My Oscar Setup

This afternoon the Oscar did not like were my potted hornwart was growing and decided to move them to the other side of the tank making a gain big mess. He seems to dislike it when its growing vertically but leaves it alone when its floating around. So I decided to modified my hornwart "growing cage" and added another side to it forming a square and I put all of the remaining hornwart in there keeping it from floating everywhere.

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Sorry if some of the pictures are missing moved and cleared some of my photo albums they are here now: http://www.tropicalaquarium.co.za/album.php?albumid=176 and here http://www.tropicalaquarium.co.za/album.php?albumid=260

Took some pictures of the Oscars diet habits:

Below is: Ocean Nutrient Chillid Mix, Formula 2, Super Shrimp, Krill, Ox Heart, Bloodworm, Hikari, Mealworms and Chicken Livers. Missing is the Earthworms and Crickets since I rant out.

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thats alot of different food for ur little bugga

 

Geez,what a smorgasbord...Cant fault you on the menu dude,just a warning on your waterchange regime though...

We dont just do waterchanges to eliminate nitrates from our tanks(your plants seem to be doing a nice job of this by themselves...),but to replace various solluble compounds that get used up in the biological processes that happen in our tanks...Noticed you say you dont bother keeing your pH @ 7 any more....Hmmn,been noticing a general downward slide in pH? Ever test your dKh or general hardness - noticed a downward trend there too? The danger here is that biological processes are using up a lot of solluble Calsium compounds - leading to a slow but increasingly bigger and faster drop in the waters abillity to buffer the hardness...
The danger here is that one day you might just experience a pH crash - eco system gets pushed past a point where it can buffer itself and BOOM,overnight the pH drops to like 4 and you end up with a dead Oscar...

Another factor is that by just topping up,you are not replacing enough trace elements that is needed for plant growth and other biological processes,leading to a slow down in growth and other nasties...Also consider that the filtration process has another cycle running apart from the nitrogen one - the sulpher side to the equation... Noticed some of the media in your filter taking on a blackish tinge from time to time? Yip,thats evidence of this... Removing solluble sulfer is not something your plants will do - waterchanges!

Tetra has a product out that replaces a lot of the things a tank needs and removes some of the ones it dont(cant think of the product name now) - thereby reducing the need to waterchange - maybe look in to that...
I have in the past thought in exactly the way you do - that I dont need to waterchange and well,both arrogant,"fly in the face of convention" attempts at this ended up in tears for me and dead fish/dead tanks...

@larch - not slamming what you are doing,but more of a warning of what "could" go wrong if you persist with this way of managing the wellbeing of the little ecosystem in your care,and the life of a fish you love...

 

@azurekoi Is there anything in the world of all things wet and finned you don't know your knowledge continues to astound me

 

@FishRMan ... lots Dude - had to learn the hard way some times,but having worked in the industry for as long as I have,you pick up a thing or two... NOT all of them correct though....lol
Funny thing about fishkeeping though,is that you learn something new every day...

 

Yeah more variety, and the more types of food I give him the less chance I will have of getting a fish that when grown up is picky about the types of food he eats. But so far he eats anything I drop in the tank including my fingers ush:

Also I read an interesting article on Hole In The Head, which Oscar's are very prone to getting and apparently they get it due to a lack of Phosphorus, Calium, Vitamin C and Vitamin D in their diets so I try and give him a wide variety of foods.

 

Some unexpected dinner quests decide to fly into my flat so I ran around with my net and started catching them for my little monster, put them in a small container till they lost their wings (less messy) and currently feeding them to him.

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Yip, my White clouds and Gobies had the same snack - had to "mash" them up for the little guys though...lol - 2 fed the whole tank..lol

 

No, haven't noticed any type of your so called downward slide you mention. Did a test on Sunday after 3 months of having not done so and it looks pretty much exactly the same as when I stopped doing water changes see picture below:

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If there was a lack of Calcium in my water the snails would have been the first indicators showing me there is a lack because they need a certain amount for their shells. If not their shell turns white and brittle and die. And as you can see my tiger snails look pretty healthy:

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The danger here is that one day you might just experience a pH crash - eco system gets pushed past a point where it can buffer itself and BOOM,overnight the pH drops to like 4 and you end up with a dead Oscar...

Currently my plant growth is pretty good considering its a Oscar and I dont add anything for plant growth refer to another picture below of my Amazon Swords "dying" happily:

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Nope no blackish tinge on any of my filter media, cleaned my canister filter after 4 months of working 24/7 and found nothing but a healthy snail population.

As for "fly in the face of convention" I am trying a biological manner of running my tank rather than throwing a bunch of un-natural chemicals into my water. For instance my 4 tiger snails take care of the algae in the tank and to a lesser degree my growing population of Asian Trumpet snails.

As for waste management it seems my Asian Trumpet snails have taken a liking to eating whatever the Oscar excretes, most likely because he does not process everything 100% as soon as it lands on the gravel they swarm and leave nothing behind.

The hornwart in my tank cleans the nitrates and ammonia from my water, limits algae growth and as a bonus it is a great oxygenationator of water and I regularly need to trim it back. And every week or so I clean the tank out with a net but I dont clean out much.

Perfectly understandable, but unfortunately or fortunately however you look at it my current system seems to manage itself perfectly and its almost entering its 4th month of running perfectly now. And all the evidence points to the fact that its working for me and my Oscar.

 

Added the plants that did not fit in my 40 liter Jebo to my Oscar setup, my little monster is now sulking in the corner because there is now unknown green stuff stuff that has invaded one corner of the tank.

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haha.. cute..

 

That's very healthy looking plants!

 

Thanks hornwart is growing like weed. This is the amount of hornwart I trim off on a monthly basis in my Oscar setup:

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And most of my other plants are doing well too, I just trim off all the leaves that start dying and other than that I dont add anything to the water or do anything special:

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After seeing how Irma attached her ballasts to the tank lid, I did the same with my Oscar's tank and it ended up looking better than just having it hanging behind the tank.

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Mine is mounted the same way.

 

Yeah dont know for the life of me why I did not think of it.

 

My plants finally decided to die a slow agonizing death, pretty impressed that they lasted for a whole 7 months. All the leaves started turning transparent and then brown and died, so I decided to remove them all. For some reason the Oscar looks happier and removing the plants freed up loads of tank space.

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nice.. its abit bare though.. i'd really get another oscar at least...

 

Won't an Oscar and an eel make friends?