Mom wants to get an Oscar to reduce her guppy population. Any advice?

Oscars are large fish - there are much smaller fish that will happily gobble up guppies. What's her biggest tank?

I believe her largest right now is a 30 gallon but she's been eyeing the 50s that they have in store

oscars

Oscars require a lot of filteration fairly messy fish and also goldfish r known to cause hole in the head to oscars as oscars can't fight off the bacteria that commonly come on many goldfish. I would say get a nice dwarf pike or a jaguar or piranha something like that to take care of them. or offer then to someone who has one of the above. or even do a trade for something u might want for some goldfish feeders. My 8 inch dwarf pike will def eat goldfish of almost any size, my 3 inch jaguar will also attack and kill/eat watever he can catch basically. Hopefully this info helps some. Also 30 gallons is way to small for even a single oscar they recommend 75ish gallons for one oscar.

30 gallon is way too small for a grown jag. A Ctenopoma would fit well in a 30 gallon. Mine is full grown at about 6-7" and would take care of the guppy population no problem.
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Yea jags get big when I mentioned them I forgot the 30g tank part haha

jeaninel said:

30 gallon is way too small for a grown jag. A Ctenopoma would fit well in a 30 gallon. Mine is full grown at about 6-7" and would take care of the guppy population no problem.
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Agreed

The best guppy population control is the humble angelfish! Right now I have 3 that are 2 inch in diameter - not including fins - and they really pick off the baby guppies! As soon as I had them in the tank they went to work and by the end of the week there was no baby under the size of a cm/half an inch. Now that they are 2 inch one of them are starting to see if it can eat an adult female! The funny thing is that the guppies have this derpy attitude and casually swim by - they are not harmed any way. The guppies fins are perfect - except the males as they are nipping each others fins - and there are no inflamed areas on the guppies or do they get scared! Your mom can sell the older guppies if she wants while the angels are picking off the school of babies!

Thanks everyone! I'll pass the info along to my mom She does like Angelfish

In my 75 gallon I have a Male Bolivian ram that happily snacks on the Diamond Tetra Fry we are constantly getting. He doesn't get them all, but the majority of them end up as lunch. A Bolivian ram would happily live in a 30 gallon community tank.

As earlier said, 75g is an absolute minimum for an oscar. If you are breeding the guppies yourself, and they are free of any parasites, then I see no problem in feeding them to an oscar, however the oscar would also eat the adult guppies. And oscars need pristine water conditions, and love the occasional cricket. I fed mine on Hikari Cichlid Gold pellets as a staple.