Red Tiger Oscar

[The Flizzle]

I want to start with .... I love my Oscar. It has more personality than any other fish I have owned. I compare it to having a dog. It always greets me and is excited to see me. A very interactive fish. I purchased the fish at about an inch or two inches length and is about twelve inches at this point. He has an extremely large appetite. I feed him frozen blood worms every few days and New Life Spectrum Large Fish Formula twice per day. I have tried giving him frozen krill, but he wont touch it.

My concern is his color. He has a small amount of red. I would love him to have more but thats not my concern. The disappointment is in the black. In parts it is dark and in others it is more dark grey. To me, it looks as if the dark grey would be red on most red tigers and the black is black. (not sure if that makes sense) Is this a result of genetics?

I have read a light background may lead to lightening, so I will be painting the background black this week. My water quality is good. I do a 50% water change every week and he gets a fresh ten gallons daily through a drip. The tank is 150 gallons and he shares it with a large pleco and a few small plants.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[TiggertheOscar]

Sounds like you have a pretty healthy fish there.
I'll start off by saying that Oscar's are also my favorite! I own 3.
I also had concern about color with my oscar's, as it turns out, when they are jet black and bright orange they are P.O'd about something (I am referring to my oscar's, not all oscar's). Yet when they are greyish they are calm and content. Seemed like the opposite of what I actually expected but hey, they are awesome fish so I looked past it.
As far as I can tell you, there are foods available for color enhancement, however, IMO, if they did have a noticable affect at all, it would only be to the existing colors of the fish.
I also have a painted black backround, recently i switched my oscars to a larger tank and went from a peal-off design to painted black and I noticed nearly no difference.

What type of lighting are you using for the tank? The color spectrum of your bulbs play a large part in the appearance of your fish too. The best I have found for the orange and black of an oscar is the Aqua-Glo 18000K freshwater light. The orange really pops with the black background, and the black seemes denser and a little less gray.
Hope I didn't ramble, but finally a post I am experienced with enough to give feed-back Whoo-Hoo!

 

[The Flizzle]

Thanks for the advice. Im headed to the fish store soon and will check out those bulbs.

 

[BODYDUB]

He's pretty much reached his mature colors by now at that size. The only thing color enhancing food does is enrich the exsisting color.........

 

[jbarbaresi]

don't sweat it, from your description he sounds like he looks a lot like mine. not all oscars look the same even if they are all "tiger oscars". the amount of orange doesn't necessarily have anything to do with health, assuming he is otherwise healthy and happy. i've noticed that the tiger oscars who are really dark as juveniles with deep colored orange/red patterns don't develop any more orange as they get older, they just keep the orange scales they already had. the ones with less vibrant orange/reds as juveniles are the ones that grow to be mostly orange in those "gray areas" you described on your fish. i also feed NLS as a staple diet for all my fish and as long as he is healthy i am happy with it. you won't have to worry about HITH as long as you keep up with the NLS and make sure you tank is adequate size.

here's how the colors have shifted on mine as he grew, i think he is more of a "common type" oscar than tiger oscar.

about 2"

about 6-7"

11"

most recent pics at 12"+

 

[jbarbaresi]

a couple more recent ones for you. does your guys look similar?

 

[anoop1285]

kewl collection.. i also had the same doubt with the coloration and was gonna post a thread.. noticed this one at the right time...

well i got 2 oscars... one albino red and a black with dark orange shade..