What do Oscars do when mating?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

They generally will section of a portion of the tank with a territory and guard it against any other fish, staying together.