WoW Petopia Community

About a year ago, I decided I wanted to get an oscar fish. Over time, I started to get the assorted gear I'd need bit by bit. Back in late July, I finally had pretty much everything to set up a 75 gallon tank, so I filled it up and started feeding it pure ammonia to get it ready for a resident.

Saturday night, the water tests indicated that the assorted little bacteria were finally doing their thing and that the tank was cycled. I checked again Sunday with the same results. Yesterday afternoon I went to the store and brought home this little guy:



He (or she) is a juvenile tiger oscar. They're New World cichlids from South America. Right now, he's about 2.5" long. In a year or so, he should be full grown and will be 12-15 inches long and weigh 2-3 pounds. They're *big* fish! For now, though, he's a small fish in a very big tank.

They're also pretty smart, as fish go. They can recognize individual people and will 'play' with things in their tanks. They're notorious for rearranging any sort of decor or substrate in their aquariums and putting things where they want them, not where you want them to be.

Oscars are sexually monomorphic, meaning that there's no obvious difference in appearance between males and females. Really, the only way to know their gender is for someone to do a medical exam or to see a pair of them spawning and note which one is laying the eggs. Since this one is gonna live alone, I'll likely never know. Dunno why, but I'm just inclined to assume the fish is a boy.

Oh, and they tend to be very territorial and prefer living alone, so he's not gonna be unhappy not having any tankmates.

Anyway, that's my new boy!

Awesome Fishy! I worked as a petcare associate at petsmart for a little under a year, and used to love playing with these guys. We would get a laser pointer and point it at the tank and they would chase it. They're also quite found of crickets(in limited quantities) and anything else that they can "hunt". Did you know that you can actually clicker train fish?

You just use a light flashing as the "Click" that signals they've earned their treat. You can start off using the laser pointer to guide them through a hoop in their tank(or whatever other behavior), flash a little light(like a bright LED or something) and immediately give him a treat to slowly teach him things.

Oh nice! Sounds like a really awesome fish!! I love that they move their decorations around XDDD

You should give him a really androgynous name like...
Adrian or something.

He's adorable and I will refer to him as him because it sounds nicer than it.

Beautiful fish I'd love to have an albino tiger oscar one day, they're absolutely gorgeous, unfortunately I just don't have the room to house such a large fish at the moment xD

Hey, I'm open to any suggestions for names for the lil fella. Bubba, Hobbes, and Ackbar are a number of Mayan ones have been suggested so far by friends and family members. I'd rather not name him 'Oscar.'

TheDoomcookie wrote:Oh nice! Sounds like a really awesome fish!! I love that they move their decorations around XDDD

They're rather strong as adults. They've got a reputation for destroying plants and decorations that they don't like and for shoving rocks here and there. They also are known to smash regular glass aquarium heaters. That's why I set up an inline heater on his tank. I didn't want a cut/electrocuted fish.

Boven wrote:Hey, I'm open to any suggestions for names for the lil fella. Bubba, Hobbes, and Ackbar are a number of Mayan ones have been suggested so far by friends and family members. I'd rather not name him 'Oscar.'

"Adrian" as I so lovingly derp'd out earlier.

My father had a fish when i was little that was enormous. My brother and I loved this fish, and he lived a very, very long time. Our father would joke about killing and eating the fish, and we'd get all scared until we realized he was just kidding. We moved away and I forgot about the fish for a few years when I was suddenly reminded of it while at a pet store, because I saw one that reminded me of him. The fish's name was Oscar... and it was an oscar. There was also a cat in the house named Oscar, so I don't know why the fish wasn't given a different name. I thought that was pretty silly, naming an oscar Oscar!

anyway, how about Marv?