My Sister was over at my Dad’s place the other day and she snapped up some pictures of his fish.

Since I haven’t had time to update this Blog for a while now I figured I’d at least post some pictures of his fish.

I really need to get some updated pictures of my Oscars up as well.

Here’s some pics of my Dad’s fish:

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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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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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I’ve added more fish to both of my Aquariums in the last week.  I bought 3 Cardinal Tetra’s, 3 Bala Sharks, 3 Otto Catfish, and one really cool looking Adonis Pleco.  For some reason I lost 2 Tetras and 1 Bala Shark the very first night, but the rest of the fish have had no problems and it’s been almost a week now.

I ended up putting one of the Otto’s in my 20 Gallon as I’m starting to grow some algae in there so I hope he starts to clean that up a bit.  Also, my younger brother Bart gave me 3 fairly sized Pictus Catfish and a Pleco the other day.  I put the 3 Pictus Catfish in my 55 Gallon tank and the Pleco in the 20 Gallon.  He can have a feast with all the algae in there.

Here are some pics:

One of My Pictus Catfish

Another Angle of My Pictus Catfish

My Lonely Survivor Cardinal Tetra. He Needs Some Buddies.

I’ve been keeping an eye on my Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate Levels and finally in the last couple of days the Ammonia levels in my 20 Gallon have started to go down rather quickly, so it looks like my cycle in that tank is coming along nicely.  As for the 55 Gallon, the Ammonia has just started going up in the last few days and today I noticed my Nitrites have gone up so the Cycle is just beginning in that tank.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the Ammonia levels to make sure they don’t go up too high.  Also, I picked up this Filstar Zeolite Ammonia Remover Cartridge for my Rena Filstar xP3 Filter.  It’s supposed to help keep your Ammonia levels from getting too high in new Aquarium setups and from hitting sudden spikes later on.

I’ll measure my Ammonia levels over the next few days and report back how effective it is.

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