Can Oscar Fish Live Alone? (Yes, but…)

If you want to keep an Oscar Fish but wondering. can Oscar Fish live alone? then you are in the right place.

In this article, I am going to answer the same question.

Yes, Oscar Fish can live alone. You just have to provide it the ideal environment to keep it happy and healthy in your tank.

Besides, you can also keep other Oscars as well as other species of fish with your Oscar Fish.

Can Oscar Fish Live Alone? image

Are Oscar Fish Good Pets?

How to keep an Oscar Fish happy in your tank?

oscar fish

As mentioned earlier, you can keep Oscar Fish alone in a tank but you have to provide the ideal environment to keep it happy and healthy.

1. Tank size

Oscar Fish can get pretty large. It can grow up to 20 inches long.

Also, it grows pretty fast at a rate of 1 inch per month.

That’s why even a single Oscar Fish requires a large tank.

Ideally, you should keep a single Oscar Fish in 55 gallon tank.

If you have a baby Oscar Fish then you can keep it in a smaller tank of 20 to 30 gallons but soon you will have to upgrade to a larger tank.

If you want to get more information about Oscar fish tank size then check out my complete guide on Oscar fish tank size.

2. Water condition

Oscar Fish is a tropical fish and it is found in mostly Amazon basin.

Oscar Fish needs a warmer temperature and it cannot tolerate the low temperature.

The ideal water temperature for Oscar Fish is between 74 to 81° Fahrenheit.

Its pH tolerance range is between 6-8 and the hardness tolerance range is up to 20 KH.

So to keep Oscar Fish happy and healthy in your tank, you should keep the water parameters range within these ideal ranges.

3. Food

Oscar Fish are omnivorous but their diet mostly consists of meaty foods.

In the wild, Oscar Fish feeds on crustaceans, small insects, small fishes, and plant matter.

You should try to emulate the same diet in your aquarium.

Besides, for the proper growth and development of Oscar Fish, providing a balanced diet is the key. So you should feed a variety of food to your Oscar Fish.

Live food

You can feed live food to your Oscar Fish like feeder fish, bloodworms, earthworms, waxworms, shrimps, mealworms, etc.

But there are a couple of things you should keep in mind when it comes to feeding live foods:

  • Live food is the most nutritious food you can feed to your Oscar Fish but it also carries the risk of transferring harmful bacteria and viruses in your tank. And these harmful bacteria and viruses can cause disease to your Oscar Fish. So you should only get live food from a reputed shop.
  • Live food also has a very short shelf life so you should feed the live food within a few days after getting it.

Frozen food

A very good alternative to live food is Frozen food.

You can feed Frozen food such as brine shrimp, bloodworms, etc to your Oscar Fish.

Frozen foods are not as nutritious as live food but they still have a lot of nutrients and the best part is, it doesn’t carry any risk of transferring harmful bacteria or viruses in your tank.

Besides, frozen foods are very convenient to feed and they also have a longer shelf life.

What Do Oscar Fish Eat? (A Complete Guide)

Flakes and pellets

In your aquarium, mostly you should feed high-quality cichlids flakes and pellets to your Oscar Fish.

These flakes and pellets contain all the essential nutrients that your Oscar Fish need for its proper growth and development.

Fruits and vegetables

As Oscar Fish are omnivorous, occasionally, you should also feed them fruits and vegetables.

You can feed them vegetables such as cucumber, spinach, green peas, lettuce, etc.

Before feeding the vegetables you should blanch or boil it and cut it down into small pieces so that it will be easy for Oscar Fish to consume it.

You can also feed fruits such as apple and banana to your Oscar Fish.

Again before feeding these fruits to your Oscar Fish, you should cut them down into small pieces so that your Oscar Fish can easily consume it.

Remember, though Oscar Fish are omnivorous their diet mostly consists of meaty foods so fruits and vegetables should not be there primary diet. And you should occasionally feed them fruits and vegetables.

How Long Can Oscar Fish Go Without Eating?

4. How to entertain Oscar Fish?

Oscar Fish are very curious and the like to investigate new things that you put into their tank or on the surface of the water of the tank.

If you are going to keep only a single Oscar Fish in the whole tank then there are a few things you can do to keep your Oscar Fish entertained and encourage its curiosity.

Live food

The way Oscar Fish stays busy and entertained in the wild is by catching live foods.

And you can do the same in your tank and feed live food to your Oscar Fish like feeder fish, crickets, shrimps, various types of worms, etc.

Toys

You can introduce some toys like ping pong ball or golf ball in your Oscar Fish tank.

If you want to keep the ball floating on the surface then you should go for ping pong ball. Or you can also drop down the ping pong ball to the surface of the tank by poking a hole into it.

Besides, you can also use a golfball

Oscar Fish seems to really enjoy knocking the ball so it will keep them busy and entertained.

Moss ball

You can also introduce Moss ball into your Oscar Fish aquarium. Your Oscar will play with it and move it around in the tank.

Mirror

You can also keep a mirror floating on the surface of the water of your Oscar Fish tank or you can sink it into the tank.

Oscar Fish are very territorial and when they look at the mirror they will think that there is another Oscar Fish who is invading in their territory. 

And so it will try to fight with it and chase it out.

Bridges and tubes

Oscar Fish really enjoying moving through bridges and tubes.

So you can introduce some bridges and tubes into the aquarium. 

It will also provide an ascetic look to your aquarium.

Get another Oscar

Oscar Fish may get bored with whatever you put into their tank like balls, mirror, etc after sometime.

So if you introduce another Oscar fish into the tank then they will play with each other and will not get bored for a long time.

Schooling fish

You can also add some schooling fish into your tank.

Oscar Fish is a predator fish and it will chase the schooling fish and may even eat a few of them.

So the key is to get a group of at least 5-7 schooling fish so that the Oscar fish will not chase only one schooling fish, tire it, and eat it.

Overall, adding schooling fish in the Oscar fish tank is a very good way to keep your Oscar Fish busy and entertained.

Can You Put Live Plants with Oscars?

Can you keep two Oscar in the same tank?

Yes, you can easily keep two Oscar Fish in the same tank.

But as Oscar Fish can get pretty large you will require to keep them in a large tank.

For two Oscars, ideally, you should keep them in at least 75 gallon tank.

If you are going to keep Juvenile Oscars then you can keep them in smaller tank. But as they grow bigger, eventually, you will have to keep them in a larger tank.

Oscar Fish Behavior And Intelligence (Everything You Need To Know)

How many Oscar Fish can stay together?

You can keep as many Oscar Fish you want together in the same tank.

But there are a couple of things you should keep in mind while keeping them together.

  • You should try to keep Oscar Fish that are similar in size.
  • You should provide a larger tank according to the number of Oscars you are going to keep in the tank.

Now, in the above video, there are a lot of Oscars in a relatively very small tank and you can do the same but then you will have to do the water changes very very frequently.

So a good rule of thumb to follow is to have a 55 gallon tank for your first Oscar Fish and then you should upgrade the tank to extra 20-30 more gallons for every new addition of Oscar Fish.

13 Types of Oscar Fish For Aquarium (With Images)

Will Oscars kill each other?

Oscar Fish are very aggressive and territorial fish and when you keep Oscars together then you will definitely notice some aggression.

They will fight with each other.

The most common ways they fight with each other is by chasing each other and “Jaw locking” this is when they face each other head to head and try to get hold of each others mouth.

Here is a video of fighting Oscar fish.

Now these fighting behaviour are very common in Oscars and usually it doesn’t result in death.

But Oscar Fish can kill each other though it is not common.

So, you should watch their behaviour and if you notice that they fight with each other but most of the time they stay peacefully in the tank then there is nothing to worry about.

Are Oscar Fish Jumpers? (Can they jump out of the tank?)

What other fish can live with Oscar Fish?

Though Oscar Fish is a very aggressive fish there are some other fish you can keep in your Oscar Fish tank.

There are a few things you should keep in mind while choosing tankmates for Oscar fish:

  • You should choose the fish that grow similar to the size of your Oscar Fish.
  • You should choose the fish that are semi aggressive and can hold their own against Oscar Fish.

Some good examples of best tank mates for Oscar Fish includes Convict cichlids, Firemouth cichlid, Silver dollars, Silver arowana, Blue acara, Pleco, etc.

I have written a detailed article about the best tank mates for Oscar Fish on this website here.

20 Tips to Maintain a Healthy Aquarium

Conclusion

So, can Oscar Fish live alone? – Definitely, you can keep a single Oscar Fish in the whole tank and it will do just fine. You just have to provide the ideal environment and feed it high-quality food.

Besides, you can also keep other Oscars as well as other species of fish with your Oscar Fish.

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Author
Prathmesh Gawai
He is the main author and editor at Aquagoodness.com. And he loves to share helpful information on aquarium and/or fishkeeping hobby. Prathmesh has over five years of aquarium and/or fishkeeping experience. Currently, he has a Betta fish tank. He has written hundreds of articles on various aquarium fish species and on fish tank maintenance over the last five years. Connect with him on YouTube here. Learn more about him here.

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