after only a few seconds of shaking the bottle after adding the second solution. I did not even have to wait the 5 minutes to know that I would not be able to get a true reading of how high the nitrates in this tank were.

I have the tank sitting on my floor, filled halfway with water. I have the Oscar, the Goldfish and the 2 Plecos in it. I set it up this way so that I could more easily photograph these fish.

First the Oscar. It is 10 to 11 years old. It is maybe 9.5 inches total length, far shorter than my 18 month old Red Tiger, Drifter, who has been properly housed and cared for his entire life and who is pushing 13 inches total length. Drifter, being a nice healthy fish, has some thickness to him. He is between 2 and 2.5 inches thick (side to side). Here is where the most noticable and visible sign of stunting is evident on this poor old fish. It is 3 to 3.5 inches thick, a thickness that is abnormally exaggerated when compared to its over all length. Add to that the height of the fishes body, with is also abnormally advanced for such a short fish.

The photos that follow may be shocking, but I hope they drive home the truth about the recommendations made by this site for proper and adequate Oscar housing and care. i cant post the picures but lets just say you dont want to see them.