when we got our oscar he has the nicest colour and now hes black with almost no orange on him. hes been mostly eatting blood worms as that was all he would eat but we just got him on hikari gold this morning. any advice?
They will get darker depending on envrinoment and how stressed out they are. Two things might help:
1. It might just take some time for him to get used to other fish. What else do you have with him? If its your "108 gallon", he should be good maybe check your water parameters.
2. Lighter substrate. You could try pool filter sand.
He's in a 60g with a jack Dempsey, 3 synos, a pleco and a Raphael catfish. One synonym is bigger than him and the dempsey is bigger, everyone else is smaller but everyone gets along perfectly. I'll try a different substrate because he was with the same fish when he was orange and once we put them in the bigger tank with red gravel he changed. Thanks
yeah i seriously wouldnt bother with changing the substrate, oscars go through MANY color changes as they age, i have heard (though not confirmed, it is just a general belief) that young Os are given food with hormones in it before before being shipped to stores so that they show more adult coloration as to be more appealing to customers. but yeah so young Os will revert back to their more juvenile coloration after these hormones wear off and then will go through their regular maturing color changes, he should get more orange again once he gets bigger
Ya I was pissed when we went out of our way to get him and the Dempsey the good food and they ignored it. One day of not feeding and they managed to muscle it down. I'm also found a guy who lives like 10 minutes from me who makes Beefheart recipes. Some with veggies in it, some with flakes food mixed. So I'm buying 4 zip lock bags of pre-cut frozen Beefheart cubes from him for 10 bucks. Seems cheaper than buying a little thing of bloodworms that only lasts a couple weeks
