oscar stocking...

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cogburn

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Feb 5, 2008
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bangor, pa
okay i know im months away from getting this tank but im so flipping excited i keep talking about it... ive decided on a perfecto 120 gal tank because its the biggest i can get for the 4ft wall im putting it against... for stocking... i want the centerpiece(s) of the aquarium to be 2 oscars... with kind of a rock work barrier in between them so they can stay on opposite sides of the aquarium... so i want the 2 oscars, 1 common pleco, 3 tinfoil barbs, and probably 3 clown loaches... i would be getting them all roughly around the same size... a lfs near me always has medium sized of each of these fish... so none would really be bigger than another... do you guys think thats over stocked for a 120 gal. or will that work... if overstocked ill just scratch the clown loaches... lemme know what you guys think... thanks in advance...

-Larry
 
and by the way... ill definately be doing a FISHLESS cycle this time... itll be much easier to set this tank up knowing im informed now...
 
Sounds exciting! I kept tin foil barbs successfully with oscars before and loved the combo. I don't know about it being overstocked... doesn't sound it to me (but I do know that the oscars and pleco are high bio loads becuase of their waste and what not).

Shouldn't the barbs and/or loaches be kept in groups of 5+ since they're schooling/shoaling fish?
 
ummm... yeah youre right they probably should... maybe ill scratch the loaches and get 5 barbs
 
Yeah. Hey, I red somewhere that you can keep Pacu's with oscars. But then I think you'd have to scratch an oscar and just do a pacu and an oscar. What about the red parrots? I'm not so found of them, but when I was at Wal-mart a few months ago they had a red parrot and an oscar in the same tank. (Then again, may not be best to follow Wal-marts lead. . . they also had a betta in the same tank as a crab. . .)
 
Pacus grow to 3 feet long leave them in the Amazon. That is a lot of potentially big fish for that tank. I would do the oscars and the barbs. Clowns grow slowly and the Oscars may get aggresive with them. A comman pleco is a messy fish and may out grow eeven that tank. You will have plenty of fish to clean up after without the pleco.

I would also suggest you do not feed the oscars live fish. They will become more aggresive and they are not really made to eat other fish.
 
hmmm sounds good to me... i thought i would need the pleco to clean up... i would be perfectly happy with just the oscars and barbs... if i dont need cleanup ill scratch the pleco too... i dont plan to feed live fish... maybe one or 2 rarely as a treat... but dont wanna risk disease
 
What about snails for clean up?

When I had oscars, we used a filter that was rated for a tank twice as big as ours. That could be an idea. We had 3 oscars, 2 tinfoil barbs (which I only learned recently should be kept in larger groups), and a common pleco. Way overstocked as I have since learned. But now I know not to do that again, but like I said, we had a filter rated for a much larger tank and did frequent water changes.
 
im gonna get 2 fluval 305's... that will have me for 140 gallons on a 120 gal tank thought that would be good
 
would the 2 fluval 305's be good or should i go for the fx5? seems like its high flow... can it be turned down?
 
No idea on the filters, although that sounds like a good plan to me.
 
awesome thanks... one xp3 is 350 gph... wouldnt one be enough... with 2 it would be 700 gph... wouldnt that be over kill? 350 is 3x the water volume an hour... also whats the gravel rule of thumb... 1 lb per gallon? 2 lbs per gallon... i dont remember?
 
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I read some where (i think in my tank's "guide") that there should be 2 to 3 inch covering. I think thats about what we had in my oscar tank. What kind of substrate are you using out of curiosity?
 
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