Dnphillips08's Oscar Tank

[dnphillips08]

Well it's been a while since I've been active on the site. I had to take a leave of absence to deal with stuff going on in my life (i.e. trying to move away from the brink of divorce :eek: not a fun place to be let me tell you). Now things are somewhat back on track. During the whole process I got a new couple new fish! I'm an emotional shopper, weird for a guy I know but fish have a strange way of cheering me up! One fish in particular, was just screaming my name through the aquarium glass (honestly I think he was screaming, "FOOD! FEED ME!" but hey it's easy to confuse the two). This fish happened to be a handsome little Oscar. Now I must admit I did something noobish and bought the Oscar knowing all my tanks were too small for his adult size. Just need a bigger tank then, right? :hmm3grin2orange: I've wanted a bigger tank for quite some time anyways, so it wasn't really a big deal and with the wife gone there was no stopping me. Well turns out I wanted things to work with the wife more than I thought, so she's back after quite a bit of coaxing. Now I have an Oscar growing quickly as they do (about 1" in the last month). So a new bigger tank is becoming more of a necessity than an option. I've found a few good deals on craigslist (a 90G and a 110G) and now just to convince the wife :yipes: . The planning has gone into full effect and so has the convincing (planning- going well, convincing- dead in the water). So here is the plan:

[dnphillips08]

I really like the look of Iwagumi tanks. Sadly word on the street is Oscars have a tendency to destroy plants and rearrange tanks. But the heart of Iwagumi can live on right? We'll see. As I'm still undecided on whether I want the 90G or the 110G, I can't plan everything down to the t. They both cost the same, I personally would like the 110 but convincing the wife to be okay with a 55 is hard enough alone. But the general Idea of the layout will be to give the feel of the oh so beautiful Rocky Mountains in my aquarium. Concave layout using mostly rocks, not sure exactly which type (ideally I'd like to go rock hunting but I'm not entirely sure where to go to look). I feel like a lot of my other tank designs have been cluttered so I want more empty space (negative space??) with this scape. I have quite a bit of pool filter sand and the current tank the Oscar (Otis) is in has a bit of Eco complete, so I was thinking about mixing the two. I'll have to test it out to see how it looks. I'm not sure what kind of filters the tank comes with, so I may have to go buy my first canister filter to make sure I have enough filtration. Lighting on the tank will be minimal, pretty much just enough so I can see the fish and get decent pictures. I also want to incorporate some caves but haven't really came to a solid conclusion of how I am going to do this. I want natural looking caves that will blend with the aquascape and I haven't found a method that does this very well yet. For the background I'm a little undecided on what color I want, optimally if I had the time and money I'd make my own. Stocking will be Otis and Captain Spaulding (my clown loach), my lfs has two medium sized clown loaches on sale for $19.99 so I want to add them so Captain Spaulding can finally have some amigos to hang out with. I would buy more clown loaches but the other ones they have for sale are pretty small and Otis has demonstrated his aggressive eating habits (i.e. he eat his Zebra Danio roommates). I don't really have any other fish planned stocking wise because I feel that I am already pushing the stocking level. That's all I have thought about thus far, if I'm missing anything or you have any suggestions let me know!
*PS: Otis and Captain Spaulding are currently in a 10G (So bad I know). I've had Otis for about a month and he has grown roughly 1" or so. Captain Spaulding has grown quite a bit since I got him a couple months ago. How much longer do you think I have before I HAVE to get a larger tank or re-home my fish?*
Here are some pictures:
The Tank They're In
http://i949.photobucket.com/albums/ad335/dnphillips08/th_FT1.jpg (http://s949.photobucket.com/albums/ad335/dnphillips08/?action=view&current=FT1.jpg)
Otis (He doesn't like pictures)
http://i949.photobucket.com/albums/ad335/dnphillips08/th_TotheSpot.jpg (http://s949.photobucket.com/albums/ad335/dnphillips08/?action=view&current=TotheSpot.jpg)
Captain Spaulding (Also doesn't like pictures)
http://i949.photobucket.com/albums/ad335/dnphillips08/th_hmmm.jpg (http://s949.photobucket.com/albums/ad335/dnphillips08/?action=view&current=hmmm.jpg)

[Lady Hobbs]

I would get the 110 so the Oscar has more back and forth area for swimming. The 90 gallon is the same footprint as the 75 but a couple inches higher.

I would probably also go all sand since the tank won't be planted. Not much point in spending your planting substrate if you aren't going to plant. I would put it in the tank you have now and plant that one. Only the loaches will use the caves but even some driftwood would work and make your tank look nice. Throw in some floating plants that the Oscar can't destroy and call it a day. Since Oscars like to dig and rearrange, the plant substrate may stay stirred up by him so that's another reason to use something else he can throw around.

[dnphillips08]

Thanks for the recommendations LH! Any recommendations for the floating plant? Somehow I got a bunch of little floating green leaves in my tank (frogbit?) would that work? Or should I get some anacharis or something like it and just let it float around?

I've been watching the tank quite a bit today and it seems that Otis has the fresh fish fever and has been chasing my clown loach all over today. I don't know how much longer I should put off getting the tank or doing something. I'm still trying to get my wife on board at least somewhat but she's almost as stubborn as me so it's not going well. Any thoughts on how soon I should get the tank?

[dnphillips08]

Well so far everything is looking good, I think I should have the tank by this weekend. As I've thought more about the aquascaping aspect of the tank, I think I'm going to try plants. There are some plants in the tank with him now and he seems to enjoy hanging out in them. Stem plants to this point have not worked will at all, so they won't be part of the design in the least. I'm thinking just simple plants like moss and java fern. I was thinking about trying a carpet plant to work with my mountain design, but from my research a lot of carpets demand higher light which I'm not really looking to have on the tank. So I might try to do a moss carpet if I can figure out a good way to go about it. I'm going to use lace rock for the scape, my lfs sells it at a reasonable rate and I really like the look of it. My clown loach seems to love it too. The floating plant that has invaded both of my tanks is duckweed, really is an annoying plant imo. Must of came with some of the plants I bought awhile ago. So that's kind of a progress report.