hi, my name is mike and I just rescued a 10 in. oscar and some other fish.wasnt planned and Ive never had oscars before. tank was terribly nasty and only a 55,paid 40.00 but now I think they should of paid me after 18 5 gal. buckets of the blackest water youve ever seen. anyways the tank had the oscar, a 7 in. jd,a 5 in. fm, and 2 monster plecs(15&10 in.)with help from another site I have it down to only the oscar in the 55 with all deco taken out. looks so bare, can I add fake plants even? I know he will uproot them but at least there would be something in there. how bout a large rock or two? anyhow sorry about the long story, could of been posted elsewhere on the forum Im sure, but just wanted to give an intro and say hi and got carried away.
mike c.

Welcome to the site Mike

First of all, a good job in reducing all those fish. I dread to think what the water quality was like. Yes, of course you can have some decor. I wouldn't piled too much in, remember that 55 gallons is the absolute minimum. What happens if you fill a bucket of water to the rim and then put a brick in it, the water starts poring over the edge. So, if you put too much in the tank, you will actually have less water than you think. It won't make a huge difference, but when you have the minimum size tank, you want to utilise as much of the water as you can, you don't want to waste any. I should have little substrate, try some fake plants in the tank. The Oscars won't necessarily destroy them, not all Oscars are demolition experts, some don't bother with what is in their tank.

If you want to put a rock in, try a small one just to make it look nicer, don't put huge boulder in.

Hope that helps. Keep a check on the water

See, I told you on the other site that the Oscar would "hook" you instead!

Great job again on the rescue and the thread was pretty interesting...

yeah, figured I better start learning as much as I can about oscars:) . I put in 3 fake plants and a nice rock in the middle,looks better now. also threw in some hornwart to float. friendly guy he is.
mike c.

Yup, Oscars do have more of a personality then other fish and they get to recognize their owner / feeder too.

It's OK to decorate your tank but eventually you'll see that the Oscar has a decorative taste all his own and in the end, his will, will be stronger then yours and he will win. Penn's point was not to displace too much water with big items as you really need all the water you can have in there, so even a light layer of gravel is better then a thick one as even one ince of extra gravel displaces alot of water. Post a pic of him when you can. Glad to have you as a Member!

thanks for the greeting everyone, Ive already started posting oscar questions on the forum.
mike c.