South American Cichlids • Stress?

[Andy88]

My Oscars are looking off. I've been having a lot of power outages, and I'm not sure if it is causing this or if it's mood or what. Any thoughts?

[Auballagh]

Your GTs look pretty good in the other photos. But, the color on your Oscars does look maybe a little faded. And yes, it may be because of the recent power outages with cooler temps in the tank they've experienced recently.
Hmmm... have you checked the water in the tank with a Nitrate test kit? Maybe the Nitrate level rose up a bit in there. I mean, if their mood doesn't improve and your Nitrates are good at around 20 PPM or so, I still would consider doing a high-percentage water change anyway.
Doing that always seems to perk a lot of fish up.

[Andy88]

We are under boil water advisory, so water change is out of the question right now...

24 consecutive hours with power at this point though. I just did a water test, 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite, 10 Nitrate.

My more submissive Oscar is always fairly pale- had been since I got him. I also suspect that he is a red Oscar rather than a tiger. But I know they are both considered Astronotus ocellatus and I don't mind. But the tiger Oscar is usually very vibrant black.

All tank behavior is 100% normal. It just threw me off... hopefully by Sunday (my big water change day) my tap water will be safe.