What live plants tend to outlast an oscar and how should I incorporate them in my setup?

Also why does an oscar tear up plants?

Oscars tend to destroy plants because when they breed, they make little pits in the substrate whether Fry will be transferred to the after hatching. They like to move things around, dig around in the substrate until they find somewhere they like, and normally plants just get in their way. Also, they tend to be fairly destructive fish that will just rip up or uproot plants because they are there.

As for plants, I'm not an expert on them so I couldn't really give you many names, one fairly hardy plant is called the Amazon sword, this is fairly robust but an Oscar will still destroy it if it wants to.

LMAO, My Oscars destroy the fake plants. and move big rocks. LOL

Well ill just have to try it.

mybe even build a fence around the plants.

Sure, Oscars love to break down fences to get to your plants!
I remember when i still had plants, i placed a lot of heavy stones on top of the roots. I figured none of my fish was big enough to move them.
Came home later, plants uprooted, stones moved. :angry:
Turned out they teamed up to get to the roots.
The 3 biggest fish would work at one side of the stones together and still thrashed my plants.
Last time i bought a "very hard leaved motherplant, that my fish would never eat".
Or that's what the LFS told me.
One day later the plant was torn to pieces and that was the last of my planted tank.
No more live plants for me.

Thats why i use fake plants and flowers lol an o will go to extream lengths to get what they want that way fake you can just re glue them together and your done with it lol i visit my locale walmart craft dept A LOT

and one more thing..... never put a stone big enough to sucked and lifted by an oscar.
i had an accident wherein my oscar sucked a gravel about 1 1/5 inches in size, lifted
it and release somewhere in the tank that have no substrate...every body in the house
panic upon seeing rushing water in the sala....

since then, all my tanks are set up at the car port...

i bought some random live plants for my tank with my small tiger oscars, all is well so far but we will see, ill let you know

thanks for the info everyone, almost forgot this thread , but iam going to get live plants started anyways since an oscar will be the final fish added to my tank, it is going to incorporate red tiger lotus, another lily type, african fern and jungle val, from reading, most of these plants if not all are good growers once they get established, so once i get them established and have a good sized black ghost knife and my two angelfish are grown up and a rhino pleco is 4 inches ill get myself hopefully a baby white longfin oscar, to complete my tank.

hopefully the oscar being raised around live plants and having to deal with tankmates that aren't destructive, will convince it not to tear up the plants, but if it does so and these plants being fully established it wil just be giving my plants a trimming, as long as it doesn't shread the roots and bulbs wich i know is a possibility the plants should be fine.

I am also curious about this one. I have never tried live plant because of most of the reasons outlined. But I am thinking of giving it a shot; maybe using little flower pots with gravel to help secure the roots. So the follow up question is...

Has anyone had any luck at all with live plants and Oscars? Anyone?

Nickisue wrote:



x2!

just set up a new 5 ft tank and had to use literal boulders so i know thye cant move them....but their trying lol especially my lutino!

Oscars aren't the only fish that uproot plants. I've had a few (fake) plants mysteriously become uprooted. All along, I have blamed the Oscars.

I just caught the Severum "red-handed finned" grabbing the plants with his little mouth, shaking them and pulling them out

I just wish my camera was handy at the time.