Keeping The Oscar Cichlid - Astronotus Ocellatus
Oscars are large carnivores and they are known to be happy eaters even in captivity. Your Oscar will do best on a varied diet consisting of fish and insects. Feeder fish, crickets, worms, adult brine shrimp and krill are all suitable food types. It is easy to train your Oscar fish into accepting prepared food, such as pellets and flakes. A high quality prepared food suitable for large cichlids is recommended. A prepared food can provide a good base, but you should not keep your Oscar fish on flakes or pellets alone. Supplementing prepared food with some of the food types described above is always advisable. Since small fish will be viewed as food, they are not suitable tank mates for your Oscar. Oscars are not very aggressive towards fish that are too large to be considered food, and you can house your Oscar with other large and non-aggressive fish species that like the same water conditions. Some species that come to mind: Tin Foil Barbs, Red Bellied Pacus, larger varieties of Cat Fish and maybe some similar sized Jack Dempsey's. As with most large fish, and actually all large cichilds, keeping your aquarium well decorated and well planted will be next to impossible. As Oscars grow larger, they will tear things up, so you may find yourself decorating your tank with a lot of rocks and overturned clay flower pots.
Oscar cichlids are relatively hardy fish, and will tolerate most water conditions as long as you avoid the extremes. If you want your Oscars to thrive, and possibly spawn in your aquarium, you should strive to provide them with a pH between 6.5 and 7.0 and water that is soft or just barely hard. A water temperature in the 72-80 degree Fahrenheit range is recommended. The Oscar is a South American cichlid, from the Amazon River and its tributaries in Brazil and Paraguay.
Frequently Asked Questions
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QUESTION:
2 questions about my koi pond and tetra pond 4000 pressurized filter with u.v clarifier?
hello,1- I am currently treating the pond with melafix, so i unplugged the filter which turns off the filter. The pump running the water through the filer media is still cleaning the pond current?
2- when should i turn my filter/ u.v light back on?( it has been medicating for about 3 days.
sorry what the first question is asking is i unplugged the filter which turns off the u.v because the u.v will burn off the meds... does the pump running the water through the filter pads still clear the water up even though the filter is off?
pond is 3500 gallons( three thousand five hundred)-
ANSWER:
yup it can collect all the debris out there will be no problem just as you stop the medication you can turn it on and don't forget partial water changeskOi keeper & goldfish keeper.
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QUESTION:
question about putting a second filter in my 4000 gallon koi pond?
hello,my koi pond is running a 2600 gph pump into a tetra pond 4000 pressurized filter with u.v clarifier. It is working Good but i want to add extra filtration to the other side especially for when all my koi are big messy machines. i came across this for FIFTEEN DOLLARS! http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=370092172608&Category=103440 . and i want to put it on the opposite side of the filter and pump. think of my pond as an irregular rectangle. would that be efficient?
thank you so much!!
and i want-
ANSWER:
it could help but an outer filter chamber is more efficient and easy to clean rather than a filter inside your pond you still have to reach it out and check and the debris is stuck in the water of the pond compare to an outside filter chamber easy to check it daily and easy to clean you don't have to bother the kois. Two pumps is better than one since sometimes pumps stuck won't run need a good cleaning in this case you still have one pump on the run.kOi keeper & goldfish keeper.
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QUESTION:
how do i build a waterfall for my koi pond?
hi!
i have a roughly 2500 gallon koi pond. i built in in September of 2008 and im 15 years old
. i have been using a filter weir since because i didn't have time to build a waterfall before school started 
. i have at least 20 feet ( all together) of extra liner and i have 4 pallets of rock. also behind the pond there is a hill andthat'ss where im building the waterfall. i want the waterfall to beroughlyy 3-6 feetLongf and a couple feet wide. i really need help on how toSett it up andbuildd it.
theeasiestt thing to do it to juts make like a "slip and slide" out of the liner curving the sides but thatdefeatss the purposebecausee it would look horrible! i really need to know hot to build it correctly.also, my pump is 2600 gph. when it goes through the filter and everything else the gph coming out into the waterfall is a lot less correct? its a tetra pond 4000 pressurizedfilterr with u.v sterilizer.
i really need help!
thanksx a lot!-
ANSWER:
Sounds like a great project!First thing you need to check is the pump. Find the specs and determine what the GPH are at what "head." As the pump has to pump uphill it will reduce the gph. In one pond that I know of they had to replace the pump because it couldn't handle the height of the waterfall and still put out enough GPH.
2. Are you going to stick the rocks together or leave them loose? If you are sticking them you need to find what is safe to use and what is available. If you have lots of little rocks you may have to think about cementing them together. If you have big rocks you might get away with a series of steps.
3. Either way you are going to be starting at the bottom because water runs downhill and you want to direct it from upper rocks to lower ones.
4. Probably this should go earlier but you need to have some idea of the look you want to achieve. You will put your liner under the rocks over an approximately shaped earth. Try putting it together dry and running some water over it. Play around with it to get the look and sound that you like.
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QUESTION:
UV lights for POND. i bought a Tetra green/free uv clarifier....how?
how do i install it.???? i just ordered it online and i'm afraid it may be difficult to install. i bought a 9 volt for my 1800 gallon koi pond.-
ANSWER:
Hi uv clarifiers are very simple to instal and should come with full instructions,your pump water will run through the uv filter killing the bacteria that causes the water to go green,i fitted one of these to a pond i had and the water cleared within a couple of days,just follow the instructions and you won't have a problem.
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