Okay so today i walkd in my room and i just noticed my oscar is to small for the tank but when i bout it at the pet store they said it would be okay in a 50 even with three t four other fish!! they said for every inch a fish grows it needs one gallon so i figured 14 inch oscar =14 gallons plus my three other fish i was like o SCORE but then after i got him maybe about four inches which was a few months after i got him i did reacherch and boy was i shoked! i knew at that moment i needed to upgrade so i tried telling my mom i need at least a 55+ tank! she was like HELL NO so the best i could get wasa 50 gallon and that was after i grew to love my fish but i know the day i graduate HS im going to get the bigest tank that fits in my basement its not that i dont care for my fish its just my PARENTS trust me cause i spent every pennny i owned and worked for into my current tank so obiosly i love them but i feel like a bad owner cause i cant provide them with the big tank that they require but even still my lfs ppl tell me one inch one gallon

Oh once again the lfs are only interested in a sale.

But that rule was made more for small fish like, Live-Bearers,Characins, etc.
Oscar`s and most cichlids are big messy fish, that poo ALOT. Also Territorial.
There for need the room and water volume to keep them happy and healthy.

I think you need to re-think your stocking and figure out what is best for your fish and you.
Keeping an O alone in a 50gal tank will be ALOT of work on your part, and the O will not have alot of turning around space once grown.

Matt E. fish lover wrote:



Thats why you need to not get your primary advice from your LFS pple. They are trying to sell things...keep that in mind. They also would probably tell you to buy stress zyme, ph up/down, water clarifier. salt, bio-zyme, carbon, etc. etc. Basically a lot of stuff you probably don't even need, and could actually be harmful.

This is not to say there aren't good, knowledgeable pple working at pet stores, it's just that it's more advisable to ask pple who don't have any other motivation than love for the hobby and want to help others.

That being said, it's not your fault. Thing is, I think basically you need to make a tough decision for the good of your fish. You might have to either give your other fish up or your oscar. What kind of fish are in there, anyways?

Keeping the oscar in a 50 by itself isn't necessarily advisable, but I suppose you could do it and it would survive with careful maintenance. Again, though. It's not recommended.

Any other fish in there as well..no. If your other fish are small and will remain small I would have to say rehome the oscar. He's probably not going to make it in that tank with other fish, and you're probably going to lose more than one.

Keep in mind when a tank says 50 gallons it's not even that, you have to factor in the water displacement from rocks, substrate, other items...as well as the fact that 99% of the time the tank isn't filled to maximum capacity or it's be spilling over the hood. A 50 is probably closer to 47...if not less.

It's hard to do, trust me, I know...I had to rehome my pleco that I had for quite a while, and I didn't realize how attached I became to him, but you have to get past that and look at whats best for the fish, and realizing caring about them means knowing when to let them go so they can be healthy and happy.

Make sure you are reading all of the articles on the sight that OFL prepared carefully and thoroughly. All the info you need to get a good start is there, and most of the stuff you're experiencing now could have been addressed beforehand by reading them. Maybe you did, but it seems like alot of the things you are asking are answered there.

For me, so as not to make you think you're the only one who didn't know or followed bad advice or anything-- I started out with 3 oscars in a 20 gallon. I had no real info about oscar keeping. I just assumed they were fish and you plonk them in and buy a small filter and there you go. Well, obviously I had a lot to learn. I lost 2 of them (one from poor water, the other from jumping from a hoodless tank), and decided to make a commitment to the one that survived that I was going to do things right by him...and it's been very satisfying. But it took endless hours of careful research and a lot of mistakes, to be honest. Even now I feel like I'm just scratching the surface in truly understanding all the things that go on in a healthy aquarium.

I would leave you with the advice that if you do not have the means to DO right by yours: let him go, wait for the time you have the resources, and do it right with all the experience and knowledge you've learned.

You could scrape it in a 50g if you rehome all your fish except an oscar but you will need to do more water changes than in a bigger tank. Say, a large water change (50%) every 5 days without missing 1. However you are probably best to rehome the large fish like oscars and keep some smaller fish like community fish or small cichlids like firemouths or blue acara.

The inch per fish rule is for small community fish like neons. It is obvious that 14 inches of oscar is much bulkier, will eat more and produce more waste than 14inches of neons, so the 1 inch per gallon rule doesnt work for oscars

god i have come so far than first fishing minows out of the creek in my yard and keeping them in a ten gallon tank the two other fish i got are a OB peacock and a red blood paroot its not me i have the money just my dad wouldnt let me get a huge tank i would love to get a 100 for my o alone BUT I CANT its so hard i will have to make a decision and hopefully i wont have to give up a fish but get a smaller tank for the other two fish i think im going to do something different but i only have 4 more years till i graduate and if i move to the basement i can do wat ever i want i no this is rediculious but how long can i wait til i absalutly need to huge upgrade in tanks?

Matt E. fish lover wrote:


about 2 weeks ago, to be honest...

basically you need one now...first thing is you gotta move any other fish out of the oscar tank if you want any chance of keeping them healthy.

...and thats cool if eventually you want a huge tank...I think it's great you are getting into fish at such a young age, I wish I had.

Its just that you're not going to have any fish in 4 years--or 4 months for that matter if you leave them as they are...even with regular maintenance.

i can guarentee my dad wont let me get a big tank for the o but wat i can work on is getting a 30 gallon for the other two or ill do sum resherch on how much room they need and see if i can get one