I have an 8.5 inche oscar that has recently taken to digging a hole in the bottom substrate and resting or sleeping there. Is this a normal act? My fish Named Rosco is very aggressive to everyone else but me he allows me to touch him if I feed him just before. Usually he just come to the top and when I touch his back he slowly sinks away and comes back for more. I have had him since Oct 09 and love to watch his antics in the tank. He is in a 60 gal long tank and love to chase feeder fish I raise for him.

This is quite normal behavior. It's probably linked to the Oscar becoming sexually mature, or it could just be what the Oscars do,they like digging around and moving things around.

i concur with OFL...normal oscar thing there

Good to know it seems to be normal. He is a real clown. I would not believed it if someone told me how far they can see from their tank. However I am now a believer. When I come home and enter from my back door I am 55 ft from his tank. He will spot me and begin to frantically swim back and forth and bang on his feeding ring. When my wife gets home before me she say he just sits still on the right side of the tank looking towards the door.

thanks for the quick reply. Glad to see it a s normal

Walt447 wrote:

one more thing, don't you ever be surprised if you go home one day and
see the tank totally rearranged and if you have plants totally ripped-off

My 15 month old Oscar is becoming and behaving like an adult.
Waterchanges are fine, but if i move rocks or any other interior he will attack me noweadays. Like to say :"Those are my rocks!"
My wife allways laughs at me for telling the fish to please move out of the way!
They allways want to be where i'm working.
Guess they expect some food to pop up!

Oscars are very independent! My 7 month old has started to try and remove the air stone bar I have on the back of the aquarium. Every night about 730 he begins to grab the bar and shake his body. he settes himself in the bubbles and occasionally disloages a suction cup and pulls the bar into a vertical position. Then he begins to scoop up stones from the bottom and place them into a pile at the front of the tank.
That is the fun of owning one
Walt

i made this video lately after waterchanges.
My O wanted those plants on the other side of the tank.
Oh, well, it's his tank....

mine picks up gravel with his mouth moves it and spits it out to make some kind of hole in the gravel