I've got the aquarium bug!

I originally bought a 10 gallon tank in November to cycle for my 2 yr old for Christmas. My husband had to one up me and buy a second tank with prettier fish. I'm a stay at home mom so by default I ended up with the work load for the tanks. Then my husband got over excited and overloaded the tanks while I was away and did no water changes (magically all the fish died but a few gold fish and a pleco). By then I had been stalking craigslist for a cheaply priced aquarium I could talk my husband into. He decided in the meantime we should start keeping tropical fish and overloaded the tanks again. I finally got him to get a 90 gallon tank and put all the tropical fish in it (it really hurt my feelings when my 2 Oscars ate all their "approved" tank mates). Now after all that confusion and heartbreak and frustration I feel such satisfaction in a healthy tank (all my levels are perfect!!! I'm so excited) and healthy fish. My issue is now I want to try my hand at breeding guppies and mollies as feeder fish for my Oscars. I've had the Oscars since December and the albino is my sweetheart so they're my main concern. I can get them to eat flakes, worms from my composer (I starve the worms for a few days first) and occasionally some veggies. I plan to start breeding crickets soon as well. I tried pellets which were an epic fail outlining how spoiled my fish are. Everytime I would try not feeding them to make them hungry enough to eat pellets a tankmate would disappear or turn up floating with chunks gone. Any ideas or suggestions Are welcome. I know it's a long post I'm just really excited and worried, I've made a ton of mistakes so far that costed lives (including a black moor that I was very fond of). I don't want anymore deadly mistakes.


Side note I was thinking of adding in a sponge filter to the 90 gallon incase one of them got sick I could transfer the sponge filter to the 20 gallon tank for a hospital tank. I was researching and it was recommended but I'm not sure if that's right or not. Is 20 gallons big enough? Is there a different way I should do that?

 

Welcome!
My app keeps crashing so ill be quick.
Your overstocking rollercoaster is crashing your tanks. If you have had tank crashes as recently as January, your 90g is not cycled, sorry. Have any plants and driftwood for your oscars to hide in? If not, get alot. Pretty sure they need a 125g if they are going to be in pairs.
Mollies and guppies are wonderful and intelligent creatures with tender personalities not unlike your oscars and with their bony bodies are not a good feeder fish, esp. for the bioload they produce.
Please put a moratorium on stocking until youve got some live plants and are sure your filtration is up to snuff as well as your tank is fully cycled.
I wrote three much less succinct and crabby sounding responses to this, all culminating in app crashes, so please excuse any glib nature.

Good luck, keep us posted, and pics or it didn't happen
Welcome again!

 

welcome to the forum and glad you're here. sounds like you have had quite the adventure. There are members on here that keep Oscars and hopefully they will chime in. I had one but that was over thirty years ago and I used to feed it feeder goldfish in addition to whatever else I used to feed it but from some of the posts I have read on here it doesn't seem to be recommended anymore. I love their personality kind of like fishy puppies. Alison

 

Welcome to fishlore

Oscars are amazing fish but unfortunately you will eventually need a bigger tank to keep them both happy. You are going to want to consider something like 125 or 150 gallon for the long haul. Depending on how large they are right now they may be fine for the short term but just know eventually this tank will not be large enough.

Do you have an apI master test kit? If not I'd suggest purchasing one and testing your levels of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates.

What other fish do you have in the 90 gallon? Eventually oscars will eat everything they can fit in their mouth. And if they can't, they will take chunks until nothing is left.

 

What size is are the Oscars? If they're juveniles the 90 will work for a while. If you bought large ones, you're in a jam.

I think there's some confusion on cycling here. It's possible to have a tank "crash" then have a completed cycle within 48hrs.
Microbiology has a lot of variables.

 

I agree with everything said so far except for the addition of plants. Oscars are plant murderers and you'll quickly realize that heavy duty plastic plants and decor will be the way to go. If they don't tear the real plants to pieces, they'll at the very least move them around to their liking after you've carefully decided where you want them to go. Floating plants may work but I never tried them with Oscars.

 

Welcome!
My app keeps crashing so ill be quick.
Your overstocking rollercoaster is crashing your tanks. If you have had tank crashes as recently as January, your 90g is not cycled, sorry. Have any plants and driftwood for your oscars to hide in? If not, get alot. Pretty sure they need a 125g if they are going to be in pairs.
Mollies and guppies are wonderful and intelligent creatures with tender personalities not unlike your oscars and with their bony bodies are not a good feeder fish, esp. for the bioload they produce.
Please put a moratorium on stocking until youve got some live plants and are sure your filtration is up to snuff as well as your tank is fully cycled.
I wrote three much less succinct and crabby sounding responses to this, all culminating in app crashes, so please excuse any glib nature.

Good luck, keep us posted, and pics or it didn't happen
Welcome again!

ctually prefer bluntness, I hate when people sugarcoat. Don't worry I have forbidden anymore fish in my house until we get settled at our new home and get more tanks as the Oscars eat anything that is in their water. I read somewhere that you needed about 3/4 tank cover so it's full of logs, artificial plants, a couple skulls, and devils ivy. When we move in a few months I was planning on upgrading the Oscars to a 200 gallon tank in the living room (alone because they are extremely aggressive towards any fish I've tried to keep in the tank) putting the 90 gallon in the bedroom for guppies/mollies a 75 hexagon aquarium in my daughter's room for guppies/ mollies and using the two small tanks I started with to breed crickets. I thought guppies and mollies would be a good choice to breed because I didn't want to get the Oscars sick from store bought feeders. The 90 gallon I currently have sits at 80 degrees and has 2 90 gallon filters and 2 aerators running. I usually end up changing about 10 gallons a day since I vacuum the bottom ALOT I hate when the poo sits down there and makes the tank look gross. I also end up doing a 30 gallon change a week to water my plants.

 

Many folks breed convict cichlids for the purpose you are thinking. The breeder tank can also be used as another display. More tanks.

 

Welcome to fishlore

Oscars are amazing fish but unfortunately you will eventually need a bigger tank to keep them both happy. You are going to want to consider something like 125 or 150 gallon for the long haul. Depending on how large they are right now they may be fine for the short term but just know eventually this tank will not be large enough.

Do you have an apI master test kit? If not I'd suggest purchasing one and testing your levels of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates.

What other fish do you have in the 90 gallon? Eventually oscars will eat everything they can fit in their mouth. And if they can't, they will take chunks until nothing is left.

I plan to upgrade to a 200 gallon by July. They'll be alone in it because they have already eaten about 30 dollars in fish that were supposed to be approved tank mates. Besides they seem happier alone together. They're only about 4 (tiger) and 5 (albino) inches at the moment.
Currently I have the strips for every other day and take my water to the pet store for testing every other week.

 

Yeah I would consider getting an API master test kit. Amazon has them for the cheapest I've seen. It would save you a trip to get your water tested every other week.

I love the look of oscars but are one of the fish I can't afford to keep as 1) it would require a large investment into a large tank and 2)It would cost me a lot of alimony payments when I informed my wife we were buying a 200 gallon tank for the living room

 

What size is are the Oscars? If they're juveniles the 90 will work for a while. If you bought large ones, you're in a jam.

I think there's some confusion on cycling here. It's possible to have a tank "crash" then have a completed cycle within 48hrs.
Microbiology has a lot of variables.

At the moment they are still small but I know they're growing fast so I don't have an unlimited amount of time. They've over doubled in size since January (both about 1.5 inches then).
The reason I thought the tank was cycled (by the way this one has never crashed, it was the smaller ones) was the man I bought it from downgraded to a smaller tank and the 90 gallon was actually still set up when I got there, we had to drain the water and unplug everything. He had had it going for about 3 yrs or so and said that if I used the same equipment he gave me that it would be cycled, I don't know if he was right or wrong but it hasn't crashed or anything and the Oscars seem happy and healthy.

I agree with everything said so far except for the addition of plants. Oscars are plant murderers and you'll quickly realize that heavy duty plastic plants and decor will be the way to go. If they don't tear the real plants to pieces, they'll at the very least move them around to their liking after you've carefully decided where you want them to go. Floating plants may work but I never tried them with Oscars.

I had a very large devils ivy plant, I read that they we're good for aquariums. so I took a bunch of cuttings and tossed them in. I find the occasional dead leaf or root but on the whole the Oscars seem to like it and it's thriving well. Devils ivy is pretty hardy though and is supposed to be poisonous to people and dogs so maybe that's why they've left it alone. I stuck the cuttings into their logs and gravel after it rooted. They are constantly rearranging something but I don't mind, their better decorators than me anyways.

 

That's useful info. More than likely then your tank is cycled. Your Oscars should still be the only buddies in there, though. I've seen people keeping full grown bichir with Oscars, but in that tank everybody was a butthead.

 

Many folks breed convict cichlids for the purpose you are thinking. The breeder tank can also be used as another display. More tanks.

hat's kinda what I was thinking with the guppies and mollies. They're very beautiful and apparently amazingly good at filling at large tank quickly. I figured when they got a bit overstocked I could net enough of the less pretty ones and toss them in with my Oscars.

That's useful info. More than likely then your tank is cycled. Your Oscars should still be the only buddies in there, though. I've seen people keeping full grown bichir with Oscars, but in that tank everybody was a butthead.

My Oscars aren't hanging out with anyone anytime soon if ever. They're terrorists, all their tank mates died because I stopped feeding them anything but pellets that were supposed to be super healthy and they refused to touch them. So everyday I would notice someone else was missing and my Oscars sat at the front of the tank looking smug.
I would've been mad except I love the Oscars best and they ate all my husband's fish.

I'll add pictures of my tank as soon as I figure out how, I can't seem to get the site to update any information or upload pictures.

 

ctually prefer bluntness, I hate when people sugarcoat. Don't worry I have forbidden anymore fish in my house until we get settled at our new home and get more tanks as the Oscars eat anything that is in their water. I read somewhere that you needed about 3/4 tank cover so it's full of logs, artificial plants, a couple skulls, and devils ivy. When we move in a few months I was planning on upgrading the Oscars to a 200 gallon tank in the living room (alone because they are extremely aggressive towards any fish I've tried to keep in the tank) putting the 90 gallon in the bedroom for guppies/mollies a 75 hexagon aquarium in my daughter's room for guppies/ mollies and using the two small tanks I started with to breed crickets. I thought guppies and mollies would be a good choice to breed because I didn't want to get the Oscars sick from store bought feeders. The 90 gallon I currently have sits at 80 degrees and has 2 90 gallon filters and 2 aerators running. I usually end up changing about 10 gallons a day since I vacuum the bottom ALOT I hate when the poo sits down there and makes the tank look gross. I also end up doing a 30 gallon change a week to water my plants.

I understand your enthusiasm for your Oscars. They are remarkable fish. I kept a pair for almost 20 years from the time I was in intermediate school until way past grad school. And they would eat only live food. They grew to the size of small Buicks and eventually I had to rehome them. I was fortunate to convince the folks who operated the display aquariums for my university's department of fisheries to adopt them where they got a much larger home in a concrete display tank. Big fish. Unfortunately, they would eat us if we were small enough.

I heartily support your idea of raising feeder guppies. They are fine food for oscars, despite the fact most guppy fanciers hate the idea. But considering the cost of electricity, fish food, and the months it takes to get them in large enough numbers to maintain a steady supply it might just be more economical to buy them feeder goldfish. Good luck with your oscars.

 

I understand your enthusiasm for your Oscars. They are remarkable fish. I kept a pair for almost 20 years from the time I was in intermediate school until way past grad school. And they would eat only live food. They grew to the size of small Buicks and eventually I had to rehome them. I was fortunate to convince the folks who operated the display aquariums for my university's department of fisheries to adopt them where they got a much larger home in a concrete display tank. Big fish. Unfortunately, they would eat us if we were small enough.

I heartily support your idea of raising feeder guppies. They are fine food for oscars, despite the fact most guppy fanciers hate the idea. But considering the cost of electricity, fish food, and the months it takes to get them in large enough numbers to maintain a steady supply it might just be more economical to buy them feeder goldfish. Good luck with your oscars.

Thanks for your approval, I was starting to feel awful about the idea. Also Albie (my albino oscar) already bit me (she was aiming for the worm I was holding though and it didn't hurt) When I was researching I kept seeing all these horrible stories about how Oscars dies from diseases and parasites they caught from live food. Its why I started starving my composting worms before I fed them to my fish. That's actually why I was looking into breeding my own crickets and feeder fish too, I know it will cost more I just got really attached very quickly to my water babies and I would hate it if I killed them out of carelessness I want them to live as long and happy as possible.

 

My wife almost had a breakdown when our betta died.

 

My wife almost had a breakdown when our betta died.

I'm embarrassed about it because I had read that without a top Oscars will jump out but it didn't come with a top and I had put off getting one I guess out of pure stupidity thinking it wouldn't happen to me. A couple weeks ago my favorite Oscar Albie (the albino) jumped tank and flopped out of reach under the entertainment system. I nearly broke the television and everything else in my living room to get to her. When I finally got to her she was dry and covered in dirt and dust. I flipped out and started crying hysterically telling her how sorry I was as I gently put her back. She stayed at the bottom in the corner with Rex (the tiger) for a few hours then she was fine but it taught me a lesson I'll never forget. I ordered two covers that will be hinged and hooked into place. I have the top covered in 2 weighted down tote lids til then. I'm just glad she did it while I was awake.