i need some advice as far as my substrate goes at the moment i think ive got the normal pea gravel which ive heard cant be good for the oscars
My oscar "doug" has got a little lump on his bottom lip it fair play it looks saw and some times it looks like theres a bit of skin trailing from it and i want to sort it out b4 it gets worse as it looks quite saw and inflamed, but
sum1 did tell me i think it was ofl to get some sand
is sand alot better for the oscar????
how would i clean it with a gravel vac as i would do with my gravel????
which sand should i go for???

OFL how do i upload my pics of my oscar onto the mebers gallery??????? i cant find it any where???? can u pm me plz how to do it step by step
?????????
i cant find how i up load pics of my aquarium?????
how do i set my avatar as it says im exceeding the 80 pixels?????

cheers ofl ash:unsure:

don't worry about the lump on the Oscars chin, this is very common and doesn't normally cause any problems, it hasn't with my Oscars anyway.

as for substrates,there is nothing wrong with the substrate you are using. However, if you do want to use sand, there are various grades available. I use very fine white sand in my 125 gallon tank, and a black volcanic type sand in my 300 gallon tank. I would advise anyone to use sand, your tank will be much cleaner at the end of the day, and this is without using a gravel vac. Okay, I have got two Eheim 2028 canister filters running at either end of the tank, this does make a big difference to how much waste is removed. But even if you haven't got as much filtration as me, you will still see the crap a lot better than gravel, it will also be much easier to remove with a gravel vac.

As for cleaning sand, it is extremely easy, I often can't understand why people have such a problem. It might take few attempts to get it exactly right, but if you stick with it, you'll be perfectly okay. What you've got to do is hover just above the sand, let the suction do the rest of the work. If you do get sand going into the gravel vac, just lifted up and the sand will fall out.

I will strongly disagree with anyone who reckons that gravel is better than sand, because it definitely is not, believe me. In the wild, Oscars will live over substrate that is more sand than gravel. So it only makes sense to use sand in your tank.

This is where me and ofl disagree. I think gravel is best for oscars. Oscars love to did and gravel is perfect for this. It can be pain to clean but it you put an undergravel filter (UGF) in with a gravel tidy and use the outlet from an external filter to push water down the tube it keeps the gravel clean. Sand is easier to clean against gravel without the UGF but you get waste sitting on the top and that makes it look dirty. With sand you still have to move all the ornaments as dirt gathers underneath it

Everybody is entitled to their opinion on what they think is best and we are never going to agree. However, I like to approach substrate from different angles. Firstly, what substrate is best for fish, gravel or sand ? unless the fish can tell us, no one's going to know that. Having said that, look at the type of substrate that is found where they live. Look at the type of substrate may cichlids live over, you'll find that it is sandy type substrate in many cases. You only have to look at Malawi cichlids to see this, they make perfect craters in the sand where they raise their young.

Secondly, which substrate is the easiest to manage? Sand is without a doubt the easiest substrate to look after. I can understand some people not wanting to look at dirt. However, I'd rather know where the dirt is then not. This is the problem you've got with gravel, it can be haven for hiding dirt and the only way to remove it is using a gravel vac. Unfortunately, this is very time-consuming. I dread to think how long that would take,my 300 gallon tank contains nearly 200 lbs of substrate. I have never used an UGF before, but many people believe they should be avoided because they can become blocked. . With sand, especially light-coloured sand, you can see exactly what you're dealing with. With sand, everything sits on top, if you've got good filtration, there isn't much cleaning you need to do.

I did the weekly water change on the 125 gallon tank this morning, it contains four Oscars, four clown Loach and one jade eyed cichlid. I always do a nitrate test before, it was 10 ppm today, I'd put that down to sensible feeding, but mainly limiting the amount of dirt that stays in the tank throughout the week. I use sand, and two canister filters, say no more

Anyway, this is my opinion. I started off using gravel and now only use sand, and for the reasons above, I know I have made a very good choice.

OFL i use a UGF in reverse. I dont have to clean the gravel, only run the gravel cleaner over the top to remove the large parts. Its loads quicker than with sand. Since adding the reverse UGF i have found my nitrates a lot easier to keep down

As you said we are never going to agree on this as its one of those things that is a matter of opinion

I have sand in my discus tank but i do have a couple of questions. Oscars love to did in gravel, do they dig in sand???

What is the nitrate of your tap water???

i think the subtrate choice basically come down to what the owner prefers to look at. i have never used a ugf myself however i have heard that with the reverse flow thing they are quite easy to keep clean. i know from personal experience that sand imo is very easy to clean. personally i prefer the look of sand over gravel and use it in both my oscar and african tanks.

i also know that the oscars have no problems digging in sand and i have the craters to prove it.

i vacuum my oscar tank twice a week and do a 20% water change once a week and my nitrates have yet to go over 20ppm.

about every three weeks i move all the decorations in my tank and do what i refer to as a big vacuuming. at this time i also stir the bottom up to remove any trapped pockets of gas.

my oscar seem happy, my water quality is good, and i like the look so for me sand is the way to go. i'm sure other might disagree but like i said i beleive it all comes down to personal preference.

delboybully wrote:


funnily enough, two of my Oscars in the 125 tank started shovelling sand and cleaning one of the rocks the other day. You have to bear in mind that they have just hit maturity being just over a year-old so if we have got a male and female, they may start breeding at some stage in the next few months.



I tested the Water for nitrate three weeks ago and it was zero. I did a water test prior to a water change on the 300 gallon tank and it was 30 which is very good seeing as we only do a water change every two weeks on this particular tank.

you could make a video of your setup using the UGF and I'll put it on the website so people can see things from a different perspective.

I still think sand is best

im definetly going to remove my gravel and go with the sand option as i dont like gravel myself as there is loads crap in amongst the gravel!!! thats 1 thing that nags me is all the crap thats why i should get an external filter isnt it ofl???????
ofl how do you work out how much sand i will need my tanks 48" x 24 x 18 ?????
and another thing is how shall i remove the gravel shall i empty it??????
or leave it and suck the gravel out via a hose will this work??????

the amount of sand will depend on the desired depth of the substrate you want. as for changing it it is definetly easier to do it with and empty tank. if that is not an option you can remove a little gravel at a time over the course of a couple of weeks and slowly reintroduce the sand the same way.the sand has to washed thoroughly before you can put it in your tank. also you should do it very slowly to try and keep the fine dust from clouding your tank too much. hope this helps

the problem with internal filters is that they aren't very big. Using them with messy fish means they become clogged up extremely quickly. external canister filters are much more efficient at removing solid waste.what I do when choosing canister filters is look at how many gallons they are rated for. So for instance, I used to Eheim 2028 external canister filters, each one is rated up to 130 gallons, I then know that using two will give me excellent filtration, and believe me it does. That have already said, I have them at either end of my tank and they pull virtually all of the crap out.

As for how much substrate to use, what you could do is take 2.5 multiply that by the size of your tank in gallons.so if your tank is 90 gallons, that works out at around 200 lbs of substrate. however, it does depend on how deep you want the substrate. If you only have it 1 1/2 inch to 2 inches deep, you might not need as much. Sometimes it's a case of buying 10 bags of substrate are hoping it's enough.

removing gravel isn't that difficult, just remove as much water as possible and then remove the gravel. You could use something like a dustpan, or a small shovel

another bit of advice regarding gravel and sand. If you are using gravel, I wouldn't recommend using any more than 2 1/2 to 3 inches deep, in fact it wouldn't hurt to go down to 1 1/2 inches. the reason being is that they're going gets embedded a lot deeper than the gravel and if you don't vac properly, can be easily missed.

We've already established that crap lays on top of sand, for this reason, you can go quite deep when using sand as substrate. I would actually recommend using more sand, because it is a lot finer than gravel, having shallow sand can result in the fish actually exposing the bottom of the tank, especially if you've got fish that live on the bottom, like catfish/clown loaches/plecos