New shy oscars!

HannahJ

Starving Student
Dec 3, 2008
70
0
0
College Station, Texas
So I got my two new baby oscars for my 58 gallon the day before yesterday, and they are too precious. They are both around two inches long, and they look absolutely tiny with that whole huge tank to themselves. One is a tiger oscar, one is a red one. I'm naming the tiger oscar Richard Parker, but so far the boyfriend hasn't come up with anything for the red guy, so he is nameless right now.

The two of them are pretty terrified, and they stick very close together as they alternatingly cruise the tank and hide in the rock caves. They do seem to be eating, or at least, the pinches of cichlid pellets I drop in there a couple times a day always seems to have disappeared after a few hours. My boyfriend's cat also loves them, all she does is sit in the chair in front of the tank and chatter to them, which is interesting as she's never paid any of the other tanks much attention. No worries though, everything is very catproof.

Hopefully they warm up to us soon. They aren't as pale as they were the first day, but they still don't have the bright colors they did in the fish store. I'm also hoping that the way they stick together now for security will translate into compatibility in the long run, though I know it'll still be a crapshoot. No tankmates yet either, we're still researching and looking around (and the only store with anything better than the box store selection is an hour away).

Here's a bad picture of the two of them, taken with my phone, as I have no idea where the digital camera wandered off too. Their neighbor Buddy the pleco also came out while I was taking pictures, so I snapped one of him too. He's a big boy!

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Not to sound negative here, but each oscar will require a larger than 58G tank when fully grown and that looks like a common pleco which gets VERY large. What type of filtration are you running? All three are rather messy fish.
 
I know the oscars will require a larger tank, and I'm fine with that. I'm not going to go buy or build a 100+ gallon tank for a pair of 2" babies though. This tank should last them at least half a year. The tank they are in has a Fluval 304 running. The pleco is in a different tank, running a Rena XP3 filter. He is indeed a common pleco, but we're building him and his tankmate, my ghost knife, a larger tank soon.

Edit: If you want to read the discussion I've already had on tank size, check out this thread: http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=180068
 
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No worries. Very cool to hear it. Forgive me if I jumped the gun, but all too often people are less informed about the requirements they'll need and less willing to upgrade.
 
:) Richard parker...I love it. Just a couple of thoughts though. Oscars do tend to be shy at first, then after a few days they will come out of their shell them pellets won't be around for a couple of seconds much less an hour ;) If you plan on adding tankmates I would do it VERY soon once those oscars get used to that environment, even at 2 inches that tank will be theirs, and they will torture anything you add unless it is much bigger than them. Totally awesome on the Oscars though you will love them!!!
 
Yeah we're hoping to make a trip to the hour-away decent fish store this weekend and see what they have. The boyfriend is stuck on a spiny eel, but I want to have a looksie first. At least he's been talked down to one of the smaller spiny eel species if it comes to that.
 
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