Greetings all.

[Big Al]

Big Al here, not my name, I have had Oscars in the past and have just purchased a Juwel 350, quality tank I think, I plan to have 1 Oscar only residing in his/her new home, still prepping at present, any advice.

 

[Circus]

Welcome to the forum!

 

[MonsieurLaGrenuoille]

Very welcome I'd like to say, good that your name is not Big Al, otherwise you could have been a dinosaur!

 

[Fishmanic]

Welcome to da club, Big Al. Hope you like it here. Be sure to vote in the Tank of the Month contest.

 

[itiwhetu]

Welcome, I love Oscars also. My suggestion is buy 3 babies, with the plan to maybe rehome one. I don't like Cichlids to be kept by themselves.

 

[Sgooosh]

hello!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcHlOBf2W9wAUD8AwUMsF8Q

is this your youtube channel?
i just recognized that name from somewhere....

 

[Jan Cavalieri]

250 liters is about 66 gallons, minimum recommended tank size is 50 gallons but if you've kept them before you know how big they get and how comfortable they are in a crowded space. I certainly wouldn't get 3 of them since you'd have to rehome 2 of them, that makes no sense plus it sounds like they bond to people really well. The article said they grow an inch a week? The filter for this tank looks interesting it's like a canister filter built into the actual aquarium. As long as it doesn't take space away from the actual tank it sounds like a really nice filter.

I had 4 DoJo Loaches. The websites I checked said they grow to 6-8 inches . One of mine stopped growing at 6-8 inches. The other three grew to 12-15 inches. I finally found a website that says they commonly grow to 2 feet long. They were stuffed in a 50 gallon tank. You know when a baby first begins to walk they just hit their heads and everything else for a while until they have their balance? That's what it was like having 4 of these in a 50 gallon tank. So I purchased a 90 gallon tank with a canister filter. I had cycled that aquarium exactly to specifications as well as poured in a gigantic bottle of bacteria before and after cycling. They did great for a week - acting like dolphins - swimming and chasing each other - then I got up one morning about two days after a water change and found 2 completely dead. The other two just hanging on. I went for the one in the best shape and was able to successfully revive him and it's now been about 3 weeks and he's still doing fine. The 4th one, I could never get a heart beat that would stay longer than a few beats and I never got him breathing on his own. So after spending over $1.500 for the tank, the stand (which has space to store things) and the canister filter I have one very lonely fish. I've looked and looked and finally found some golden Dojo's IN STOCK from Arizona Aquatic Gardens - which has very high quality fish, most of which they raise themselves, I think they primarily sell in bulk to stores but they also sell to the smaller buyer. Often they sell very young fish - depending on what they have in stock. I hope these are sufficient size that they don't get eaten by my big DoJo - who has no problems eating small fish if they fit in his mouth. These fish are likely very skinny like a snake but still require a lot of room = when I did have the 4 in the 90 gallon I really wished I had bought a 125 gallon for some extra room because they still were having some collisions. They are super friendly - each with a little different personality (the one that is still alive of course is the shy one - so I'm bribing him with little treats to get him less tense.) Since shipping is astronomically high from AAG (like $85) I ordered about 10 other fish at the same time for the same shipping cost. Once I moved the Dojo's out of the 50 gallon tank - it left that tank open, so I'm moving all my Gourami and Pleco and the10 new fish to the 50 gallon tank which I've been spending a lot of time cleaning up. We clean weekly and STILL the tanks get terribly messy. I also purchases a canister filter for the 50 gallon like I had for the 90 gallon - but you know when I had that ammonia spike that killed my Dojos - I checked the ammonia in the 29 gallon tank with 10 fish in it and found ammonia had spiked there as well- but none of those fish seemed bothered by it - and that was a tank that had been cycled for over two years. I quit testing it a long time ago because it was so reliable but something caused such a huge ammonia spike. It's usually due to an overcrowded tank or overfeeding. I know it's impossible to overfeed a DoJo - the never leave a particle on the ground - but the others I probably was over feeding. I think what happened to my DoJo's - and you'll need to be careful of this with your Oscar - that you may have cycled the tank quite well but there still wasn't sufficient bacteria to handle the Ammonia load from when they relieve themselves they are such big fish. I even had added 2 bottles total of bacteria to my 90 gallon (once before I cycled it and once after I cycled it) and there still wasn't enough bacteria. I suspect they'll send me fairly young/small Dojo so I won't have to worry about it as much this time, but I put an aquarium Ammonia alert buttons on all my tanks.

I'm more worried about the 50 gallon tank - I'm going to keep their HOB filter from their existing tank running for a time, in addition to adding the cannister filter and a couple of bottles of bacteria. I'll also keep their old tank available in case I need to remove some fish. until the bacteria load in the 50 gallon is sufficient.

So I guess my words to you is that you're really pushing the size of tank on your Ocscar but he too will likely start small and "grow" into his tank, So just watch out for ammonia spikes the older and bigger he gets because it can happen so fast. I'm also in the beginning of cycling a salt water tank and hoping I do a good job on that one. I'm going to start with a single anemone and two clown fish and then expand from there. I found some websites with coral that are very reasonably price. Fish prices are a little high but they are everywhere. That tank is mostly filled with live rock and won't have a lot of room for fish (maybe enough room for 5 or so) - I'm more interested in the corals. They grow their own coral on their manmade reef so the prices are really good.

I'm going to be spending my days measuring and washing test tubes daily - it will remind of when I worked in a lab and nearly as expensive if I mess up. When I was in graduate school I dealt with a powder called Aldosterone (it's a hormone put out by your adrenal glands that sit on top of your kidney - they also put out corticosterone) that was over $500 a gram! I had to calculate the correct concentration of solution so that we could inject it in a pump (almost like an insulin pump but automatic) over a period of two weeks of the fastest growing period of a rat's life and try to keep the average concentration in the rat's blood stream over the entire 2 week period of the experiment some average value of X in the rats blood. I don't remember what value of X I ended up with but I remember showing my 6 pages of calculations to my major professor ( I had all done it all in algebra and by hand, because I wasn't particularly good at calculous and we only had one computer - an Apple 2C or something and I didn't know how to program in basic yet. He said I actually did it correctly. Then when I was mixing the solution I had to make sure nobody sneezed (like from that Woody Allen movie Annie Klein when Woody sneezes right on a large tray of cocaine) I'm starting to feel old. That movie is so old now but still really relevant.

Best of luck with the Oscar and take some cute baby pictures if he arrives small - I would like to have one too but I already feel guilty about my one betta living by himself - I don't think I could give the time and attention necessary to an Oscar.

 

[Big Al]

250 liters is about 66 gallons, minimum recommended tank size is 50 gallons but if you've kept them before you know how big they get and how comfortable they are in a crowded space. I certainly wouldn't get 3 of them since you'd have to rehome 2 of them, that makes no sense plus it sounds like they bond to people really well. The article said they grow an inch a week? The filter for this tank looks interesting it's like a canister filter built into the actual aquarium. As long as it doesn't take space away from the actual tank it sounds like a really nice filter.

I had 4 DoJo Loaches. The websites I checked said they grow to 6-8 inches . One of mine stopped growing at 6-8 inches. The other three grew to 12-15 inches. I finally found a website that says they commonly grow to 2 feet long. They were stuffed in a 50 gallon tank. You know when a baby first begins to walk they just hit their heads and everything else for a while until they have their balance? That's what it was like having 4 of these in a 50 gallon tank. So I purchased a 90 gallon tank with a canister filter. I had cycled that aquarium exactly to specifications as well as poured in a gigantic bottle of bacteria before and after cycling. They did great for a week - acting like dolphins - swimming and chasing each other - then I got up one morning about two days after a water change and found 2 completely dead. The other two just hanging on. I went for the one in the best shape and was able to successfully revive him and it's now been about 3 weeks and he's still doing fine. The 4th one, I could never get a heart beat that would stay longer than a few beats and I never got him breathing on his own. So after spending over $1.500 for the tank, the stand (which has space to store things) and the canister filter I have one very lonely fish. I've looked and looked and finally found some golden Dojo's IN STOCK from Arizona Aquatic Gardens - which has very high quality fish, most of which they raise themselves, I think they primarily sell in bulk to stores but they also sell to the smaller buyer. Often they sell very young fish - depending on what they have in stock. I hope these are sufficient size that they don't get eaten by my big DoJo - who has no problems eating small fish if they fit in his mouth. These fish are likely very skinny like a snake but still require a lot of room = when I did have the 4 in the 90 gallon I really wished I had bought a 125 gallon for some extra room because they still were having some collisions. They are super friendly - each with a little different personality (the one that is still alive of course is the shy one - so I'm bribing him with little treats to get him less tense.) Since shipping is astronomically high from AAG (like $85) I ordered about 10 other fish at the same time for the same shipping cost. Once I moved the Dojo's out of the 50 gallon tank - it left that tank open, so I'm moving all my Gourami and Pleco and the10 new fish to the 50 gallon tank which I've been spending a lot of time cleaning up. We clean weekly and STILL the tanks get terribly messy. I also purchases a canister filter for the 50 gallon like I had for the 90 gallon - but you know when I had that ammonia spike that killed my Dojos - I checked the ammonia in the 29 gallon tank with 10 fish in it and found ammonia had spiked there as well- but none of those fish seemed bothered by it - and that was a tank that had been cycled for over two years. I quit testing it a long time ago because it was so reliable but something caused such a huge ammonia spike. It's usually due to an overcrowded tank or overfeeding. I know it's impossible to overfeed a DoJo - the never leave a particle on the ground - but the others I probably was over feeding. I think what happened to my DoJo's - and you'll need to be careful of this with your Oscar - that you may have cycled the tank quite well but there still wasn't sufficient bacteria to handle the Ammonia load from when they relieve themselves they are such big fish. I even had added 2 bottles total of bacteria to my 90 gallon (once before I cycled it and once after I cycled it) and there still wasn't enough bacteria. I suspect they'll send me fairly young/small Dojo so I won't have to worry about it as much this time, but I put an aquarium Ammonia alert buttons on all my tanks.

I'm more worried about the 50 gallon tank - I'm going to keep their HOB filter from their existing tank running for a time, in addition to adding the cannister filter and a couple of bottles of bacteria. I'll also keep their old tank available in case I need to remove some fish. until the bacteria load in the 50 gallon is sufficient.

So I guess my words to you is that you're really pushing the size of tank on your Ocscar but he too will likely start small and "grow" into his tank, So just watch out for ammonia spikes the older and bigger he gets because it can happen so fast. I'm also in the beginning of cycling a salt water tank and hoping I do a good job on that one. I'm going to start with a single anemone and two clown fish and then expand from there. I found some websites with coral that are very reasonably price. Fish prices are a little high but they are everywhere. That tank is mostly filled with live rock and won't have a lot of room for fish (maybe enough room for 5 or so) - I'm more interested in the corals. They grow their own coral on their manmade reef so the prices are really good.

I'm going to be spending my days measuring and washing test tubes daily - it will remind of when I worked in a lab and nearly as expensive if I mess up. When I was in graduate school I dealt with a powder called Aldosterone (it's a hormone put out by your adrenal glands that sit on top of your kidney - they also put out corticosterone) that was over $500 a gram! I had to calculate the correct concentration of solution so that we could inject it in a pump (almost like an insulin pump but automatic) over a period of two weeks of the fastest growing period of a rat's life and try to keep the average concentration in the rat's blood stream over the entire 2 week period of the experiment some average value of X in the rats blood. I don't remember what value of X I ended up with but I remember showing my 6 pages of calculations to my major professor ( I had all done it all in algebra and by hand, because I wasn't particularly good at calculous and we only had one computer - an Apple 2C or something and I didn't know how to program in basic yet. He said I actually did it correctly. Then when I was mixing the solution I had to make sure nobody sneezed (like from that Woody Allen movie Annie Klein when Woody sneezes right on a large tray of cocaine) I'm starting to feel old. That movie is so old now but still really relevant.

Best of luck with the Oscar and take some cute baby pictures if he arrives small - I would like to have one too but I already feel guilty about my one betta living by himself - I don't think I could give the time and attention necessary to an Oscar.

 

[Big Al]

You sound busy, my tank is 350 liters which is about 95 gallons, give or take, I think 1 oscar will thrive in a tank that size, it only has gravel and a few small rocks along with a large piece of mangrove log to hide behind, I will get a baby and hope he will be more than happy in his rather expensive new home.
Thanks for the post, very informative.

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

hello! Welcome aboard Big Al

 

[FishHobby99]

Big Al here, not my name, I have had Oscars in the past and have just purchased a Juwel 350, quality tank I think, I plan to have 1 Oscar only residing in his/her new home, still prepping at present, any advice.

Welcome from Jenny, not my name.

 

[emeraldking]

A hi and a welcome to Big Al overhere...
Your name makes me think of the pet chain in Northern America...