HI

I have some ?'s maybe sombody can help me out with here I will be greatly apreaciated.
First?
I have a 125 gallon tank I purchased 8- 2,Inch oscars a few types that i liked... Now the ? what's the best way to keep a few oscars together ? All males? ...One male with all females?... All females?....I probably will only keep a few not all 8 once they start to get bigger....how many could i keep...i do change almost 50% of my water in my 125Gallon tank weekly.

Next ? what are the best pelletsout there (color inhancement types) What brand works best...i used omega one super color on some other fish in the past but i know there are alot of brands made for oscars and other big fish...what's the best ...I have a pond and there are some pellet foods that are better that make the red on fish brighter but wont turn the whitecolor on them pink...is this the same with food for oscars as with my pond gold fish?


Sorry for the long post...
THANKS

8 x 2 inches oscar are way too much for a 125 gal tanks.
you may feel that as of today, you have plenty of space
for them, but they are fast growing specie and eventually
outgrown your tank (in 4 to 6 months). 125 gal is good for
2 fully grown oscars, and probably with few small specie
tank mates. moreover, you have to take consideration on the
filtering system to cope up with the waste and bio-loads.

just my 2 cents ideas based on experienced.

Yes, you will definitely need to find new homes for at least six of them. To be quite honest, the only time you need to get as many Oscars that you have got is when you are looking for a male and female. Even then, a 125 gallon tank is not enough because they won't become sexually mature until they are at least one-year-old,, probably more. At this stage, a 125 gallon tank will be far too small.

Going by what you have said, I think that you are assuming that it's going to be easy to sex Oscars. I'm afraid it's quite the opposite, determining the sex of Oscars is virtually impossible by looking at them alone. You either have to remove them from the tank and examine their sexual organs, or you have to wait until they start laying eggs.

My advice would be to re-home some of them before they start getting big, you might find it easier to re-home them while they are still small, not a lot of places will take large fish.

If you do keep all of them, I can almost guarantee you running into water quality problems.

Like Paul, my advice is based on experience keeping six Oscars in a 125 gallon tank.

I am with OFL and paul on this,way too many fish and not enough space.

as for pellets Hikari gold medium size works fine for me. I dont want to get into a brand war so will point out, there are other makes that maybe as good but I have not tried them. i have tried the same brand stand pack and this is great too. medium size tend to leave less mess as the fish dont munch them up as much.

Thanks guy's for all your help.
What i plan to do is grow them up a little and try and keep the ones that look the best...I do not want to keep them all... probably a nice pair.

Also on the food Hikari makes 2 types of the gold food one in the red bag and then the one that cost more in the white bag gold + it is i think.. Is this one better?

Also i found these foods I am goin to try the color supreim on my oscars ocasionally this food is really good...I use this brand on my pond fish.
www.dainichi.com/cichlid_food.html

It's for cichlids but for a treat every once and a while it should be good i think ..it has great ingreedients

I feed my Oscars on two types of pellets, Hikari Gold and Tetra Dorimin, my Oscars love them.

shenlonco wrote:


i think you're doing the right thing. let the oscars grow and choose two. you'll have a better chance of getting a "breeding pair".

hikari cichlid gold contains astaxantin that brings out the color of the fish.
dainichi color fx and color supreme contains spirulina, also great for the colors.

from my experience i found that krill and shrimp are the best way to bring out an oscars colours.

Thanks I just got off the phone with a guy from dainichi fish foods i ordered a 1.1lb bag of the color supreme he said it has 5 color enhancers and told me how much better there food is than the others out there it's very fresh he said in a week or so i will see the difference in my fish. ...I know for my pond fish the dainichi food was much better than all the rest i used.

I wonder if i should only feed them the dainichi food as a staple diet...always when i feed the baby oscars frozen bloodworms the little stinkers stop eating the pelleted food!!

Actually guy's after looking at all the sites on foods to me it looks like omega one fish foods look to be the best by reading there ingreedients...Look
www.omegasea.net
www.omegasea.net/large_cichlid_pellets.html

necromancer4 wrote:


My oscars love shrimp but have never tried krill, how messy is it?
because at the moment i only give them hikari gold and i dont have much mess at all, its very good, but is krill messy?

my oscar loves brineshrimp but for some reason she turns her knose up at krill