Hi guys

firstly i must say what a cool forum this is just what i was looking for a dedicated oscar forum where i will probably find ive got everything wrong and have to start all over again lol
a few years ago i fell in love with my friends oscar she kept on and on and on at me to get one i wasnt keen id never kept fish before and it seemed like id be running before id learnt how to walk so anyway to cut a long story short i bought an empty tank decided to try my hand at a community tank (easy stuff) and figured if i could keep it alive for a year then id consider an oscar man did i get a lot of stuff wrong initially and made some v bad fish choices based on bad info from friends relatives and neighbours and a couple of rogue lfs grrr
anyway a few years down the line and i have corrected all of my mistakes and now have 5 happy healthy tanks full of thriving fish id completely forgotten about my intial plans i have built up a very good relationship with the local maidenhead aqautics they take a lot of my fry kribs,bristlenose,convicts and hopefully soon keyholes and geophagus and maybe even my angels if the buggers stop eating the eggs lol
also have a very good relationship with the lfs in town they know me and they know my tanks and wont sell me anything they know i cant/shouldnt have or thats gonna grow too big or agressive lol
then recently i was offered a very cheap 4ft tank i thought hmm thatd be a cool upgrade for the firemouth tank so i upgraded the tank unfortunately i have a very dominant male firemouth whose very agressive and has killed most of the other firemouths so i decided to give up on the firemouths and try something diffrent it was then that my lfs got some beautifull oscars in and i fell in love i bought 2 ive had them a month now and theyve doubled in size i was discussing with my lfs yesterday about how soon am i gonna need a bigger tank he assures me they will slow down a bit later theyre currently in a 4ft 30 gallon tank (uk gallons) running a fluval 205 which ill later upgrade with my spare aqau one cf1200 when i uprgade the tank theyre only a few inchs in size atm and share the tank with 2 yellow marbled synos one pardallis syno a couple of bristlenose 3 firemouths and a green terror (recued from my brothers wife who bought it from one of those rogue lfs who told her it would only grow to a couple inchs and would be fine in her tankfull of tetras!!)
oh and just to be extra carefull because id heard so many horror storys i bought a reinforced toughened glass heater lol


p.s sorry i know i was supposed to keep it short but kinda had a lot to squeeze in lol

Hi Paulie, Welcome to the site. I am pretty new to it myself.
One thing I think you are going to here from the members who read this is that you have far to many fish in that tank.
I have a 80g tank with 2 oscars in it and eveyone is telling me I will need to either cut back to one or upgrade to a bigger tank. Was just out bidded today on a 150g tank. BUGGER!
You may have an excuse now to get tank no.8. LOL

thanks kanga lol no fear ive no intention of keeping them in them this tank they will be upgraded asap and the firemouths will be gone soon utlimately itll just be the oscars the green terror (maybe) and the synos ive asked the lfs to let me know of any tanks they might hear of for sale thatd be suitable but they assured me for now its fine the oscars are only a few inchs in size atm

You may have an excuse now to get tank no.8. LOL[/quote]

Meant to sat tank No.6
Glad you are looking at upgrading.
I actually thought I owned a big tank till I got on this forum and discovered some of the tank sizes some of these guys are running.

lol i always was gonna uprgade no way id keep 2 oscars in a 4ft tank lol i live in a flat though and have only limited space id like a 300-350 litre tank mimimum only planned to buy one oscar but the lfs told me to buy 2 as they enjoy theyre own company i dread to imagine some of the tanks the guys on here own too big to fit in my flat i suspect lol if the worst comes to the worst and i cant get a big enough tank i can have a shuffle and move the oscars into my trigon 190 (40 gallons) temporarily lol im hoping i have a good 6 months to a year before i need to upgrade though at some point i may make some enquires as to how much its cost to have something like a 4x2x2 or a 5x2x2 made im on a bit of a budget though as im disabled however now all the fish are breeding quite well providing i stop spending it on fish!! the store credit maidnehead gives me would go towards a good sized tank lol

welcome to the site

thankyou

hey there and welcome to OFL!
I bet you'll love this site, and let me start by asking if you could try to make use of some paragraphs and puncuation marks.
This would make long posts easier to read.
You will get better responses that way.

And Kanga-fish is correct.
We need to tell you that you'll need a bigger tank with sufficient filtration to keep your oscars happy and healthy .
Their growthrate will not and should not slow down for the first year the least.

We advice 55Gl per Oscar, with no tankmates that is.

Enjoy the site!

Thanks noddy

Sorry about the lack of punctuation/paragraphs etc really not my strongest area so usually i try to keep posts short as to reduce the need for too much i will make an extra effort in future.
I'd like to re iterate again that i never planned to keep the oscars on the 4ft tank for life this always has been just the "starter tank" as for filtration ultimately i will likely run both my aqau one cf1200's on the oscars tank giving me over 2400lph of filtration.
Just need to do some maths now and work out if i can buy a 110 gallon tank off the shelf thats going to fit in my bedroom how long do you expect ill be able to keep the oscars in the 4ft for ? the lfs told me theyd be fine for 6 months to a year as they will be on theyre own with just the synos the firemouths arent being replaced and the green terror will be moved to another tank after doing a bit of reading on here im not really comfy abut leaving it in with the oscars.

p.s im sure ill get to love this site too you all seem quite friendly i was a lil worried about signing up in the past ive joined fish forums and found some people to be quite brutal with newbies expecting us to already know everything theyve learnt over the last 20 years of fishkeeping i never buy any fish without doing research first like i said getting my oscars has taken several years of deliberation and making sure i can dedicate the time and effort to keeping them happy

hi paulie, i am paul! welcome on board!

Good to see you're willing to upgrade when nescesary.
And thanx for making things easier by using paragraphs.
I'm a lazy reader and i like to keep it that way!

A healthy oscar should grow about an inch a month.
Taking that into consideration, they should be able to reach 10" within a year easily.
You'll be good for some months, but they will eat a lot and create a lot of waste, so I think it's best to look for an upgrade as soon as possible.

Welcome to OFL