Lighting Regime For Oscar

[gizmo001i]

Hi,
As I said in an earlier post, I am setting up a tank to house one Oscar. However, my experience so far has been with a community tank, which is fully planted with CO2 injection. With the Oscar, I intend to have no, or very few plants so my question is, what sort of lighting regime is suitable for an Oscar which will also limit algae growth. Due to my community tank being well balanced, I haven't had any real problem with algae. But of course without any plants, the game play completely changes. Therefore I want to limit the amount of time that the lights are on, to help prohibit algae growth, but without putting stress on the Oscar. Therefore, any advice on lighting duration for an Oscar and what they will put up with would be very helpfull. At the moment, I do use the Siesta regime of lighting for my community tank and would still probably use it with the Oscar tank.
Many thanks
Ian

 

[meguro]

Maybe have a look at 5 or 10mm high intensity led's to light the tank? Would also be cheap too. That is if you're going with fake plants of course.

 

[gizmo001i]

Hi Mequro,
I'm hoping not have any plants at all really as I am thinking of going for rocks and bogwwod. Plus I would like to use the lighting that is already in my tank to save on expenditure.
Ian

 

[jb12288]

If you completely tear down the tank and give it a good scrub you won't have to worry about algae. During your weekly maintnence you will want to scrub the glass to rid of any bits of algae you have.

 

[gizmo001i]

I am slowly tearing the tank to bits and giving the gravel etc a good clean, whilst keeping the filter going. One other quick question for you all. I know I had some Malaysian Trumpet snails in the gravel and it is proving a real pain to remove them all from the gravel. Would it be worth adding a snail control additive to the tank a while before introducing my Oscar. Obviously I would have to wait a while as the dead snails would end up fouling the water for some time. I ask, as I realise that oscars are messy eaters and would therefore end up feeding the snails. Or are the just as likely to eat the snails.
Ian

 

[jb12288]

I am not sure if they will eat the snails, but you could always get a large loach to do snail patrol.

 

[gizmo001i]

I would love to have a large loach in there, but I only have a 75 Gallon tank which from what I can understand, is about right for 1 Oscar on it's own.

 

[jb12288]

You could temporarily house one just for snail purposes and the give it back to your LFS. But I wouldnt worry about the snails anyways, they will help with the algae a bit.

 

[jayjay]

Leave the snails in the tank, unless you have a real problem with them, they do more good than bad in my opinion. The snails will feed on algae and uneaten food the oscar will most likely churn up.

 

[Spishkey]

since upgrading my oscars tank i no longer have lights in there, just a small strip of blue LEDS fro night viewing of the pleco

i have a variety of floating plants which the oscars leave alone, these out compete the algae for nitrates etc, so the algae has started to die off (had a huge algae prob before adding the floating plants.

my oscar tank doesnt have a lid either, i have wire mesh over the top so daylight gets in for the plants, if it gets cold i stick perspex over the gaps to keep the heat in

sadly i dont have a before pic, but you could hardly see through the glass..this was the tank 4 weeks after adding the plants

 

[gizmo001i]

Thanks Spishkey. I will keep the floating plants in mind as they wouldn't muck up the look of my tank so much. I am also considering placing a moss ball in there as well as they don't spread all over the place.
Ian