The month of January has been so busy for me, I haven’t had any time to update this Blog.  In the month of January, we’ve had some massive snow falls here in the Greater Vancouver area and a few trees fell in the area I live causing numerous power outages for us.

We had two power outages which lasted over 24hours, and I was getting really worried becuse my fish tank temperatures dropped down to like 16 degrees Celsius when the power went out since the heater wasn’t working anymore.  Luckily, during both outages I didn’t lose any fish even thought the temperature dropped so much.

My Oscars looked really cold, and they huddled together at the bottom of the tank to conserve heat I think, but once the power came back on and the temperature slowly started to rise they were back to normal as usual.  In my other tank, all my fish survived both power outages with no ill effects due to the temperature drop, so that was good.

The Oscars are growing rather quickly and they are always hungry.  I call them my little “Piggy’s” because all they ever want is food.  In fact, right now as I’m writing this they are staring at me through the glass waiting for their food.  If I don’t give it to them, they’ll start splashing soon and making noise to tell me it’s time for food again, hehehe.  They are very cheeky, but I totally enjoy them.

I’ll try to get some newer pics up soon.

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I’m starting to learn that one of the most important factors in enjoying the Aquarium Fish hobby is to be able to find the types of fish that you enjoy keeping.  Aquarium fish are not all the same.  In fact, that’s very far from the truth.

Just in the freshwater fish category alone, there are so many different species of fish and they each have their own little unique set of behaviors and personalities.  I think it is very important to learn as much as you can about all the different types of fish out there, and to try keeping a variety of them to see which ones you really like.

Every person will like different things so I think there is a lot of personal preference involved.  For example, the Oscars that I picked up a few weeks ago are really keeping me entertained.  There is just two of them in my tank, along with the Pleco I’ve got in there, and the two of them can be more entertaining to watch than my other tank which has over a dozen fish in it.

Today when I went to feed my Oscars, instead of eating the pellets I fed them they decided to hoard them and play with them.  Here’s a picture of one of my Oscars after it shoved like SIX pellets in it’s mouth and swam around with it’s mouth open.  It reminds me of when kids put a whole bunch of mashed potatoes in their mouth and then show you their food with their mouth open, hehe.

The other thing I noticed about the Oscars is that if I’m sitting here on my computer and I haven’t fed them yet, they eventually get tired of waiting for me and start making noises.  Sometimes they’ll just splash the water a bit to try to get my attention.  If I don’t pay attention, they’ll start to smack things in the tank.  I’m not really sure what they’re smacking, because every time I look they are off on the other side of the tank pretending like they didn’t do anything, but I know it’s them.  I think they may be hitting my filter intake pipe as it makes a CLANK sound when they hit it. 

I was also over at my brother Bart’s place today and I was checking out some of his fish and I noticed that there is a distinct difference in atmosphere in his 55 Gallon tank compared to mine.  He has a bunch of Tetra’s in there and Cray Fish, but what he doesn’t have is the Giant Danio’s and Pictus Catfish that I have in mine.  The Pictus Catfish and the Giant Danio’s I have really changed the atmosphere of my tank when I put them in.  They are both very fast swimming fish and whenever I go to sit down to watch the tank for a bit, they fly around the tank like crazy and all the other fish just go hide in the corner.  It’s really annoying.

I think I’m going to have to give them away, and I’m probably going to stick with calmer and smaller fish in that tank like the Tetra’s and Guppies I have in there now.  Maybe I’ll get an Angel Fish as well, as they are kind of neat to watch.  I also really did like my Female Betta’s before they were eaten, so maybe I’ll get some of those as well.

It’s almost impossible to figure out what kind of fish you’re going to enjoy keeping just by seeing them at the pet store, so I really think one of the best ways to figure out what you’ll want to keep is to just try picking up a couple of fish of different varieties and see what you end up enjoying.  Everyone is different and the person at the fish store will probably have a totally different preference from yours as will other aquarium hobbyists so I think it’s good to experiment on your own.

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Well, I’ve tested my chemical levels multiple times in the last few days and it looks like both of my tanks are fully cycled now.  The Ammonia levels are now sitting at pretty much 0 ppm and Nitrites are starting to get converted to Nitrates as well.

Since my last post, what I’ve done is I’ve moved my Pleco from my 55 gallon tank and put him into my 46 Gallon tank with my two Oscars.  Eventually I’ll have to make some changes as a 46 Gallon is too small for two Oscars and a Pleco but for now they seem to be getting along quite nicely.

In my other tank, I have not seen any further deaths since the massacre that took the lives of 8 of my fish in one night.  Now that my 55 Gallon is fully cycled, I might think about stocking a few more smaller fish in there but I’m kind of contemplating getting rid of my Pictus Catfish and my Giant Danio’s and just getting some slow fish.  The Danio’s and Pictus are just so skittish that it kind of ruins the mood of the tank when they go flying around at warp speed nine.

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Oscar fish are primarily meat eating (carnivorous) fish in the wild, typically consuming smaller fish, aquatic invertebrates, insects and insect larvae.  As they prefer a high protein diet you will need to feed the a diet that might be slightly different from other aquarium fish.

There are three main types of food I’ve tried feeding my Oscars with varying degrees of success.  Let’s start with the most basic:

Flakes

The first type of food you’ll find readily available on the market are Flake type foods.  One flake type food suitable for Cichlids is called Tetra Cichlid Large Flakes.  These types of foods last a long time, they are easily digested by fish and they promote naturally vibrant color and strong immunity.

I wasn’t sure if my Oscars would like this type of food, but they seemed fairly satisfied with it.  This type of food usually floats on top of the water for a few minutes and then starts to sink down to the bottom so if your Oscars don’t eat it before it drops, they might have a hard time finding it in the gravel or sand below.

If the Oscars don’t finish eating what’s floating on the surface, it’s recommended that you use an aquarium net to remove the excess food before it sinks to the bottom.

Floating Pellets

The second type of food you’ll find out there are floating pellets.  Hikari Cichlid has one that comes in four sizes - baby pellet, mini pellet, medium pellet and large pellet.  Depending on the size of your Oscar you would purchase the pellet size that fits in their mouth.

My Oscars are about 1.5″ right now so they are still pretty small.  I wasn’t sure whether to go with baby pellet or mini pellet so I bought both and tried them both.  It turns out that the mini pellets are still a bit to big for them right now especially since they do get a bit bigger once they absorb some water from the aquarium.  So if you just bought your Oscar and it’s still a small baby around 1-2″ in length you’ll be better off with the baby pellets to start.

There are two different types of floating pellets I have found out there and tried with my Oscars.  One is green and it’s called Cichlid Staple Pellets and the other one is red and it’s called Cichlid Gold Pellets.  Cichlid Staple Pellets are the economical food that has the nutrients that the fish will need at an economical price.  The Cichlid Gold Pellets are usually a little bit more expensive but they have something called Astaxanthin (a natural nutrient) in it which helps to promote rich coloration in Oscars and Cichlids.  My Oscars are dark grey and black with bright red markings and I do want the coloration to stay bright and pronounced so I bought a package of these pellets for my Oscars as well.

So far, the Oscars haven’t really liked this type of food though.  They like playing with it since it floats on top of the water, but they just eat it and spit it back out.  I left a few pellets floating to see what will happen and when I came back a few hours later they were still there uneaten.  I’ll try feeding them these pellets again over the next few weeks, but there is one other type of food that they absolutely love…

Frozen Blood Worms

Frozen Bloodworms (red mosquito larvae) sound really disgusting but the Oscars love them.  This type of food typically comes in small frozen individual cubes.  You keep it in the freezer and when you’re ready to feed your Oscars, you simply pop out one of the frozen cubes and feed it to them.

One thing to keep in mind though is that you don’t want to just dump the frozen cube into the aquarium water.  What I do first is I use a small shot glass which I’ve dedicated to this purpose and I put a frozen cube into the shot glass and fill it half way with hot water swirling it around thawing the cube.  It only takes a few seconds to thaw out the worms and then I pour the water with the worms into the aquarium.

The Oscars I have absolutely love this type of food.  At first I was a bit worried because the worms floated down and settled in the gravel below and I thought I would have a mess on my hands, but the Oscars are very thorough when eating this type of food.  They’ll move gravel around to get at the worms below.

Other Types of Food

From the research I’ve done, I’ve hard of people feeding their Oscars everything from feeder fish to small lizards.  Personally I am going to completely stay away from this type of food.  You never know what kind of diseases feeder fish carry when you bring them from the pet store, and you’re going to be really sad when your Oscar dies because he ate a sick fish.

I’m not even going to touch the topic of feeding lizards to your Oscar as I think that’s just cruel and disgusting, but that’s just my personal opinion.  I read an article about someone who tried to feed their fully grown Oscar a puffer fish to see what happens and they were really surprised when the Oscar spat out the puffer after a few seconds and then croaked.

You can spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars and countless hours taking care of your Oscar, so why chance killing it in a few seconds by trying to feed it something you shouldn’t just to see what happens.

Summary

I’m always on the hunt for new information about Oscars, but from my research and testing I believe the best bet for feeding an Oscar fish is to feed it a variety of foods of different types such as Flake Foods, Floating Pellet Foods and Frozen Bloodworms.

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I’m so excited.  I got two Tiger Oscar Fish today.  I’m going to start them off in my 46 Gallon Tank as they are just babies right now so there’s plenty of room for them at the moment.  These fish grow really fast and really big so eventually I’ll have to either move one to the 55 Gallon I have or upgrade to bigger tanks entirely.

Most people with experience with Oscars recommend a 75 Gallon tank for one Oscar or a 125 Gallon for a pair, and they say that there really isn’t any way to tell the gender of the Oscars until later so I have no idea whether I have two males, two females, or a female and a male.  If I ended up with two males, chances are I will need to separate them into two different tanks (ie. 2 x 75 Gallon for example) but if I have two females or a male and a female, I may be able to keep them together in one larger tank.

Here are some pics I snapped of the two Oscars:

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Two nights ago I had the weirdest thing happen in my 55 Gallon Tank.  Before I describe what happened, first I need to explain what fish were in the tank. Here’s a list of fish that I’ve had in the tank for the last few weeks:

2x Female Betta
1x Cardinal Tetra
2x Bala Shark
3x Pictus Catfish
2x Giant Danio
2x Oto Catfish

Besides the fact that the two Giant Danio’s would swim round super fast and sometimes freak out the other fish and the two Pictus Catfish were skittish when I would turn on/off the lights, all the fish seemed to be getting along quite nicely with no fin nipping or aggression.

Then, a few days ago I got a Free 46 Gallon Tank so I decided to get rid of my 20 Gallon tank and put the 46 Gallon in that spot in my room.  To do this I had to transfer the fish that were in my 20 Gallon into the 55 Gallon.  I didn’t think there would be any problem with this, considering all the fish in the 20 Gallon are peaceful fish.  Here is what I had in the 20 Gallon tank:

8x Cardinal Tetra (Small)
1x Oto Catfish
5x Guppies (Small)
1x Pleco

Ok, so I moved those fish into the 55 Gallon.  My main concern was that the 55 Gallon isn’t completely cycled yet so I knew I would have to really watch my Ammonia levels carefully.  However, I’ve been doing daily partial water changes due to the Ich problem I had and it’s not that bad so I figured even if the extra fish put more strain on the biological filter I could temporarily compensate by doing more frequent water changes.  A small price to pay to get a nice 46 Gallon tank setup in place of my small 20 Gallon.

Anyways, I put the fish in there and I kind of figured a couple of the small Tetras might go missing or die but I never expected what happened next.

The following day I check the tank and I noticed that one of my Bala Sharks had the top part of his tail nipped off.  I thought that was pretty odd since I didn’t add in any aggressive fish and the existing fish that have been in the tank were getting along fine.  Then I started looking around and I noticed that a whole bunch of fish were missing!

When I say a whole bunch, I mean EIGHT FISH!  Here’s the casualty list from one night:

2x Female Bettas… GONE!
1x Bala Shark… GONE!
1x Bala Shark… Missing top part of tail.
5x Cardinal Tetras… GONE!

What the heck happened!?  I am pretty sure my 3 Pictus Catfish may be to blame.  They must have gone into a major hunting expedition that night and ate 8 of my fish!  I was devestated to see my Female Bettas gone especially.  They were so fun to watch.

I checked and no the fish didn’t jump out of the tank.  My lid is pretty tightly placed and I looked around the aquarium to make sure they didn’t all jump out.  And no it wasn’t my cat either.  I’m keeping a close eye on the Pictus Catfish and if I find that they are killing all my fish at night, they might just end up getting relocated to the pond in my back yard!

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Yesterday, my younger brother called me to let me know he had a free aquarium tank at work if I wanted it.  It’s used, but it’s in pretty good shape and came with an aquarium stand and a hood.  I decided to pick it up even though I don’t really have room for it yet.

I filled it up with water today and I’ll leave it outside for a few hours to make sure it doesn’t leak or anything and then I’ll see if I can find a spot for it.  If it doesn’t leak, and I can find a good spot for it, I might have another tank to setup and cycle.

I might get rid of my 20 Gallon tank and replace it with this.

Here’s a picture of it, sitting outside filled with water.

My New 46 Gallon Tank

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A few weeks back I bought a really cool looking black Adonis Pleco with white polka dots.  It’s a really cool looking Pleco and I was really hoping that it would survive and grow in my tank as it’s white dots were really pronounced.

Unfortunately, today I found it dead in the tank.  It hasn’t been behaving the same in the last few days for some reason, perhaps as a result of the water changes and the medication I’ve been putting in to get rid of the Ich I have in the tank?  Normally it would hide inside the large bell decoration I have and I would hardly see it, but in the last few days it was out and about hanging around the top part of the aquarium which I thought was really strange.

I kept an eye on it to see if perhaps it had Ich on it, but it didn’t.  I wasn’t really sure what was stressing it out so much, but it wasn’t behaving right in the last few days and today it died.  I’m very sad to see this little guy go, because he seemed like such a cool fish and I would have loved to see him grow to a full size in the tank.  I’m not sure if the store still had any of these left, but if they do I’ll pick up another one once my Ich is gone and my cycling is complete.

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Yesterday I noticed the Cardinal Tetra in my 55 Gallon Aquarium had these little white spots on his body.  There weren’t many of them, just a few, but I had to take a closer look to see if it could be Ich (White Spot Disease).  Ich (Ichthyophthirius multifiliis), also called White Spot Disease, is a very common parasite amongst aquarium fish and it’s not unusual for you to run into this if you have an aquarium.

Cardinal Tetra With Ich - Not Very Visible in This Picture

Cardinal Tetra With Ich - More Visible on His Fins

The good news is that I caught it really early so I should be able to treat it, hopefully without any fatalities.

Ich goes through three stages in its life cycle.  The white dots you can see on my Cardinal Tetra is Ich in its “trophont” stage of the life cycle.  In this stage it is visible to the naked eye and its actually attached and burrowed under the mucus coating of my fish where it feeds on the body fluid of the poor Cardinal Tetra.

In a few days it will finish feeding and detach itself from the fish, going into the next part of the life cycle called the “tomont” stage.  In this part of it’s life cycle it will swim around the aquarium, looking for a place like my plants or other surfaces to attach itself to so that it can begin to reproduce.  In this stage it basically starts to reproduce like crazy and then within a few days it will turn into hundreds of new little parasites called “thermonts” in the third part of the cycle.

These “thermonts” are then going to swim around my aquarium looking to attach themselves to more of my fish to hide under their mucous coating and start the whole cycle again, each time multiplying and spreading all over my aquarium.

While in the “trophont” stage, the Ich parasite is protected from any type of medication that I can put in the tank, but once it detaches itself from my fish and goes looking for a surface to begin it’s reproductive cycle, it will be succeptible to treatment by medication because it will no longer be hiding in the mucous coating of my fish.

So basically, while its attached to my fish (the trophont stage) it is safe.  As soon as it detaches and tries to reproduce (the tomont and thermont stages) and find other fish to attach to, that’s when this parasite can be treated with medication which is exactly what I’m going to do.

I’ve done a bit of research on the problem and I’m going to treat the Ich (White Spot Disease) problem as follows:

• I’ve done a 20% water change on the tank, because it’s not recommended to do any water changes during the medication process so I figured it would be best to do one right before I start.
• I’m going to increase the water temperature of my tank to about 80-82ºF, which speeds up the life cycle of the parasite, which will get it off my fish faster trying to go into its reproductive cycle.
• I’ve removed the carbon charcoal insert on my canister filter as charcoal will just filter out the meds I’m putting in and we don’t want that.
• I’m adding in a product called Ich X from Aquarium Solutions to kill the parasite. This particular product calls to add about 5ml per 10 gallons of water, so for a 55 Gallon tank I’m supposed to put in about 20-25ml, but I’ve been reading that if you have Tetras in the tank you’re only supposed to use about half the dose, so I only put in about 10ml in.

From what I’ve been reading, you’re supposed to keep treating the tank about every 24hours for a period of at least 3 days after all white spots disappear off the fish.  The product calls for a partial water change with each treatment, so I’m probably going to do a 10-20% water change for the next few days and see how it goes.

This is not bad anyways as I’ve wanted to do some partial water changes to reduce the Ammonia levels in my tank anyways.

Here’s a picture of what Ich-X looks like:

Ich-X from Aquarium Solutions Treats Ich (White Spot Disease)

Actually, while I had my canister filter opened up to remove the carbon charcoal insert, I also took the opportunity to put in some “Ammo Chips” which I’ve been meaning to do for a few days now.  These “Chips” help to reduce the ammonia levels in your aquarium tank.

The biological filter in my aquarium has been taking a while to get established as I go through the initial cycle of my tank and so the Ammonia levels have been sitting at about 1ppm for about a week now and I wanted to help reduce that so I bought these “chips” to add into my filter.  Hopefully it helps to lower the levels a bit.

Here’s that the box looks like:

Ammo-Chips Ammonia Remover

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It’s really interesting to watch the difference in the natural Aquarium Cycle between my 20 Gallon tank and my 55 Gallon tank.  In the 20 Gallon tank the Ammonia levels began climbing starting on the fifth day after setting up my Aquarium and putting in my first set of fish.  The ammonia levels first went to 0.25 ppm for a few days, then climbed to 0.50 ppm for a few days and then went as high as 1.00 ppm for a period of 4 days before going back down to 0.50 ppm and now slowly dropping down to 0.25 ppm and less over the last few days.

Obviously the Cycle in my 20 Gallon Aquarium is well under way.  As for the 55 Gallon, it seems like the same thing is happening except much slower.  It took almost 10 days from setup and putting in fish to get the Ammonia levels to start going up.  They first climbed to 0.25 ppm for a few days, then 0.50 ppm for a few days and now have been at 1.00 ppm for about three or four days.

I’m keeping an eye on the Ammonia levels every day to make sure they don’t end up going any higher than 1.00 ppm.  I’ve also been adding in a few cap fulls (5-15ml) of Cycle into the tank on a daily basis to help establish a healthy population of beneficial bacteria.  My tests also show that my Nitrate levels have started going up as well in the last few days which means that the bacteria that convert Ammonia into Nitrate are starting to form nicely.

I did also do a 20% water change today in hopes that it will help to lower the Ammonia levels a bit.  I’ll test the water again tomorrow to see what’s happening.  So far the fish seem to be doing fine at the 1.00 ppm levels of Ammonia but I don’t want to stress them out too much so if the levels go up any higher than that I’ll do another partial water change while I wait for the biological filter Cycle to establish itself.

I also picked up a school of 8 Baby Cardinal Tetras for my 20 Gallon tank the other day and they seem to be doing very well in that tank so far.  I may end up either putting them in my 55 Gallon once it finishes Cycling, or I may move the one adult Cardinal Tetra I have in the 55 Gallon right now into the 20 Gallon tank.  I don’t like it being there by itself.  Tetras prefer to live in schools so I think the single one I have in the 55 Gallon is lonely right now.

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