Where do I begin with this poor fish?

[AndyR83]

This week I came into possession of a large albino Oscar that seems to have had an extremely tough life! I’m fairly clueless when it comes to freshwater and I don’t even know where to begin with helping this poor thing. Wondering if anyone has any thoughts...

The obvious issues I’ve observed are ragged fins (not sure if bacterial or related to being beat up by other fish,) a sizeable wound on the lower aspect of the face, and apparent blindness in the right eye. The left eye follows me as I move around, but the right does not. I also see the fish perched with its right side near the wall of the tank often, which makes me think it’s positioning itself to avoid being ambushed on its blind side.

The good news is this thing eats like a champ. It’s also pretty big, about 14”, but very shy and just looks absolutely awful in general. Where do I even begin? Any ideas?

 

[Scottmac]

Bacterial infection. You would likely see whiteness if it was fungal. Do you have other Oscars in your tank as the mouth injury looks like a fight injury.

You can get liquid medication for the bacterial infection or alternatively medicated food. As it's eating well, don't worry it will recover and the fin damage will regrow. As with any infection/injury, first things first: water change!

 

[PicassoClown04]

Poor baby!!!! Feed it a nice diet of protein rich foods! I feed mine the same as my arowana, feeder fish, feeder insects, and predator pellets. Oscars are very tough fish and can pull through a lot. Time, good diet, good water perams and I’d say he’ll be okay. That’s a big boy!!

 

[Reverend Turtle]

Give him at least a 55 gallon to himself. Weekly 50%+ water changes, a good diet of pellets and frozen foods, and he could live to be over 12 years old.
He's had an eye injury at some point, his pupil is reduced in the right eye. Keep sharp decorations out of the tank to keep him from further injury. Anything more specific, DM me.

 

[PicassoClown04]

I would do a planted tank for this guy as far as decor, the cover from the plants Will give him a little more security without posing a threat. Fake plants are also fine for this purpose because live will take a long time to get to the height you need them to be to properly aquascape a tank big enough. A large rock cave would do nicely as a little hide/sleeping area for him. After he becomes comfortable I would expect a recovery (of the overall body condition, the eye is probably a permanent thing) in about 6 months to a year, maybe quicker but probably not as he’s pretty beat up. Throw on some magenta lights to help him display his full colors (magenta lights make red/orange pop just like blue lights make a reef pop). Good diet here is key, he’s gonna need a lot of nutrients to heal. If you have a very large tank (100 or more gallons) an arowana would make a good tankmate, I keep my arowana, oscars, red sevrums, and blood parrots together in a 200 gallon. My oscars are not nearly as large as this guy though!

 

[AndyR83]

Thank you all very much for your quick and extremely helpful replies!

To fill in some additional details:

The wear and tear on this fish was present when I got him a few days ago. He came from a LFS and I believe he was a fairly recent acquisition for them (they were a bit fuzzy on details but I know I didn’t see him there on my last visit a few weeks ago.) There were some other big Oscars in the tank with him.

He’s in a brand new 90 gallon tank with an oversized canister filter and UV sterilizer currently. I have a juvenile arowana that I just moved up from a 40 breeder to this 90 a few days ago. There’s also another Oscar in the tank (one I’ve had for a couple of years, about 10” long) and three silver dollars. My other Oscar is being a bit of a jerk, but there’s been no actual physical hostility that I’ve observed. Just lots of mouth flaring.

The light is one of the fairly cheap Fluval Marine models, I think maybe 2.0 or 3.0. I may swap it for something else if a different spectrum will enhance the look a bit. This one is pretty much just a white channel and a blue channel.

Assuming this is a fairly run of the mill gram negative bacteria, I should be able to use Furan-2 and maybe a sulfa drug as well right?

 

[PicassoClown04]

My Oscar used to get tore up pretty good by the Severum and parrots, all I did was give him a good diet and some time. I don’t see a problem with furan though. A led strip should do you fine, I use 2 giant ones for my arowana tank with magenta, blue, and white settings on.

 

[|Tom the Bomb|]

This week I came into possession of a large albino Oscar that seems to have had an extremely tough life! I’m fairly clueless when it comes to freshwater and I don’t even know where to begin with helping this poor thing. Wondering if anyone has any thoughts...

The obvious issues I’ve observed are ragged fins (not sure if bacterial or related to being beat up by other fish,) a sizeable wound on the lower aspect of the face, and apparent blindness in the right eye. The left eye follows me as I move around, but the right does not. I also see the fish perched with its right side near the wall of the tank often, which makes me think it’s positioning itself to avoid being ambushed on its blind side.

The good news is this thing eats like a champ. It’s also pretty big, about 14”, but very shy and just looks absolutely awful in general. Where do I even begin? Any ideas?

ik a decent amount of fw more then sw so here
probably keep it in a minimum 75 gallon tank with excellent filtration cuz these guys are messy like an oversized canister filter would be ideal preferably the fluval fx4 if ur getting a 75-100g tank and keep it singly alone for now and keep tank with sand and lightly planted with hard leaf plants and wood
start dosing bacterial/fungal treatments like API melafix or general cure and feed it a high nutrition diet like hikari cichlid gold pellets and remember to perform weekly water change in this type of scenario

if u don't have a 75g rn a 40-55 would work until it outgrows
i would recommend the most seachem kanaplex combined with high nutrition cichlid food dipped in seachem focus with UV and water changes and plants and good filter