Your question is an old one, and a good one. It is quite difficult to sex oscars, externally anyways, and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of it. According to Baench, the only way to sex an adult oscar is to watch them when they are thinking of spawning. When the female is interested, her genital papilla is quite noticable. I have read in other books that it can be done by looking at the underside of the oscar. Family friends who've bred oscars for...probably 20 years or more have said the same thing. With a large one like yours, you could dangle some food above, and look below. Females genital pore looks more open and straight forward, males are slanted back and less obvious (If I have this backwards, it's cause I can't find my oscar book right now, and have just been perscribed 300 dollars in meds for sinus, throat and lung infection, but I'm pretty sure I got it straight. Another oscar keeper out there can probably help me out and confirm this. You could always actually vent the fish, but I would think that it's a rather traumatizing experience, much like visiting the gyno, or the family doctor with the obscenely large index fingers
Some will tell you it is the length of the fins, that's a guess at best. Others refer to the eye spots in the dorsal, that is actually an indicator of a seperate variety of oscar, rather than an indicator of sex. Good luck, and enjoy! Big oscars rock
