Hole in the Head Help?

dogfish

Hello. Im dealing with HITH w/an Oscar. Here are my parameters as best I know them:
80 gal tank, one adult oscar, one lg upside-down catfish. Both seem to have HITH. Running the largest size over-the-back-of-the-tank type filter (its large enough for a 100gal tank, at least thats what i was told). Nitrates have often been high, even with 3xwk ~15gal water changes. I feed mostly lg cichlid pellets, but also try to mix that up with at least one other kind of food.
We are moving in a few weeks, and Im thinking of replacing the tank w/an acrylic, and hopefully a larger tank. Weve gone so far as to take this fish to the vet. they prescribed formaldehyde baths - the fish clearly hates this, but it did solve the immediate crisis and he has been better since, though its not resolved. we also did baytril injections for a few weeks (it was REALLY bad then)

Does anyone have advice on managing this problem long term? IVe been fighting this battle for about 3 years now - i question how humane it is at times, but this fish has never stopped eating. ALSO: he now seems to have some kind of a tumor in his gill on one side - im afraid this could be due to formaldehyde baths (which sounded insane in the first place, but we were desperate at that point).My local fish store has not been able to help much - they just say its incurable. im afraid the vet's formaldehyde baths have caused a tumor in the gill. ideas? Is this just poor water quality, and if so, how do i improve it?
thanks

Something smells FISHY!!!

HI,

I don't know much about either of these fish I'm a goldfish person. However, when looking to answers for my own problem (beaten, bruised and collapsed gill---due to a bully in one of my tanks) I came across this disease. I do not know much about water piramaters for you, but if you are worried do little water changes every day. Tumours in the gill... I'd be worried about that, but we don't have any fish vets where we live. I sometimes wish we did. They would help a lot. Based on what that chemical is used for in biology as a perservative for dead disection creatures. I would be suspicous of bathing live creatures in it. Seeing how the tumour is in the gill I myself would worry, but I had one Goldfish that had a tumour. In the end I believe it was cancerous and not benign. Really in those cases there is not much to do. MY fish did in the end live a rather normal life. He lived with the tumour normally for 5 months and then passed on and he was actually rather old for a mixed breed of fish. So, hopefully he will continue to live normally for longer and in my opinion I would stop chemically treating him with formaldahyde. As for Hole in the head I bought a new fish not realizing I was choosing one out with that problem. I decided not to put him back and it went away when I treated it with MelaFix. MelaFix is an 100% natural medication for fish in fresh and salt water. It is also allowed with invertebrates. It was useful to have researched stuff about the new fish that became a bully I helped him and hopefully you. I hope I can find a cure can my little guy. You can also find stuff on google about Hole in the Head. I don't know who said it couldn't be treated, but I found a site that said a few ways to prevent it and even to help make it better or cure it. I'll look through my bookmarks and hopefully I bookmarked it and I'll get back to you

Good Luck Dogfish!

~Somethings smells FISHY!!!

P.S. I looked through my bookmarks and I guess I thought the sites were useful. Your quite lucky though that he is still eating.

Here are the sites:

http://www.kokosgoldfish.com/Hole-in...20Disease.html


http://www.fishpalace.org/Disease.html#HITH

corbettfam7

Tommy Gun

Not to sound like a broken record (again), but like I was telling corbettfam7 in a similar post to this one, you really need to be careful when diagnosing and treating apparent hole in the head issues with large cichlids, particularly with Oscars. This is because a very very similar issue (in looks anyways) also exists called Hexamita that can lead to mistreatment.

The fact that you took your fish to a vet is mind boggling to me because he or she should have recognized this as well and told you how you can treat for both at the same time easily. The underlying causes of hole in the head are most often times based upon a lack of some dietary needs of your fish, and/or water quality issues as well...hence, you can address those items by raising your maintenance standards and changing what you feed your fish, while at the same time, treating for Hexamita, which looks like hole in the head, but is caused by a parasite (a protozoa, just like Ich is). It is my guess that your vet is thinking your fish has hexamita, but you may want to ask him or her if your fish's diet or water quality is having an impact as well.

The reason I feel bold enough to contradict your vet somewhat is because you mention the fact that you are having some troubles with high nitrate levels. That said, do you have any idea what the reason for that issue might be? To help you further, it might be good to know:

How often and in what amounts would you normally perform water changes? I know that you point out performing 15 gallon water changes three times a week, but has this always been your routine? If not, what was it before?

-The bottom line is that Oscars, like a few other larger fish, are very 'messy'; meaning they add a lot of bioload to your tank which another fish might not, even if they are both the same size. Simply put, this will result in higher or more rapidly accumulating nitrate levels.

What type of filtration are you using and what is your routine/methods for cleaning or performing maintenance on your filtration system?

-Often times, a neglected filtration system can actually become a 'nitrate factory' because detritus is collecting in an area which is "out of sight, out of mind", causing similar issues that you explain. If you are using a cannister filter (which is extremely 'out of sight, out of mind'), I have found great benefit to using filter floss in exchange of the scrubby-pad like filter media that often accompanies these sorts of filters. This way, I have no problem throwing the stuff away every week or two since it is cheap, and in the process of doing so, I am removing all of that detritus which has gotten stuck in the filter floss and is slowly adding nitrates to my tank.

How much and how often are you feeding your fish?

-I know you say what you are feeding them, but by overfeeding you could certainly be adding to the 'nitrate factor' exponentially by overfeeding. Keep in mind that there are at least TWO ways in which you can overfeed:

1. You could add too much food to the tank at one time so that some of it sinks or accumulates in the tank before your fish can eat it all

2. You could be feeding your fish too much, even though they eat it all and/or no extra foodstuffs are left such as in example one above. Obviously, the more your fish eat, the more wastes will be produced. This is important to realize since a lot of fish are known to be 'opportunistic feeders', meaning that they will seldom, if ever, pass up a meal even if they are not hungry, just in case a long time will pass between now and the next food source comes along. This is why I will never feed my fish more than once a day and in a measured amount...always resisting the urge to feed more food when my fish act hungry every time I walk by the tank (they are just learning that I am their source of food, so this is a conditioned response, much like Pavlov's dog). Of course, there are exceptions to this 'rule', but so far, I have never found any info or indication that Oscars are one of them.