Comments Oscar owners have made:

Below I will post some comments I have received from pacu fans. I add new ones every couple of months. Some of them are full of facts and experiences; some are filled with fun stories. I have marked in bold the comments I find of interest or I find funny. I will be adding real forums soon. Enjoy:

Most frequently asked Question: How often should I feed my Oscar live feeders?

Answer: According to our local pet store and experience, we feed them ciclid sticks and once a week we feed them multiple feeders. It depends on the size of our fish but they will chase, catch and eat as many as they can fit in their mouths. Quite remarkable.

I really appreciate all the work you did to provide information for those of us who would like to know more about our fish! FYI, oscars often attack heater lights. It is possible that your friend's fish and yours were attacking the light that comes on when the heater is on and that is how the heaters broke. An easy fix is to position your heater so the light faces away from inside of the tank. Jon

Hi, Just thought I would write in to tell you that your's is the best website so far that I have found on this fish. Most don't even list them under "oddball varieties" I started working in a feed and pet supply store in Feb. and we have a fish dept. One day this very nice guy comes in with a problem, it seems his fish have out grown his tank and he needs to get rid of them. Being a big softie I told him I would be glad to take them in. (At this time I had a 20 gal tank just sitting on the deck that my husband bought me) After I asked what kind of fish, he told me they were a albino tiger oscar and a pacu. My mother had one of these fish when I was very young, so I figured no problem.(ha ha) Now we have "Fillet" she is beautiful, her tankmate went to a home with other tiger oscars. She seemed lonely at first so I brought home a small feeder, he would either be a buddy or dinner. Well 4 months later the feeder whose name is "Buddy" loves her (her dorsal is mostly rounded and I read that males have a sharper point to their dorsal fins) he goes to which ever part of the tank she is at and even rubs against her at times. My husband has given in and let me purchase a 135 gal tank for her and I now have another person who wants to give me a long finned albino tiger oscar who is half her size. My girl is about 14 inches long and very active, she likes bannanas and she plays with whole unshelled hazel nuts, I only give these to her rarely as I don't know what it does to the water. I have heard of Pacus cracking the shells of Brazil nuts and eating the nut.

Great website man, its good to see some interesting informative material on the net. I just graduated college and my obsession with tropical fish grows by the day. What began as a bowl holding a beta soon turned into the 100 gallon that i am now looking to upgrade even further. I have 2 pacus, two tiger oscars, green terror, 2 parrots, and some other ciclids. My pacus are about the same size as yours and they act exactly like you descibe them.

We have a Pacu that we've had for about twelve years. This month we purchased a 300 gallon aquarium for him (her). We had him in a 100 gal. Of course, he broke heaters (fortunately never electrocuted I was surprised about your story) knocked the top glass panels off the aquarium, with them landing either in his aquarium or broken on the floor--what a character. Good thing we have hardwood floors. We are very attached to him and talk to him every time we walk past his aquarium-- he loves attention. The question I have is are there any toys, like balls or rings we could use to train him or that he could play with? I'm worried that he gets bored. Every so often we buy him plants from the fish store which we know he'll tear up but we figure it gives him some- thing to do. He started out with Oscars but did away with them rather quickly. So we've given up getting him a companion. He is trained to get his grapes stuffed with pellets by swimming from one end to the other. My son is worried that I give him too many grapes and he will just get bigger. He gets a total of 8 grapes a night and every other night I stuff them with Cichlid pellets. I didn't know you could get sinking pellets. He also likes strawberries. No veggies thank you.