Family: Cichlidae
Size: 8 to 14 inches
Temperature: 72 to 84 degrees Fahrenheit
Alkalinity: acid to neutral, moderate hardness
pH: 6.6 to 7.0
Origin: Amazon River basin drainage
Oscar Species Profile
The oscar has become one of the most popular “pet” fish because it will learn to recognize its owner/feeder and will become extremely tame. Interestingly enough, it has also become a major game fish in Florida, where escapees from fish farms or aquariums have become well established as part of the local fauna.
Unfortunately, when the oscar is about 1 to 2 inches long and wiggling its little nose in the tank at the local fish store, it is so cute and appealing that lots of folks buy it. If they have been told what the oscar turns into as it grows up, this has conveniently been forgotten, and they feign surprise when they wake up one morning and find they have a large oscar swimming around the entire tank and some armored catfish left cowering in the corners of the tank. If you are going to keep an oscar, please realize that it will become a big, mean cichlid. Long time ago i was having 2 oscar. it was amazing to watch them swimming. this is a carnivor fish, it will eat every smaller fishes than him in your aquarium if you want to buy an oscar.
Given that you understand its nature, the oscar makes a great fish. It now comes in many different varieties of red (on its sides), as well as in albino coloration, and even in a long-finned variation. These variations are all the same in terms of the fact that they prefer meaty foods, either frozen or pellets. The oscar does not in any way shape or form require live fish. In fact, feeding it with guppies or goldfish is a very bad idea, as you take a real chance of introducing diseases. The oscar makes a real mess in a tank, and therefore requires a very good canister filter or two. The oscar can be bred fairly easily as long as you have a pair and the male does not kill the female in typical cichlid fashion. Beware –- oscars have thousands of babies and you will never be able to get rid of them all. And, finally, forget about keeping any kind of live plants with the oscar. while growing, the oscar will turn completly orange. it depend on which species you got. red head with orange body or black head with orange body. try to have one oscar for your aquarium and you will really like this fish.
TIPS FOR A HEALTHY AQUARIUM:
Step one: quarantine
Most
aquarists treat quarantine like flossing - it's something that you know
you should really do, but it just seems like too much trouble.
However, it's the essential first step to maintaining a healthy tank
ecosystem.
Many of the pathogens that affect fish are
opportunistic - they are always present in a tank, but healthy fish are
able to fight them off. Only when they fish is already stressed by
something else (like poor water quality) do they become susceptible to
these pathogens. But some of the most serious pathogens are not present
in all tanks, and can be avoided with proper quarantine. Most of these
are external or internal parasites. If you quarantine new fish before
introducing them to your tank, you can avoid many of these problems.
Quarantine is not foolproof - Camallanus worms can take over 100 days to
show up. But it's a useful first step in maintaining a healthy aquatic
ecosystem.
If you have the space and finances to do so, putting new fish in a
quarantine tank is a good idea. This will allow you to observe and treat
any fish that do not look well before adding them to your existing
aquarium.
Ecosystem concepts
If
you understand your aquarium as an ecosystem, then the challenges of
keeping it healthy are easier to understand. In an ecosystem, some
things come from outside, while others cycle within the system.
Energy always comes from outside - live of earth depends entirely on energy that comes from outside the system in the form of energy from the sun. Matter, on the other hand, tends to cycle. There will be inputs and losses of matter, but there will also be cycling. Depending on how "open" or "closed" a system is, the cycling of material may be dominated by external inputs and losses, or it may be dominated by processes that go on locally. In an aquarium, external inputs and losses tend to dominate the cycling of matter. In practical terms, this means that you need to ensure that the elements that you add to the system when you feed your fish are balanced by the elements that you remove when you do water changes.
While it's important to understand these things in terms of inputs and losses, it's even more important to understand the transformations that go on in your aquarium. If you read the label on your container of fish food, you know what you're adding to the tank. But things don't stay in the form you add them - proteins in the fish food become ammonium compounds after passing through the fish. These then undergo further transformations in the system as they are used by one bacterial species after another. Different forms of the same compound are going to affect your fish in different ways. Understanding this is an important step in keeping your aquarium healthy, and keeping your fish alive.
Energy always comes from outside - live of earth depends entirely on energy that comes from outside the system in the form of energy from the sun. Matter, on the other hand, tends to cycle. There will be inputs and losses of matter, but there will also be cycling. Depending on how "open" or "closed" a system is, the cycling of material may be dominated by external inputs and losses, or it may be dominated by processes that go on locally. In an aquarium, external inputs and losses tend to dominate the cycling of matter. In practical terms, this means that you need to ensure that the elements that you add to the system when you feed your fish are balanced by the elements that you remove when you do water changes.
While it's important to understand these things in terms of inputs and losses, it's even more important to understand the transformations that go on in your aquarium. If you read the label on your container of fish food, you know what you're adding to the tank. But things don't stay in the form you add them - proteins in the fish food become ammonium compounds after passing through the fish. These then undergo further transformations in the system as they are used by one bacterial species after another. Different forms of the same compound are going to affect your fish in different ways. Understanding this is an important step in keeping your aquarium healthy, and keeping your fish alive.
Energy
In your aquarium, some energy is captured locally through
photosynthesis. Your plants will photosynthesise. The energy the
capture from sunlight (or more commonly, the fluorescent bulbs in the
hood of your tank) will be used to combine carbon dioxide and water to
make sugars. Oxygen, which is a waste product of photosynthesis, is
released into the waters of your aquarium. Plants use the sugars they
make as the building blocks for everything else - they can make
cellulose, proteins, DNA - all biological molecules are made from the
basic building blocks of sugars. Even if you don't have plants in your
tank, once you have light getting into the tank, you will still have
algae or cyanobacteria photosynthesising.
In nature, there may be enough photosynthesis going on in a body of water to provide enough energy to keep everything else alive, but very often there's input from external sources. In a forest stream, this might be dead leaves falling off trees. In an aquarium, it tends to be "fish food". The energy present in your tank determines everything else that goes on. Your fish depend on the food you feed them for their energy supply. Plants and algae in your tank can contribute some more energy.
The total energy input sets one limit on the amount of life you can support in your tank, but its unlikely to be the limiting factor. You can't add fish indefinitely and expect them to survive simply by giving them more food. At some point there won't be enough oxygen in your tank. Waste products will build up. Crowded fish will be aggressive to one-another. While essential, it's unlikely to be limiting (unless you don't feed your fish at all...)
In nature, there may be enough photosynthesis going on in a body of water to provide enough energy to keep everything else alive, but very often there's input from external sources. In a forest stream, this might be dead leaves falling off trees. In an aquarium, it tends to be "fish food". The energy present in your tank determines everything else that goes on. Your fish depend on the food you feed them for their energy supply. Plants and algae in your tank can contribute some more energy.
The total energy input sets one limit on the amount of life you can support in your tank, but its unlikely to be the limiting factor. You can't add fish indefinitely and expect them to survive simply by giving them more food. At some point there won't be enough oxygen in your tank. Waste products will build up. Crowded fish will be aggressive to one-another. While essential, it's unlikely to be limiting (unless you don't feed your fish at all...)
Nitrogen cycling
Almost
every aquarist has heard the term "cycling" in relation to the setup of
a new aquarium. When you first set up a new tank, levels of ammonia
increase, and then fall off. As ammonia levels fall off, the levels of
nitrites rise. Finally, nitrite levels rise, and nitrate levels climb.
These changes are very significant for the survival of fish in your
tank - while ammonia and nitrites are toxic to fish, nitrates are only
harmful at high concentrations. All of these reflect the same element -
nitrogen - which you add to your tank when you feed your fish.
Fish food contains nitrogen, primarily in the form of proteins. Fish consume this food and excrete out the excess nitrogen as ammonia. Certain species of bacteria use the ammonia as a food source and convert it to nitrites. Other bacteria oxidise these nitrites to nitrates. While there are bacteria that can convert nitrates back to nitrogen gas, and while plants and bacteria will take up nitrogen compounds and use them to make proteins, none of these processes occur quickly enough to balance out all the nitrogen that gets added when you feed your fish. Thus, to manage nitrate levels, you need to perform water changes.
In a new tank, bacterial populations are low. The bacteria that oxidise ammonia are going to be food limited - if there isn't any food for them, them won't grow. Over the first few weeks of the life of an aquarium, ammonia levels tend to spike because more ammonia is being released than can be consumed by the bacteria. As the bacterial populations grow, they are able to consume all the available ammonia. In a mature tank, the level of ammonia should be undetectable. A spike in ammonia in a mature tank means that either the input of nitrogen has increased sharply, or the bacterial population has crashed. The latter can likely to occur with certain medications. The former can occur if you add a large number of fish to an established aquarium, or if there's a large dead fish somewhere that you haven't noticed. Spikes in ammonia can lead to further fish deaths, or to general unhealthiness in your tank.
Old Tank Syndrome
Fish food contains nitrogen, primarily in the form of proteins. Fish consume this food and excrete out the excess nitrogen as ammonia. Certain species of bacteria use the ammonia as a food source and convert it to nitrites. Other bacteria oxidise these nitrites to nitrates. While there are bacteria that can convert nitrates back to nitrogen gas, and while plants and bacteria will take up nitrogen compounds and use them to make proteins, none of these processes occur quickly enough to balance out all the nitrogen that gets added when you feed your fish. Thus, to manage nitrate levels, you need to perform water changes.
In a new tank, bacterial populations are low. The bacteria that oxidise ammonia are going to be food limited - if there isn't any food for them, them won't grow. Over the first few weeks of the life of an aquarium, ammonia levels tend to spike because more ammonia is being released than can be consumed by the bacteria. As the bacterial populations grow, they are able to consume all the available ammonia. In a mature tank, the level of ammonia should be undetectable. A spike in ammonia in a mature tank means that either the input of nitrogen has increased sharply, or the bacterial population has crashed. The latter can likely to occur with certain medications. The former can occur if you add a large number of fish to an established aquarium, or if there's a large dead fish somewhere that you haven't noticed. Spikes in ammonia can lead to further fish deaths, or to general unhealthiness in your tank.
Old Tank Syndrome
Most
aquarists are familiar with what is called "new tank syndrome", the
problem of fish dying when added to a new aquarium that hasn't gone
through the cycling process. Less well known is what is called "old
tank syndrome". Sometimes aquarists will have an older tank full of
healthy fish in which newly added fish always die. This seems puzzling -
if the older fish are healthy, why do the new fish die?
Over time, most people relax their maintenance schedules over time. The fish can adapt to the changing water chemistry as long as it is gradual, but the shock is too much for newly added fish. The best solution to this is to check your water chemistry and gradually increase your maintenance routine.
Over time, most people relax their maintenance schedules over time. The fish can adapt to the changing water chemistry as long as it is gradual, but the shock is too much for newly added fish. The best solution to this is to check your water chemistry and gradually increase your maintenance routine.
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