My poor Oscars!

I dunno but there was a short power outage in my city for like a couple seconds and for that time my heater wouldn't work for my oscar tank! My water quality is good in terms of nitrates, nitrites and ammonia and ph and whatever but it is slightly on the cold side and even when a bought two heaters and put it in the tank to warm up the tank the tank is still a bit on the cold side and I have been noticing my oscars are not as active and all they do is lay on their sides all day (but their not dead) and they don't eat. What is wrong? Is it because of the water temperature? Also, the on one of the Oscars I noticed that there is a thin white line outlining only its tail fin that has been there for about 2 months now. It doesn't quiet look like ick though, but then again there is a chance it could be.

 

The power going out for a few seconds (or even several minutes) shouldn't have much of an affect on your water temperature. Are you sure your heaters are set at the correct temperature and are actually turning on? How many gallons is the tank and how many watts are the heaters?

As for the white outline on the tail fin, that sounds like normal coloration. Both of mine have it.

-Chelle

 

I agree with Chelle about the heaters. It should only take maybe 2-3 hours depending on the heater and the setting to raise the water temp. As far as them not moving, their metabolism has been reduced due to the colder water temps. It's sort of a biological defense to not use too much energy, but for you're fish to be acting noticebly sluggish and laying on their sides, your tank temp would have to be in the mid to low 60's if not lower. I don't believe this to be very good for your oscars for long amounts of time. I know this because I was stupid when I set up one of my fisrt tanks and got impatient and didn't wait for the water to warm.

 

I'm not sure as much as wattage goes but the tank is a 75 gallon. I noticed this morning though, that my seem to be coming around a bit, but they are still very sluggish! So what can I do?

 

If you still need to raise the temp more and your heater isn't doing the job fast enough then maybe try putting some warm water( maybe a little less then bath temp) in a plastic zip lock and put it in your tank. The temp increase should not be so fast as to shock the fish but you would have to keep an eye on the temp. I don't like to put warm tap water into a tank because hot water pipes have extremely high concentrations of sulphuric bacteria and I'm not sure if they will harm the fish in the tank.

 

Alright, thanks!