New tank

James

new tank and I was wondering what kind of fish would be good to mix with an oscar, thankyou

aquakid

personally I would only reccomend oher oscars and maybe a shovelnose catfish

what is your tank size??

okiemavis

Shovelnose cat!? They can get over 3 feet and would probably pretty quickly outgrow and eat your oscar.

What size is your tank? If it's large enough, another oscar or a jack dempsey would work, but it would need to be quite a big tank. There are also some great plecos you could add and a catfish like a Synodontis eupterus or a Raphael catfish.

The most important thing here is tank size and filtration. Oscars are very, very messy, so you don't want to overstock the tank by adding another fish.

tophat665

If your tank is under 125, you can't add a second large cichlid. If your tank is under 75, you probably shouldn't get an Oscar in the first place (yes, they technically have enough water in a 55, but a full grown Oscar is longer than the tank is wide.) So, what size is your tank? If it's under 75 but over 30, there are some other excellent cichlids that'll give you very much the same sort of interaction as Oscars. If it's under 40, well, there are at least 4 different types of really cichlid-y cichlids (and many, many species) that will work, some of them in tanks as small as 5.5 gallons.

Pasfur

I would feel comfortable with a number of fish to be included with an Oscar, provided the aquarium is much larger, say 220 gallons or more.

In such aquariums you will find that Oscars do well in a community of large lesser aggressive fish, such as Severums, Blood Parrots, Geophagus sp., Raphael Catfish, adult Bala Sharks, Leporinus, or Tinfoil Barbs. This is contrary to popular myth, which is probably due to "my fish is tougher than your fish" syndrome.

As mentioned, it is very difficult to determine compatibility for Oscars in smaller sized aquariums.