Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have a dwarf caiman that is approximatly 18 - 24 inches long. there is an oscar fish in the tank with him along with 2 other good size fish. the oscar is the biggest at a little less than 10 inches. all summer there was no problems between any of them and in the last 3 weeks my oscar has been looking very bad. his head has all the skin peeled off it and he looks like death. i am going to get the water tested to see if it is anyhting in the water. my caiman has been eating often too and sometimes i even give him to much and he doesn't eat it all so he is not hungary. is the caiman most likely the problem here or should i be trying to solve this problem in some other way? thanks,
mike

Take a water sample to a pet store. My guess is that you have a rampant ammonia/nitrite problem. I'd personally seperate the fish and hope it's not too late.
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

I suspect you will see high ammonia levels. I've found through my experience with making natural communities that even 50% water changes will not decrease the ammonia levels significantly. Theres only one way your going to be able to keep the fish and caiman together thats extensive filtering. I have done this and it works well but can easly become very expensive. I use a wet dry trickle filter with bio balls. The filter is way oversized for the gallon size of pond but you need this because the camian puts off some much ammonia with its waste. Also in this system are air injectors, chemical filtration, and mechanical along with the biological from the trickle filter. It is cheaper in the pocket to just separate the fish and camain. Hope this helps. Jason

Just wondering what you mean by more filtration than necessary for a pond...

I ask because "ponds" in general need much less turnover of the water than an aquarium. An aquarium requires 5-7 times turnover (ie. 500gph for a 75-90 gallon aquarium) Is this the figure you are trying to hit or is this the figure you are increasing from?

Mr. F

Yes generally ponds dont need to be turned over more than aquariums but this depends on the load on the pond. When I said "oversized filtration" I was talking about the amount of surface area provided by the bioballs in the trickle filter. Due to the extensive amount of ammonia build up in a captive croc pond the filter area needs to be larger to remove the excess ammonia in order to keep it down for also sustaining fish. Through my trial and errors with it I've found that that GPM doesnt need to be changed as much as the filtering system. Hope this helps. Thanks Jason.

fish and caiman in the same facility. Not a good idea my friend. Better idea. Take the fish out and put them in a seperate invironment. He may not be trying to eat them but most will snap and kill it anyways if it swims in front of them. My alligator does it all the time. He will kill mice but won't eat them if he is not hungry. Good luck with the fish.