I was wondering what people did with the outflow from filters in their Oscar tanks? I'm not sure what the O's might like/dislike as regards water current.

One pipe has created a blast crater in the sand just like a cichlid nest and both O's go in there and have a good wriggle around on their sides, some times both together. I assume from the frequency with which they do this they enjoy it. The other is just playing onto a rock at the moment - I was wondering whether to angle it to get good surface movement like a river or whether they actually prefer stiller water.

Any ideas?

Your fish need oxygen. Oxygen can be created by various ways. If you have a very big-tank with a large surface area, more oxygen will enter the water. However, many people do not have particularly big tanks so it's vitally important that you use the outflow from your filters to create oxygen. It's quite simple, just make sure that the water coming out of the pipe is causing surface agitation.

You normally know when there is a little bit of oxygen depletion, the fish start breathing heavily.

surface movement is what you are best to try to achieve as said by OFL. I would only add that try to avoid very strong jets that point directly down or across the area that the fish can swim into. I once forgot to replace the end cover on my filter that i had on a pond only to find the fish had suffer some damage to fins. they recovered ok but the fins can tear leaving the fish not looking at there best if they swim into cross currents. that said I think most fish like to have something to swim against from time to time. with some of the powerful pumps on sale now they can generate a current that would leave fins looking tatty for a while.

Made a smaller output to my filter and pointed it a bit dowmward and to the far end of the tank.lifted the outlet half an inch so my water wouldnt flow back and overfill my biofilter in case of poweroutage.Had a thread about that a little while ago and decided to lift the outlet a little bit and my problem was resolved,got quite a strong currrent going and it takes a lot of waste out of the tank.But my fish like to"play" near the current and are never hurt in any way by the current!

most filter pump has a discharge control valve. if the current
is to strong, you can adjust it. however, the water turn over or
the capacity of the filtering system will be reduced accordingly.
some people make the splitter discharge in order to maintain the
capacity to the maximum

PAUL wrote:
[quote]most filter pump has a discharge control valve. if the current
is to strong, you can adjust it. however, the water turn over or
the capacity of the filtering system will be reduced accordingly.


Got a Central Heater Pump installed which can easily pump up the water 10 meters up so theres no problem for me!