oscars in a 250g

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I have found that all Os in the pet stores fully grown are usually the most ugly. I also find tigers much better looking than red.

Plus, they recommend getting 6 while baby's to get a pair.

I love my O wish I could have more and who could hate this mug?
 
I had two in a 180, raised from babies. Doesnt mean it will work out. The male chased the female till one day she commited suicide and jumped out of the tank in the middle of the night. It all depends on the fish, every one can be different.
 
I have 4 oscars in a 200 gal tank and they do great together. I'm building a big tank for them to go to later this spring. They have a pecking order, but there's never any nasty fights. In there is a tiger and a lutiano red that have spawned twice. The eggs were eaten though. The worst that happens before spawning happens is some shallenging, and that's it.
I haven't fed live foods either.
I also know someone who has had 11 oscars together in his 800 gallon tank and he said they had their own pecking order, and the dominant one was a female.
It all depends on the personality of your fish I guess.
 
My experience has been you can mix n match oscars with no problem. Different varieties will interbreed as well (I had a tiger breed with a red, for example).
 
I only had 2 then Charlie decided to get Johnnie out of the tank. I had to get rid of him he was almost killed by Charlie. You can never tell with oscars from what I have learned.
 
Oh and I thought you could not sex oscars how would you get all males?
 
IKeepPacu;1706455; said:
thinking of changing over my 250g to an oscar tank to pick my interest back up after losing my rays, as some of you have read from my post in the general forum.

i wanted to do atleast one of each of the different colors of oscar. couple questions however.....will they all get along being different colors, since there all oscars in the end?? or do they need to be the same to not beat on each other too badly. this is assuming ofcourse that the old "you have to keep 1 or 6+ oscars in a tank" is true. the single oscars ive kept have always seemed rather calm with other fish their size, but never kept a shoal of oscars before.

and in an 86"x26"x26" tank, how many oscars everyone think i could house? i was thinking maybe 6-8 safely, 10 pushing it. does this sound ok, or no?? ill be keeping my one 18" pacu, who i doubt will grow much more since he's already 5+ years old, and was kept horrible the first 3 1/2 yrs with his 1st owner.
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Oscars are extremely messy fish. The general recommendation (for optimum health and well-being) is 55 gallons for one oscar. Oscars do the best with nitrates kept < 20ppm. The more fish you have in your tank, the harder it will be to maintain excellent water parameters. Water quality is important for pacu also. Pacu don't seem to live very long in small tanks. I think it's because it is very hard to maintain good water quality in a small tank without doing massive daily water changes.

Our 300 gallon tank is overstocked with two pacu and two oscars. Even with extreme mechanical filtration and a large capacity wet/dry filter, we do a minimum of two 60% water changes a week and sometimes do three 60% WCs a week to keep the nitrates below 20 ppm.

If you want your fish to be healthy, for your tank, 4 oscars with a pacu would be pushing it. Two oscars and the pacu would be better. An even number of oscars is better than an odd number. When we had 4 oscars, they all got along. After we lost one to HITH, two of the oscars ganged up on the third oscar. There's no guarantee that oscars will get along with each other, but an odd number of oscars is asking for trouble.
 
thanks for all the great responses everyone. i think the final decision will either be 4 oscars, my pacu, and maybe a small school of danios or rainbow fish to either break up aggression, or give them an expensive treat eventually.

or thinking of ordering a pair or two of wild O's. getting to have and part with a few F1 babies would be quite interesting if you ask me:drool:
 
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