need loads of help for my little oscars!

rocksout4cheese

well, everything was running smoothly. i had my baby tiger Oscar settled in and doing well. then i was stupid enough to bring home an albino Oscar from wal-mart. why didn't i just go back to my fish person? i have no idea. lesson learned. next thing i know my first baby has little white dots all over him. ich. hooray. then the new Oscar has white poo. hith disease right? anyway, not sure if the tiger Oscar has hith, have not seen him pooing, only the albino one. so i did a big water change today. going to the store tonight to get some aquarium salt. increased the temperature a little bit, waiting to see that it stabilizes before i turn the heater up any more. i'm also wondering if i have an algae problem? there is slimy stuff collecting on the openings of the filters where the filtered water comes out, and on some of the decorations. do i not have strong enough filtration? or enough aeration? i did have a long bubble wand, but i decided it sucked so i'm going to get a long air stone tonight. or two. i have three filters, meant for 30-40 gallon tanks. but this is just temporary i'm going to be buying a 350-400 biowheel filter in a few weeks when i can afford it. so am i going to be doing water changes like mad until i get that new filter? what in the world can i do? i love these fish and so does my daughter! i have tons of time on my hands to care for these fish, right now i'm making money as a seller on Ebay so i can stay home with my almost two year old daughter until january. so any and all suggestions or advice are welcome i really really want this to work out well!

Lupin

You could try both salt and metronidazole with heat up and then airpumps on. Table salt is fine. Cheapers yet works equally fine as aquarium salt.

rocksout4cheese

i do have sea salt in the kitchen... i looked at the ingredients and the only other thing in there besides salt is an anti-caking agent. will this harm the fish or is it ok to go ahead and use it?

Lupin

The anti-caking agent should not hurt the fish. I really doubt it. I've used table salt with no issues.

rocksout4cheese

ok, so i added the salt. i hope this will help them! it's been a few hours, and i'm wondering... will having that small amount of salt in their water be beneficial to them all the time? my oscars seem very comfortable and happy. they've just been gracefully swimming about the tank, kind of like they're playing, and seem to be in better moods :P i hadn't read anything about salt and oscars. i know my boyfriend has some "assorted" african cichlids (also from wal-mart, hopefully nothing happens to his... he's had his longer...) and he keeps a small amount of aquarium salt in their tank. it seems to do them well.

Lupin

Nope. Best to use salt temporarily and during treatments only. Your oscars are not brackish water fish.
The water where they originated has plenty of mineral salts I believe ..Geez! I no longer keep these fish so I'm racking my brains over this. But in my opinion, aquarium salt is unnecessary and a waste of money. There is no need to add it at this point unless the fish have health problems.

beetlebz

just as a side note.. I use about 1/2 the recommended dosing of salt (i use 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons of water) and I use API freshwater salt, in both of my tanks all the time, and the fish are all doing fantastic.

another side note, bringing home fish with ich unfortunately happens to me ALL the time and id imagine other people as well. I have had really good luck just upping the temp slowly (over several days) to about 82 degrees F and keeping up on the salt as per the recommendation of a good buddy and former member of the forum, and I have to say it works wonders. Never needed meds for it yet :)

and the last side note, and maybe I am crazy but I see it ALL the time.. when I bring new fish home for a week or two (id say for more than 50% of the fish I bring home) they all have white stringy poo. the first few times I freaked out and medicated and it didnt help. So now I just watch them carefully, and so far every single one just.... stops after a while. And they are all healthy as oxen :D