so today i want to talk about why i love the oscar fish but i also want to use this video uh
as the opportunity for a generalized update on this general space as well okay so things
are technically slowly being packed up so it's a little bit of a mess here as you can see a bunch
of little totes down there um this is the kind of the podcast studio all of this the studio is back
going to the new location and uh it will be set up there so we're not stopping the podcast i just
don't want to continue to do it here because it's being packed up oh if you want to i'll give you a
better idea of what it looks like in here this is just my basic house basic basement a couple lights
that's it i'll have um i'll have less cords and stands in the new spot where i can actually make
things more permanent but the podcast was coming for a long time i knew i was going to start it
and i thought well wouldn't it be cool if i built a plywood tank right here in the corner
we did a step by step tutorial it's kind of hard to work around here um all these plants
are around it uh the new gallery's gonna have a ton but all these plants are here they're fake
plants to stop my cats from getting up on top of it anyways today i want to talk about oscars so if
you don't remember when we got these guys uh they were considerably smaller they're packing on size
really quickly in today's video i'm going to talk about some things that i really like about oscars
and we'll also feed them let me get the lights so i actually got a large oscar in the past and we
named it hook i basically got him to kind of do an oscar care video because believe it or not oscars
at one point were the only fish that i kept in my hobby a couple of them are a little banged up
they they do fight here and they're not that big of a deal yeah i've i really wanted to get back
into oscars and go through the entire process of raising them up and breeding them etc we started
with seven there's only six right now um i'll admit it i did give one to a friend as well as
one of my 120s that was in storage really wanted an oscar really wanted to 120 so i was like you
know what let me hook you up maybe someday we'll be able to go and check it out and see how his
oscar's doing and how it acts in by himself versus his brothers and sisters so these guys are basic
oscars uh they'll be like uh they're kind of wild type although the one in the back is showing a lot
of red so that would more be considered a tiger oscar but this guy's latin name is astronautus
oscillatus and the oscillatus technically means having oscillate or resembling an ocelus i like
or oscillated spot and what it's referring to is if you look at the base of the tail of an oscar
this is you know what we're getting into with why i really like oscars you'll see it on all of them
at the base of their tails see that little circle there that's their oscillators or their oscillate
i like spot now notice the shape of their dorsal fin the top fin their anal fin and their caudal
fin or tail fin however you want to pronounce all this um we'll call them everything i guess has a
name but you'll notice that the back end of them and the front end of them are incredibly
similar in shape both rounded at each end now this is the fish that got me interested in how
aquarium fish have evolved over time i've talked about it a number of times always being
so fascinated with why they are the way they are why they look why they act why they get to their
size why their mouth is shaped a certain way etc but when it comes to the oscar and of course like
peacock bass and a lot of other um species of fish that have an oscillate on the base of their tail
the reason for it is simple this entire shape of their body is shaped just like their head
and it has a false eye spot that means if a predator were to come and attack this guy odds are
it's going to go for its tail anyways which means even if they rip their tail up they still have an
incredibly high chance at survival so all oscars are technically you know a predator to an extent
because their diet is largely made up of other little fish as well as some insects but they do
have predators themselves and they have evolved over the you know hundreds of thousands of years
to protect themselves which is super super cool but that's not the reason why i love these guys
it's more so their personalities now of course like i mentioned these guys's natural diet
is uh small fish and other insects and larvae in the wild meaning that they would have a large
gaping mouth that kind of shoots out when extended if you've ever seen a cichlid yawn
it's because that's the way they eat they shoot their mouth out and grab prey a lot of the times
and able to almost like it's almost like a snake like disconnecting their jaw type
of deal they don't just open it opens and shoots forward type of situation um that's why it's all
like kind of crinkly behind their lips because all of that can kind of shoot out a little bit
not by a lot but by a general amount anyways what that means is these guys are an aggressive feeder
they are incredibly fun to feed here i'll show you so just some pellets that are insect based
i'm not sure if they're going to be hungry i just found them earlier but they're oscars so who knows
yeah so that's it's so fun to feed an aggressive feeding fish like this it's like having a massive
predator in your home aquarium yet they're easily manageable i mean we've done the oscar care video
so we're not going to get into step by step how to take care of oscars but i mean these one of
these guys is good for life in a 75 gallon for example a 120 being absolutely perfect they just
don't do well with anything else that can kind of fit in their mouths but they are just like
puppies when they're by themselves and that's why i've been really interested to keep like a little
shoal of oscars like this i love how they can swim off into the distance and almost disappear
that's why i painted this tank black on the inside when by themselves you'll get that puppy dog-like
activity where they beg for food maybe they sulk on the ground you know uh they get excited when
you enter a room and when it's a shoal like this is largely dependent on how they all feel
as a collective it's incredibly different and much different than i've ever experienced before and
like i've said in the past and maybe even already said it this video i used to keep oscar fish
exclusively for a short time in my hobby like uh for like two years i had nothing but oscar
aquariums but never did anything more than like two in a tank so it's getting to experience this
and bringing you guys along has meant a lot to me and getting to see fish in different environments
in different numbers and there's so many different ways to keep fish but again that's not necessarily
the number one reason why i love oscars yeah they're like puppy dogs but it's also abundantly
clear when you have an oscar how they are feeling this is a fish that you can truly connect to
for example if these guys are sad or moody they'll lay on the ground sometimes and i'm telling you
they will lay on the ground sometimes it's just their belly sometimes they'll lay angled sometimes
they'll lay on their complete side and it will scare you because like your fish aren't supposed
to lay down all the time not many fish do that but oscars are incredibly famous for it look at
the mess they make i also should probably mention they are incredibly messy feeders so not only do
they lay on the ground but what they'll also do and i've shown you guys in the past they'll
change color at the drop of a dime now unlike fish like discus for example discus will try
to blend into their surroundings so you got to be conscientious of their backgrounds and the colors
and too dark depending on the strain of discus can make the discus look stressed out or washed
out too light exact you know you get the idea we've kind of went over that in the past as well
but with oscars they'll change color because of their mood and environment nothing else they
don't try to blend in to a background like for example these guys are relatively light
compared to what they would typically look like um when they're really really happy
they're completely dark when they get a little stressed out or hungry or that or they just ate
they get like green and blotchy like that so it's really interesting fish to kind of from a distance
i can look at these guys and know what mood they're in that's just yet like i said another
reason why i love oscar but not the only reason i also like the idea of i can get an oscar and it
doesn't matter if it's a male or female they tend to look the same and act the same now there's um
some things that people will say like if it's a male you look at the bottom of its dorsal fin
and you can see in this guy it's he's got a few dark patches where this one doesn't
uh and if it has those patches it's male i don't find that that's incredibly accurate that changes
all the time but man these guys are so cool looking even though the tank's kind of dirty and
you know um i haven't been making it look pristine doesn't matter the fish are incredibly healthy and
and doing really well i love their it's almost like they're like an army tank camouflaged built
powerfully just awesome awesome fish to look at but on the topic of not being able to kind
of sex them that easily we should also probably mention the other morphs and different types of
oscar now technically my favorite type of oscar if i were to keep just one is going to be a red oscar
which has a lot of that red uh coloration that you can see along the sides of this one it's just
their entire body looks like that but uh i gotta admit that i also have a strong preference for
like the tigers and these guys are these guys are wild caught looking more so than um anything with
too much red isn't really wild caught looking but uh something like this guy the more plain an oscar
is see now you can see the black along his dorsal that's what i was talking about so if i were to
believe in that and uh knew about it for sure i would say this is a male then we can go look at
another one and you don't really have it so female like i don't know if that's accurate anyways the
problem with getting a red oscar or even a tiger is i find that they don't do the color changing
nearly as much they can do it but it's not nearly as much and look at these guys they ate so now
they're just gonna you know group up near the bottom and go lay down and be grumps look at
their faces they truly look like a bunch of grumpy old men don't they all bickering and playing uh
i don't know checkers or chess or something and just talking about the good old times
i don't know what old people do i should i'm kind of one of them the one thing that i don't
like look at the coloration on this guy right now and then bam this guy's much lighter color it's
so cool to just look at them just watch them and see their moods and their color changing
and whatnot such a fascinating fish but what i don't like about the oscar in fact i kind of
i accept it and i'm okay with it but i don't i'm not in love with it is the um the morphs and what
i mean by that is the ones that no not the the ones that were selectively bred for long fins
the longfin oscar in my opinion is an absolute abomination i understand that people like them
i understand that they can be attractive to some and it gives them a little flair or whatever that
case might be that you might like them but i'm fascinated with the reason the oscar looks the
way it does and how it's evolved over hundreds of thousands of years and how we can monitor
that in captivity and look at its tail it's so powerful and it's so interesting and it's meant
to look like that so it doesn't nothing attacks its actual face and then a lot of people like the
long fin and it just completely takes away from it in my opinion it's not even really an oscar
anymore and i guess on the topic of things i don't like about oscars is check out the tank
no substrate no real decoration i did have to they they do still have a massive piece of wood
in the back there it's hard to see it's in like the dark but um they'll rip up the everything in
the tank and it will be their tank they'll design it and shape it to be exactly what they want it
does not matter what you want they are going to do whatever they want so yeah these guys have been an
absolute blast to have down here i mean ultimately i just do my water changes and that's it look at
the they're displaying he's displaying or she's just playing maybe that could be a young juvenile
male that's kind of like oh no you're just eating i thought you were showing off through the side
of your body i forgot that you guys are also dumpsters you'll eat anything just because these
guys will eat anything doesn't mean you should feed them anything i see people feeding hot
dogs and bread and all that stuff ah you don't want to do that guys you want to stick to what
their natural diet is more related to or what they actually require um and we've done videos on that
before and talked about the the negative impacts of and and what happens when you don't give a fish
what they need in their diet and that is of course shortening their lifespan eventually killing them
look they're all fading off into the dark isn't that cool
isn't that cool they move as a unit i love it the oscar is technically a shoaling fish but you yeah
man i'm on the borderline of saying maybe they do a lot of schooling at smaller sizes when they
become adults they certainly don't stick around uh as an adult as competition for other adults but
at this size it seems as though they move directionally with each other
at times so and that's kind of what makes a schooling fish a schooling fish
a shoaling fish is just like they find protection with each other but they don't move as a unit
for for example they just stay kind of close to each other that's why i call it a shoal
but isn't that cool look at all the different uh different shades and colors they are right now
not to the to the average person these guys all look the same
they all look the same but to me they all look different they all have different personalities
and they're all uh their own individual like almost personality i guess or person
okay he's just sitting there chilling he's like joe when are you going to fix the silicone man
what a crappy job yeah yeah i know i was trying to rush this tank to get it done so
we can start the podcast that's it yet another update before we move to the new location i
actually have an appointment there a couple of hours with a structural engineer make sure the
floors and everything are okay um so wish me luck there guys i hope you enjoyed this video
we're gonna keep doing these updates every day or every other day as much as i can get them out
um as i work on everything else behind the scenes so i hope you enjoy them
uh if you're not subscribed to this channel yet make sure you do or you're literally going to
miss one of the biggest things that i've ever done in my hobby ever and it's happening in like a week