My wife purchased me a 55 gal. tank for my birthday. I have raised oscars before. So i am familiar with the mess they make. She purchased a topfin kit.Topfin 60 filter system. I immediatly went out and bought a marineland powerfilter penguin 350(biowheel). I have to baby oscars and two pacu's. After being told by the keeper at the general pet store that pacus and oscars get along, my girls were thrilled to have 4 fish in this big aquarium. Well i came home and did some research since i have never owned pacus before. It seems apparent that they are going to have to leave the aquarium at some time. At this time so i have enough filtration to be able to live for a month before water changes. I work offshore and I can only change the water every 4 weeks.

tks tim

Hi delt51. Welcome back to Oscar fishkeeping! and welcome to oscarfishlover.com

Please wait for the experts advise.

Did you cycled your tank? If your tank has not gone through the Nitrogen Cycle, I suggest you return your fish to the LFS -ask them to keep them for you until you return- and do a fishless cycle first. It will save you a lot of work, and, believe or not, time. As for filtering, you need to aim at MINIMUM 10 times the volume of water per hour: 550 GPH for a 55gal tank.

I'm a newbie, but I can tell you that in a 55gal, you have room for ONLY ONE Oscar. If you want to keep two Oscars, you will do best with a six footer, 100+ gal tank, although a 4 footer 90gal might work.

Pacus reach over 36" long, they belong to Nature, big-time ponds, or monster tanks. I suggest you return them ASAP.

If your tank is cycled, you could keep the two baby Oscars (I assume around 2" each), and upgrade in a a month or so. It is amazing how fast this fish grow in the first year.

I keep two Tiger Oscars. One I got at around 5" in June 2008. The other one at 4" in July 2008. As for today, September 4th, both measure 8" and 7" respectively.


Hope this info helps you.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

unfortunetly your tank is only big enough for one oscar and no tankmates. like stated before oscar grow really quickly and in no time will be 8 inches long and quite thick. your info on pacus is right they can make great tankmates for oscars provided you have a large enough tank(300 gallon +) because they get really big.

as for the frequency of water changes...you might be able to get away with only once a month for the first month but soon afterwards your nitrates will rise to quickly and you will have to do weekly water changes to keep the nitrates in check.

if there is no way that you can do weekly changes then perhaps now is not the time for oscars or any big cichlid for that matter and a tank of tropicals might be a better way to go


btw welcome to the site tim

I think oscars are going to be the wrong kind of fish for you to keep under the circumstances that you can only change the water every 4 wks.You will soon run into water condition problems as necromancer has pointed out. your tank size is only really large enough for 1 oscar. Its a shame as oscars do have an appeal to a lot of people but they also take a little more care with cleaning,its a strong fish but your time away would mean the water coinditions will go down the pan and your fish will suffer and be lost.