Pet Articles
Breeeding Oscar Fish
Author: William Berg
The Oscars, or Astronotus ocellatus, from Cichlidae family, are
fairly easy fish to breed. All you need is pretty much leaving
them alone and letting them do their thing if you lucky enough
to get a pair. If not, breeding might be very hard. They are a
very long-lived fish, probably one of the reasons they are so
popular today. Originally from Amazon.
Oscar Fish obviously requires a large tank due to their large
size. They prefer clean and clear water with a deep sand bottom,
and a few large rocks. If you keep plants with you Oscars they
will be dug up however there are some people that believe that
Oscars like to have plants that they can dig up in the aquarium
and this might be true since many large cichlid like to have
toys when kept in aquariums not to get bored. And since Oscars
are large and very smart cichlids, you can actually teach them
tricks, they might want something to do like digging up plant.
Be careful, they are enthusiastic eaters and they love to eat
smaller fish. Thus, only keep them with other fish that are of
the same size. Temperature is important, and should be kept
stable somewhere in 79-86°F range. Feeding Oscars is not a
problem since they will take every food you give, including
flake frozen fish, prawns, pellets, earth worms, crickets,
kitchen scrapes…and of course live food.
The most trying task to do is finding a mating pair. If your
Oscar is adult in size, it becomes a really trial-and-error
process. However once they form pairs they will stay together
for the rest of their life. Probably the most common and
effective method of finding pair of Oscars is to buy 6 or 8
young specimens (about 1 inch in length), and allowing them to
grow up together. A mating pair can be identified from their
mating play, which is a seemingly aggressive behavior towards
each other; lip-locking, tail-slapping…. If one of the fish is
overly aggressive, and it is a one-sided aggression and you
should separate them or risk loosing one of them.
During their spawning process, they will use their mouths to
clean a flat rock, and the female will lay her eggs there. Not
all the eggs are laid at once; the female will take breathers,
at which time the male moves in and fertilizes the eggs. A
female usually lays 1,000-2,000 eggs. The eggs are opaque at
first, turning transparent in 24 hours. After the eggs are laid,
both parents watch over the eggs, wafting the eggs with their
fin and guarding them against predators. Occasionally they take
the eggs in their mouth, which keeps them clean and turns up bad
eggs, which are then destroyed.
If a constant tank temperature is maintained, the eggs should
hatch in about 36 hours. At first, the fry cannot swim, but they
squirm "en masse" on the rock, living off the egg sac, for about
4 days. The parents constantly attend to their young at this
time. Feeding these fry is easier than other breeds, because of
the baby Oscar's relatively large size. A good and simple plan
is to crush regular processed flake food in your fingers, and
just drop it in. Turn off filtration during fry feeding time to
make it easier for them to find their bits of food.
How the parents act towards their fry depends entirely on each
fish personality. Some have numerous spawn and never bother
their fry; others easily eat their young. To be on the safe
side, you can separate the fry from their parents. However I do
not recommend this until the parents have had a few unsuccessful
spawnings. The fry will reach 1.5 to 2 inches after 12 weeks at
which time they can be sold.
About the author:
William berg is an experienced aquarist that written articles on
everything from
aquarium decoration to clown loaches
