Oscars
By Clifford J. Aliperti
This time I’m going to take a look at the very popular and very available Oscar. Okay, you’ve got a twenty-gallon tank at home, a pretty mish-mash of colorful fish swimming about, and you are absolutely in love with the baby inch-long Oscars at the pet shop.
For four or five bucks, you’ve got to have one—don’t do it! These fish grow up to twelve to fourteen inches long and they do it fast! My latest pet Oscar, I bought at just over an inch and deposited him into my 35-gallon hexagon tank. He stayed for three months before outgrowing it and is now creeping up on seven inches inside my 65-gallon tank. I’ve had him for about five months. Don’t get me wrong, if you have the proper tank (125-gallon is great for a pair, 50-75 will do for a single specimen) these are beautiful and rewarding fish.
There are many varieties now available, such as long-finned Oscars and Blueberry Oscars, but I’m a bit of a purist and prefer to stick with the Tiger Oscar as it is most similarly found in the wilds of the Amazon. These fish show gorgeous bright orange colors with freckles of black over their bodies as well. The one that I am currently keeping has an awesome black outline running along the edge of his tail and dorsal fin. Oscars aren’t generally mean, but as with all fish they adhere to the rule of eating anything that fits into their mouth—this includes other fish. It also includes numerous pellets, flakes, frozen krill and beef heart, and about any other kind of food you’re willing to toss into them. They’re not picky. When I say that they’re not mean, I also want to point out that this usually refers to their attitude towards other fish as well. If you have a big tank filled with Green Terrors and Red Devils, please don’t pick up an Oscar to put in with them solely because their sheer size makes it seem like a good match. It would be very ugly for the personable Oscar, I can guarantee that. In fact, about two and half years ago I picked up a two-inch Oscar to share space with a two and half inch Red-hump Geophagus. I had done my reading, and the red-humps were supposed to be a peace loving cichlid species that dwelled mainly at the bottom of the tank sifting through the substratum for food. Mine followed those rules and only came to mid and upper water level when the lid was raised for feeding time. Once Oscar showed up though, the red-hump felt that it was his duty to drive him out of his space. He took to tailing the Oscar and attacking him at any opportunity. What did the Oscar do? Nothing. He took it until he was killed within three days. I didn’t have another tank to shift him to at the time, and tried lots of the stock tricks (moving caves around, moving plants, trying to establish territories) but nothing worked.
Water chemistry is not too big a deal with the Oscar. However, like many large cichlids, they are susceptible to Hole-In-Head disease, so if you’re going to slip with your tank maintenance, don’t slip too badly! When I was a teen-ager, I made the mistake that I opened this article with and picked up a cute juvenile Oscar for my twenty-gallon tall tank. This was around the time that I was losing interest in my fishkeeping hobby. As the weeks passed, so too did former residents on my tank, where they went, I did not know. Oscar grew to about two-and-a-half inches and then stopped when my water changes stopped. I changed the water maybe once every month and a half. I probably didn’t feed the fellow as often as he would have liked either, because whenever I opened the lid he jumped about four inches over the surface of the water looking to nip my fingers. I was not the model fishkeeper. Anyway, the moral of this cruel story is, an Oscar can take quite a bit insofar as poor fishkeeping goes, but then why torture the poor fish?
My current Oscar has come to somewhat of an understanding with the large Green Severum with whom he shares quarters. The Severum will put the charge on him sometimes, but now more often then not the Oscar will open his mouth wide and spar in return. The minor bumps and fin tears that he was suffering when I first moved him in to the 65, have stopped and there is more often than not peace in that tank. So give your Oscar enough room and he should be all right.
The Oscar is one of a handful of fish that people will actually even keep single specimens of and think of them as pets on par with a dog or a cat. This is because of their wonderful personality, the way that they’ll recognize your presence by getting excited and swimming back and forth at the top of their tank. Some will even let you pet them. The Oscar truly is an amazing fish, deserving of all of the press that it gets, but not deserving of all of the mishandling that inevitably is bestowed upon a tank packed to the gills with one-inch youngsters. I know it’s tempting to pick up a googly-eyed young Oscar, or even four or five, but unless you’re properly prepared, just say no!