The Texas and gold saum come from high ph hard water, the oscar, severums and most geos come from low to neutral ph soft water.
NEED STOCKING ADVICE!!
- Thread starter LycheeScape
- Start date
My bad, I scanned over that kinda fast, and thought you wanted the severums. Here’s my actual stocking list.
Oscar
3 delhezis or 2 sun catfish or 1 tire track eel or other bottom feeders
Oscar
3 delhezis or 2 sun catfish or 1 tire track eel or other bottom feeders
Step One: Remove the Texas, the Saum and all of the Severums.
Step Two: There is no Step Two.
Easy peasy.
With your current stocking there is no such thing as "overkill" filtration, and your water change routine is woefully lacking.
Step Two: There is no Step Two.
Easy peasy.
With your current stocking there is no such thing as "overkill" filtration, and your water change routine is woefully lacking.
You’re telling me a a 135 gallon tank can only support one Oscar, and that’s it? what in your opinion is a water change routine that’s not “woefully lacking” as you put it.Step One: Remove the Texas, the Saum and all of the Severums.
Step Two: There is no Step Two.
Easy peasy.
With your current stocking there is no such thing as "overkill" filtration, and your water change routine is woefully lacking.
If you want more fish in your tank, you can try Texas, Gold Saum, and some smaller/mid sized Central American cichlids like convicts/firemouths/HRPs. You can also try something unorthodox and try jewel cichlids as well though they can be hit or miss (mine was a hit luckily). Oscars get to the size of a football so they take up a lot of space, even in a 135.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I mean. I don't know how large your fish are now, but an Oscar can easily hit 12-14" within a year or so, and will get considerably larger than that. A foot-long Oscar represents a much bigger bioload than a foot-long Arowana or Poly or almost anything else...there's a lot of meat on it and it's an active fish that is always swimming around, so a 6-foot tank just doesn't seem big anymore when an Oscar grows up in it. Even alone, the fish will still likely require more than a single 50% water change per week.
I can't suggest an adequate water change schedule for your current stocking in your current tank, simply because I don't think that tank will adequately house that combination of fish at adult size regardless of how much water you change. There's just not enough space for that many big cichlids to stay out of each other's way, particularly because it sounds like the Severums might already be pairing up. None of them are going to get any smaller, and aggression isn't going to lessen.
A single healthy, well-maintained Oscar in that tank could make a spectacular and interesting display. If you insist on trying to keep a bunch of fish with it...bear in mind that the people who do this are very experienced and know that they are doing, and likely are careful to keep only one of each cichlid species, or only females, to minimize aggresssion. They almost certainly have extra tanks set up to receive casualties if something goes sideways. That pretty much flies in the face of your set-and-forget thinking.
Can it be done? Sure...but if you need to ask exactly how to do it, the odds are that you won't like the results if you try it at this point.
If you have to ask the price of the yacht...
L LycheeScape Here's what you could be looking at. This is a recent shot of my red oscar, Brick. He just turned 4 in December and is a hair under 15" now. He's in a 6ft 225 tank. Still appears to be growing though its a tiny creep at this point. I clean the filters twice a week. Tank size, genetics and water quality are the big three factors. Then good food, lol. Oscars usually bulk up noticeably once they pass 11-12 inches. Water change schedule is 90% once a week.
Like I said earlier...spectacular and interesting. Brick looks impressive in a picture; in person he must be amazing.
OP, look at that Oscar in that tank...much larger than your tank, but that fish fills it, no question. Don't stretch everything to the max and end up walking a tightrope. Consider
FINWIN
doing a 90% water change weekly on a 225 with that one fish, and then compare it to your 50% change on a 135 full of fish. Does my use of the description "woefully inadequate" start to come into perspective?Keep your stocking reasonable and enjoy your aquarium and your Oscar. It may not be "set and forget"...no tank with large cichlids ever is...but it can be fun and easy and sustainable, or it can be stressful and labour-intensive and always on the verge of disaster. Choose wisely, and good luck.
