Freshwater

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Part II: Fish and How to Care for Them
Figure 8-8:
Angelfish
make great
community
fish.
Red oscar (Astronotus ocellatus)
The red oscar is an Amazonian giant (growing to lengths of over 12 inches in
the home aquarium) who may quickly outgrow your tank, so a 70-gallon tank
is a minimum requirement for one or two fish. This animal is carnivorous and
eats anything it can fit into its large mouth and will eventually need to be fed
cichlid pellet food.
One cool thing about an oscar is that you can hand tame it to accept food
from you.
Oscars spend most of their time swimming in the middle levels of the tank.
You can easily fool your friends into thinking that you are risking life and limb
by feeding them.
Oscars enjoy water that is kept between 72–78 degrees and feel secure with a
sandy substrate and rocks. Oscars will tear up plants, so if you do use artificial
ones, prepare yourself to a daily routine of replanting them. If you put
live plants in your oscar tank, say your permanent goodbyes as you are
arranging them, because the next time you see them they will probably
resemble confetti.
If kept in small groups, oscars tend to bicker with each other, so it is better to
keep them in groups of eight or more. Unfortunately keeping this many
oscars would require you to borrow a tank from Seaworld, so prepare to keep
a single or two who will fight on and off. Tankmates can include knifefish,
large plecos, tinfoil barbs, and other large cichlids of the same size.