Hey everyone how are you doing? you have mike here today and today we are going to talk
to you a little bit about Oscars so as you can see here, this Oscar is really
big and we are going to teach you how to grow your own monster oscar and how to properly
care for him Hey everyone how are you doing you have Mike
and Sierra here and today we are going to talk to you about Oscars Yeah so they are
beautiful fish.
you see them all the time super common but one of those fish that highly abused in the
hobby.
So we want to get out some great information to make sure you can grow your own monster
fish and have them live with you for a very long time.
So one of the first things about Oscars that bad advice that is given about Oscars is the
tank size that they should be kept in.
They require a fairly big tank, at the absolute minimum a 75, and that's kinda pushing it,
you can get away with it for a small fish but in their juvenile stages they will grow
up to an inch per month for the first 7 to 9 moths they slow down a bit but they are
fast growers.
They do need space in order to reach their full potential So tat is why we say to keep
them in a 125 or a 180-gallon tank.
As you will see here from this first fish we are showing you is a 14-inch tiger oscar
4 years old and e is not done growing.
So as you can see this fish could never live in a 55 gallon tank where its only 12 wide
wide.
The rule of thumb is usually 75% fish to tank ratio.
so your fish should have 25% extra space to turn around in the tank.
So what you want to do is make sure your tank is a little bit bigger . So a 75 and a 125 come in is that extra 2 feet swim space
It will allow them to be a bit more active 18 inches better.
overall it will give them healthier happier life because they will have that extra space
to enjoy their tank and thrive.
We are going to take you here over to the next tank, this tank here has 2 fish in it
one male and one female, The one female has pits from hole in the head diseases This fish
here was a rescue about 3 years ago.
Oscars are more susceptible to getting Hole in the head or other diseases if they are
not being cared for properly and especially stress for poor water conditions or just being
kept in a smaller tank. with your pairs you want to make sure they have more room.
during breeding time the males can get a little aggressive, your female may need some room
to get away, so she is comfortable
So the next thing we should talk about is the diet of Oscars what should we feed our
Oscars.
Oscars are omnivorous they do require a good amount of veggies and fruit in their diet.
Naturally in their river systems that stuff falls in and they eat it from plants algae
or fruits falling into the water.
you want to make sure you are feeding them more than just meat or fish proteins.Make
sure you use a good quality pellet., so maybe you may try feeding a veggie pellet one day
and a cichlid pellet another day.
you want to make sure you are feeding whole high-quality ingredients .
If you did want to go a little bit out of the box and feed live foods, try something
like meal worms, giant black worms,crickets or maybe some fresh fish or shrimp.
But do not over feed them when they get bigger their metabolism slows down and they don't need to eat as much
they don't need to eat as much In the wild these fish would not be eating everyday in the wild.
That is one thing you want to think about.
Overfeeding can lead to other health problems I might not be something that you are going
to see right away but I won't live to its full potential Like Mike said they don't eat
everyday in the wild.
Skipping a day every now and then is fine.With live feeders, you really want to avoid anything
like goldfish minnows if possible just avoid them all togeather they don't provide them
with any real nutrition So what we want to do now is show you the Last tank here, This
is a 265 gallon community tank with 2 Oscars in it.There is a tiger and Latino Oscar the
girl is 11 inches and she is the tank boss.
She is 11 inches long, so not as long but very tall and girthy fish, absolutely beautiful,
though.
the Latino Oscar is about a year old, he is also a rescue so its is possible that he may
not get as large.as he could have been but he coming along
If you go back to our monster fish room tour you will see him in that video when he was
just a little guy.
So with Oscars, they are big fish and produce a lot of waste, in order to keep down nitrates, you need massive filtration
on the tank.
That's why we push for a bigger tank as that will help with that. You want to make sure you have heavy filtration to keep up with that
Just as a point her, for the 265 there is 2 fx6 canisters filters as well as a fillstar
xpxl all of the other tanks are filtered this way as well. on te other tank they have 2 fillstar xpxls and ac110s on each of the tanks as well
We hope that we were able to give you some good information here if you decide you want
to step into the Oscar world.
So thank you very much for watching , you have yourself a great day