Pmp

Hello, i hav a pacu that i bought from pet supermarket and i had like 5 other fish in there 1 pleco an few gouramis the blue ones. the pacu killed all the fish. So today i got a oscar its the same size as it do you think i made a good move. if the pacu kills this oscar then ill have to get rid of thje pacu the pet store said its the most agrssive i can get because of how big the pacu is. Also what type of fish do you people put with pacus. Ty. Also i ahve a 29 gallon.

sirdarksol

Welcome to Fishlore!

A pacu needs a tank that is hundreds of gallons large. You'll be doing the pacu and the oscar a favor by giving the pacu to someone with a big enough tank to care for it.

mathas

If I can make a modification to your statement, I'd say that he (or she) would be doing the pacu and the oscar a favor by giving the pacu and the oscar to someone with a big enough tank or tanks to care for them.

Pmp... while not anywhere near as large as pacus, oscars still need a bare minimum of 55 gallons, with 75 or more being ideal.

sirdarksol

Thank you, Mathas. I thought that was the case, but I'm busy working on my aquariums and I didn't feel like doing the work of looking things up to verify.

Shawnie

welcome to fishlore!! and I agree with the guys!! id return both and get 2 angels and a ton of plants

Pmp

i cant return them i had the pacu for a while n i like tghe oscar plus oscars dont get that big and it takes alot of yrs for fish to get big and id have a bigger tank by then. what fish can u mix with pacus. so far the pacu and oscar seems alright.

sgould

Welcome, Pmp! Unfortunately, the information that has been posted is absolutely correct. Oscars DO get quite large...much too large for a 29, and Pacu get even larger. And it will not take years. If you are willing and able to invest in a much larger tank, great. But in the meantime, I definately would not plan on adding more fish.

aecw

My husband had two pacus that he bought for his 150 gallon that were about 3" when he bought them - within 4-5 months they had grown to about 10" and my husband came in to work one day to find at least 3 half eaten carcasses of fish that were about the same size one was a beautiful catfish that looked like a shark (we were SO BUMMED!). First he tried separating the Pacus from the others but they turned out to be quite persistent in breaking and entering. He ultimately put an ad online (Craig's list i think) and sold them to a guy who was looking for this specific fish for his large tank.
FYI in Brazil they make a great stew from this fish - maybe another avenue to look into - JUST KIDDING!!!!!

Alessa

My LFS has 2 pacus, 2 Giant gouramis and an iridiscent shark... in a 1000 gallon tank. The owner says he wouldnt give the pacus anything less than 500 gallons.

sirdarksol

Before I post anything else, I want to say that our purpose at Fishlore is twofold: We want you to get maximum enjoyment from your tank, and we want your fish to thrive and be happy. These two things feed into each other. The happier your fish are, the more you'll enjoy your tank, and the more you enjoy your tank, the more attention you pay to it, and the happier the fish will be.

Neither of these is really a good reason to keep a fish (or any animal) in an inadequate home. I really like llamas, but I don't have a large enough yard for them, so I don't keep llamas.

A healthy yearling pacu is well over a foot long. That's not slow growth. If a yearling pacu is significantly less than a foot long, that means its growth has been stunted and it will likely die long before its time.

A full-grown oscar will grow to be over a foot long. A twenty-nine gallon tank is less than three feet long. That means that a full-grown oscar would be able to move a bit more than its body length before having to turn around. That's like you being in a room that's two and a half strides long and one stride wide your entire life.

I'm going to take a moment to go back and answer one question that hasn't been answered. You asked if the pacu is going to kill the oscar. It will, either with its teeth or with nitrate poisoning.

Nobody can make you find new homes for your fish. We can only impress upon you that either a pacu or an oscar (let alone both) in a 29g tank would not only be uncomfortable, but would be suffering. In the end, it's up to you to make a decision, but if you choose to keep either of the fish in that tank, no question you ask and no answer we provide will let them thrive.

I honestly have to say that I find this to be a less cruel death than being crammed into a 29g tank. I once got upset when I saw a sign saying "BBQ" on a pacu's tank at a petstore.
I realize now that, compared to the poor thing living out its days in a 100g tank (the largest tank the store had), this wasn't such a cruel idea. Maybe not the best idea for the eater's health, though.

aecw

Just out of curiosity Pmp - do you know that pacus are cousins to piranhas?(We learned this after the purchase and after the "infamous eating rampage") The main difference is pacus sharp teeth are in the back where as piranhas' are in the front. Just something to keep in mind if you are worried about them eating more tankmates.

Pmp

i like oscars plus if the pacu kills the oscar ill just bring the pacu to the pet store and proly get jack demseys n chiclids or somthin. so far the fish Are alright. it takes years for the fish to get big. i feed the fish very little and like every 2-3 days. also sirdark what do you mean it will die from nitrate also i nvr got my water checked when i just bought the oscar but it would be dead if somthin was wrong with my water.

Pmp

also i no someone with a big tank i believe 75 gallon it is that i can always giv to incase one day it does get too big but im not worried bout that. im just seein which fish i can mix certain fish with.

mathas

One jack dempsey would do best in a 55g tank, let alone jack dempseys (plural) and cichlids.

No, it doesn't. When sirdarksol said a yearling pacu is over a foot long, he was correct. The word "yearling" means something that is one year old. In approximately one year, a healthy non-stunted pacu would be larger than your tank is wide. The poor thing wouldn't even be able turn around properly.

And while an oscar doesn't grow as fast as a pacu, they grow fast enough. When given ample space and food, an oscar can grow at least an inch per month for the first 6-8 months of it's life.

As fish grow, they produce more waste. More waste eventually becomes higher nitrate concentration. Two large, messy fish in a small volume of water will very rapidly pollute the water. It's entirely possible that two fish of that potential size will produce more waste than the nitrifying bacteria can handle, which would also subject them to ammonia and nitrite poisoning, not just elevated nitrates.

Lucy

sgould

Nitrate is the end result of the nitrogen cycle in your tank. The more fish your have, and/or the larger they are, the more waste they put out which will ultimately end up as nitrate in your water. The point being made was that huge fish in a small tank will quickly foul the water and compromise your fish's health. In an appropriately stocked tank, this can be controlled through regular water changes. In this case, however, your tank will be dramatically overstocked as your fish grow over the next few months, making the effectiveness of routine water changes questionable.

As sirdarksol said, keeping these fish in a 29 gallon tank is your decision. It is, however, neither a wise one, nor a humane one.

Barbrella

What you need to do is get fish of the right size for you tank, not buy fish that are definitely going to grow huge and then try and figure out how to get rid of them. And unless you have a friend with a 1000 gal tank, I doubt he'll be taking something like this:
http://www.siamfishingtours.com/pacu.jpg

Jack Dempseys, Oscars, and certainly pacus cannot be kept in 29 gallon tanks. The heavy pollution of the water is just one of the problems, but a serious one. The fish might not die immediately, but for sure can get terrible diseases like Hole in the Head (Oscar)

sirdarksol

Okay, one more post from me and then I'll be quiet.
Once again, liking an animal is not enough to keep them healthy.
An animal being alive is not proof that's it's healthy.
It does not take years for a fish to get big. A pacu grows an average of two inches a month until it's about 20". At that point, it's growth slows down a bit. This means that, in half a year, the pacu is a foot long, and that it takes a pacu roughly ten months to get to be 20" long.
Fish produce ammonia, which is highly toxic. The bacteria in your filter consume the ammonia and produce nitrites, which are slightly less toxic than the ammonia. Other bacteria in your filter consume the ammonia and produce nitrates, which are much less toxic (but still toxic). As fish get bigger, they produce exponentially more waste, which means an exponentially concentration of nitrates gets dumped into the water. Fish can survive insanely high nitrates for awhile, but they do so at the cost of their own bodies, and they do not thrive. They burn muscle and organs for the vitamins and minerals they need to keep their primary organs (brain, heart, gills) working as well as possible.

Let's give another example using humans.
We've got our guy who lives in a room that's two and a half strides long by one stride wide. We'll call him Bob. We already know that Bob is really stressed because living, mobile creatures need more space that two and a half times their stride to be happy. We also know that emotional and psychological stress negatively impacts physical health.
What we didn't know before is that the only outlet from Bob's room is a robot that cleans out his solid and liquid waste products once a week and a fan that changes out about 50% of the air (plus a rebreather that recycles his CO2 into oxygen) in a week. As time goes on, the ammonia and methane from his waste build in the air. Because he's got oxygen, he'll live for awhile, maybe months, maybe even a year. But he will die of methane or ammonia poisoning (if infection doesn't take him first.)
Now think of if Bob had a roommate, or two...

Let's look at another human. Her name is Betty.
Betty lives in a house that has a total space about the size of a soccer field. All of the specs, aside from size, are the same as Bob's room. Because the gasses from Betty's waste are diluted in all of the extra space in her home, when the fan takes 50% of the air, it keeps the waste products down much more. She's also got a few plants that work to clean even more of the toxic gasses out of the air.
Betty is going to live much, much longer than Bob, and she's going to be happier.

The same concepts apply to fish, perhaps even more.

Edit: One last thing before I go. You came here for information, which we are offering. We, of course, cannot make you listen to us, but I have to wonder why you would ask a question if you didn't want the answers. Yes, this stuff is hard to hear, but it is the truth. Like I've said, no question you ask and no answer we give can make a tank as heavily overstocked as yours work. The fish might survive for awhile, but in the end, the fish won't live anywhere near as long, be anywhere near as active, or as colorful, or as fun to keep, as a fish kept in a properly-sized tank.