aquarium oscars?

[inthegrass]

hi,
i am interested in setting up a tank with oscars. i have heard that they have a great personality. can anyone confirm?.
cheers.

 

[junglemad]

I have bred oscars before. They are nice fish. They require a good filter system coz they poo a lot and are very messy eaters. They will dig out most aquarium plants.
They don't have much to do with snakes except perhaps the no legs.

 

[africancichlidau]

Everything Junglemad said Also if you get 'em make sure you have a big tank for them and protect the heater, they love to smash heaters made of glass so either get a protector or use one of the new Hydraqua stainless steel ones Great fish though, full of personality

 

[inthegrass]

this is chit chat.
i do appreciate all replies.

 

[inthegrass]

i didn't know that they were an aggresive fish.

 

[Shimarah]

I can confirm that they have loads of personality. They aren't an aggresive fish at all. Just very food orientated. Generally what ever fits in their mouth they eat. As already mentioned Filtration is vital. They are very messy eaters. And a huge tank is also important. Would say a 4ft tank for one fish and a 6 ft tank if your going to have 2. They love rearranging their tank. Our two guys live in a 6 ft tank with a few convicts and a Sailfin Pleco. To solve the heater smashing problem we have a eheim cannister filter which has an in built heater.
Here's a pic of our 2 guys.

 

[junglemad]

They are...mine were quite calm with some red devils, a big managuense and a jaguar cichlid in with them. I had mine in a 6 foot by 2 by 2 tank. They are quite aggressive, they will wake up and decide to kill someone for no reason at all.

 

[junglemad]

Nice fish Shim...i bet the convicts are quiet in there. You must be lucky, my pair were very aggressive. Chocolate Cichlids and Synspilum still my favourite, but id rather change paper and pick up snake poo than water change the 26 tanks i used to have...those were the days!

 

[africancichlidau]

Jmad, you and me both buddy, water changes used to take all of Saturday lol

 

[Shimarah]

Thanks Junglemad I must have always been lucky with our guys. Have always found them big gentle giants. (except around food time, then the rest of the tank runs) Have 5 convicts in there all males and are at least the size of my hand. Occasionally the gippicep head butts the oscars when he decides their cichlid sticks taste better than his algae wafers, but aside from that no fights.
I agree snakes are so much easier....Have ditched my 6 or so aquarium set ups to just the Oscars and 6 or so snakes. Have a huge filtration set up on our Oscar tank, certainly helps a lot.

 

[africancichlidau]

With all these fish guys on the site you think I'd have sold all my aquarium gear by now

 

[junglemad]

Yes afro, but all worth it. A 1/3 water change taking the water out with one of those gravel sucker syphon thingies once a week resulted in no losses from disease and i had plenty of fish..PLENTY..The only african ones were fronnies, moorii and daffodils...the rest all central and south american. Tankbusters they used to call the big American cichlids.

 

[africancichlidau]

Still do mate, who ya gonna clean? Tankbusters, lol. I only used to do 1/4 changes though and the same result but then again most of mine were Tanganyikans, lot smaller than your tankbusters

 

[Shimarah]

Haha Afro I only keep the Oscars now. Have ditched all my other tanks. I have a lot of fish gear floating around the place to. Used to have mainly Africans and one saltwater set up.

 

[junglemad]

I used to breed bristlenose cats..the secret??? 21 degrees shhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[SLACkra]

hey all! well i looked into oscars once as possibility to the next fish i would keep. a standar 4ft logn tank won't be good enough. they get from what i heard anywhere from 14-18" long. so a 2ft wide tank is needed so they can turn around. i would say a 5ft x 2ft x 2ft would be good for a pair but thats just me i like giving animals lots of room to be happy in.

also from everything i have read they are very intelegent and some will make it their buisness to destroy the heater so protect it. also i heard that you can play with them using ping pong balls.

what would be probably really good would be to have an overflow flow into a nice big sump with lots of biological filtration. water change size depends really depends on how fast the levels of nitrate get to high.

i highly recomend you go to www.aquahobby.com and go to the board/forum. i am a member there and there are tons of people who would be happy to answer any questions you have on fish.

andrew

 

[inthegrass]

thanks for that.
cheers.

 

[rddryland4]

here's a pic of our two, they're in a 4ftx2ftx2ft and aren't agressive at all. will be moved to a 6ft tank next year. have them with two sailfins as well, no real problems and they all get along. would really recommend getting oscars or other larger chiclids though.

 

[Sdaji]

hi,
i am interested in setting up a tank with oscars. i have heard that they have a great personality. can anyone confirm?.

Yep, as with a bunch of others here, I've kept them and can say without doubt that they have a heap of personality. You can even train them! I had three which would ring a bell when they were hungry! (yes, it rang quite often).

They need a lot of space, they'll kill other fish including same sized conspecifics if they are too cramped. I mostly kept them in fish tanks at least 5 x 2 x 2. Having said that, I once had a pair of tiny jewel cichlids spawn in a 5x2x2 which was home to about half a dozen large oscars, as well as a bunch of large salmon catfish among other things and the two little jewels (about 2.5-3 inches long) had every other fish including the oscars huddled into one foot of one end of the aquarium..... until I decided that the jewels didn't need to be kept wet any more.

I used to breed bristlenose cats..the secret??? 21 degrees shhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I bred hundreds of thousands of them, mostly at a constant 27 degrees or so, they bred like flies, I couldn't stop them. I never tried breeding them at cooler temperatures, what happens?

 

[Possum]

Those are excellent coloured Oscars, my friend had a a big old scarred black one that was very aggressive all the time, he didn't have anything else in the tank because he would eat it. :shock: