oscar with bubbles!?

LOUIE ACES

i just got home from work and my tiger Oscar was swimming around with like a film of bubbles around the underneath of his body and some scuff marks. as i came up to the tank, he started swimming around and they came off. are they bad??? was he attacked? were they eggs? i have an albino Oscar in there with him/her and they've been inseparable since the day i got them like 10 months ago.

in a related but unrelated event, my flowerhorn looks like he's starting to throw his weight around and the oscars are 2 of the biggest threats to his reign of power. it's a 150 gallon tank which they're using a 100 gallon section of which i thought would be big enough to house the specimens together without any problems. i know flowerhorns get mean but i figured i gave them enough room to manage. is he just gonna get worse and kill off the whole stock?

rrcoolj

Flowerhorns are nasty and you really can't keep them with something a passive as an Oscar although it can work on rare occasions I don't think this is one of them. 150 gallons really isn't that large. I would remove the flowerhorn before he does some real damage. What are the size of your fish? What are the water parameters(nitrite, nitrate, amonia)? Do you change anything in the tank lately? Sounds like just bubble to me but the scuff marks could very well be from the flowerhorn. Pics would be great too.

LOUIE ACES

hey yeah i'm fully aware of the potential havoc a flowerhorn can cause. and i actually think the 150 gallon tank is huge! all water parameters are perfect. i have 4 filters running on the tank, all cycled and previously running for about a year, media wasn't changed mainly because i didn't want to take away from the beneficial bacteria that were in the filters because the 150 was just set up from combining 2 other tanks, a 75 and a 45 gallon tanks. also i make sure to rearrange the decor every time i do a water change so they feel lost again and don't become so territorial. i mainly just wanted to know if anyone had every heard of that weird bubble film being on any of their fish and if it's hazardous to their health. its actually gone away and the fish are still doing amazingly great. below is a video i posted on youtube of the tank the night i set it up. check it out! i hope you enjoy it.

rrcoolj

Tank looks great and fish do too. Just watch the aggression there are alot of big powerfull fish in that tank. Your oscars look perfectly healthy but I doubt in the long run the tank will be big enough for all those fish. I have seen jags claim an whole 125(same dimmensions as your tank but shorter) and at 16" with a mouth big enough to swallow 6" fish whole I don't blame them. All Im saying is be carefull and if there is a problem act fast or you could have alot of dead fish. Keep up with water changes because that tank probably has a massive bio-load. IDK what kind of filters you have but make sure the gph is ATLEAST 6x's the gallonage of the water to keep things clean. For example on my tank I have 4 filters which add up to a total 1725 gph. This is a 125 gallon currently stocked with a pair of midas, 3 cuban cichlids, 6 silver dollars, and 2 salvini and I plan to keep one pair of either midas or cuban along with the silver dollars. And I am still planning on upgrading filteration. Big fish need big filtration.

Again I really do hope everything works out because you do have an awesome stock but your fish are still young so watch them. Good luck with your fish!

LOUIE ACES

thanks man. do you have a video of your tank? i'd love to check it out. i have 2 fluval 405's, an aquaclear 110 and an aquaclear 70 on it right now but the aquaclears are being sold with the smaller tanks. are you telling me i should invest in ANOTHER fluval 405!? thats insane...but i hear ya there's gonna be a lot of big fish in there, that's what i want. i'm hoping that they all get along but you're probably right there there's gonna be some casualties. i just can't bear to get rid of any of my "kids" just yet.

rrcoolj

I hear ya it can be hard to get rid of fish you have raised from the get go but sometimes it's best for them. Your filtration sounds ok but you will defiantly need to upgrade in time. Keep that aquaclear 110 they are awesome power filters. Sorry I don't have a video of my fish but that's not a bad idea. I might do one and post it on my aquarium page.