Well I think my oscars have paired up and might be thinking about breeding. I have a few questions hopefully you all can answer.

1. There behavior.
These two never leave each others side. If one swims to the opposite side of the tank the other follows right behind. They sleep side by side. They have started to hunt as a pack. If they are chasing one there tank mates one will go right and the other will go left. The bigger one attacks my hand when I grav vac. They have started to annihilate there tank mates. Does there behavior indicate a pair?

2. How should I set up the tank? If they are going to breed what do I need to do to insure a successful spawning? I am in the process of rehoming everyone else in the tank.

3. If they do spawn what should I feed them?

I’m new to breeding and I want to be well informed on everything. Thank you for your help!

For me this was almost two years ago when I had accidental Oscar breeding, so I'm not sure if I'm forgetting or misremembering anything.

1. Maybe leaning towards yes. The other things to watch out for is uh. some sort of lip wrestling. Looks like really angry fish kissing. Another is, unless you have a mostly smooth flat area already they'll dig out the gravel down to the tank bottom to get something smooth. Even with something flat they may dig out anyway just for the fun of it.

2. Yea on the rehoming nothing is safe. Before I got it out, I had a 18in channel cat get the snot beaten out of it by the oscars. Also give the oscars a place or two to hide, but expect them to completely rearrange everything to their liking if it's light enough. I set up a corner for them to hide in and ended up using a 16lb bowling ball to keep it covered. Also, get some fake plants, or use plants you totally do not care about at all. I have a couple of fake ones that I've glued rocks to so they at least stay down.

3. How hardcore are you about raising baby oscars? I usually don't care too much about fry. So any fry I end up with, I usually stick in a empty tank with my nastiest grungiest sponge filter and once they get big enough start feeding them super crushed up flake food. Old sponge filters seem to hold all the right crap for fry to eat. A better option (if you care about your fry) is microworms or brine shrimp. I personally don't care for microworms tho because no matter what I do or keep them in they always get those damn fruit flies.

You could take your chances and let the parents raise them, or make sure you put in a flat rock for the eggs, then pull the rock out and get it into another tank. You could use a little of that methylene blue stuff to keep the eggs not getting fungus too if you want.

Infertile eggs are white and the fertile eggs were some color that wasn't and I don't remember what now. It was a fairly obvious moldy vs. not moldy color tho.

Also you don't need to start feeding them until they detach from their rock. While they're still stuck they're absorbing their egg yolk. It took a few days from what I remember.

You've alredy noticed the biting, but it gets a hell of alot worse when they lay eggs. If you're going to pull the eggs wear some gloves. I stuck my hand in to reattach their filter intake and one of them drew blood.

Yep sounds good. You can try feeding live foods to condition them and raise the tank temp to 80. Also do a couple extra water changes.

My big oscars lips are scuffed up and the only other fish that could do that would be my other oscar. Im going to let them raise there fry ( I like my fingers ) Thank you saint for all of the info!

Any updates? Did they spawn? Do you have babies now?

kiokie wrote:

Any updates? Did they spawn? Do you have babies now?

Look here http://www.freshwatermadness.com/new-world-cichlids-f4/sad-day-t161.htm

OOPS, I'm sorry. That blows.......