The new guy
Sep. 13th, 2011 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
murakozi...or girl. I really dunno which and probably never will.
After weeks of 'feeding' an empty 75 gallon tank with small ammounts of pure ammonia, the lazy-ass bacteria in it finally got off their butts and the darned thing finally cycled. After a big ol partial water change, it was time to go to the store and bring home the fish who will be the tank's sole inhabitant.
And here he/she is:
It's not the greatest pic, but the best I could get. I was lazy and used my phone's camera and it was having trouble figuring out just where to focus with all those layers of clear stuff in the shot.
A juvenile tiger oscar. Right now the little guy is only about 2.5 inches long. He'll get bigger, though. Much bigger. As an adult, he'll probably be somewhere between 12 and 15 inches long and weigh 2-3 pounds. That's why he needs such a big tank to live in.
In the picture, he's still in a small acrylic acclimation tank that's hanging on the side of the 75 gallon aquarium. He spent a good bit of time in there once I got him home so that he could slowly get accustomed to the water chemistry of his new home. He's actually a little pale in the pic. They can lose a bit of color when stressed and he'd just had his whole world changed on him. The olive-colored areas on his body have already become a bit more black as of this morning. He's really quite pretty with the orange glowing against his dark background.
Oscars are cichlids and, thus, rather territorial. They tend to prefer being alone except when spawning. Since they're sexually monomorphic, it's pretty much impossible to tell their gender without either seeing a pair spawning or a close up medical inspection. So, unless this one decides to randomly lay eggs for no reason some day, I'll probably never know whether it's a boy or a girl. Dunno why, but I just seem to assume male.
He needs a name. 'Bubba' has been suggested. Ackbar is kind of an obvious possibility. Of course, he could end up like probably 90% of the oscars out there and end up called 'Oscar.' I dunno. I'm open to suggestions.
After weeks of 'feeding' an empty 75 gallon tank with small ammounts of pure ammonia, the lazy-ass bacteria in it finally got off their butts and the darned thing finally cycled. After a big ol partial water change, it was time to go to the store and bring home the fish who will be the tank's sole inhabitant.
And here he/she is:
It's not the greatest pic, but the best I could get. I was lazy and used my phone's camera and it was having trouble figuring out just where to focus with all those layers of clear stuff in the shot.
A juvenile tiger oscar. Right now the little guy is only about 2.5 inches long. He'll get bigger, though. Much bigger. As an adult, he'll probably be somewhere between 12 and 15 inches long and weigh 2-3 pounds. That's why he needs such a big tank to live in.
In the picture, he's still in a small acrylic acclimation tank that's hanging on the side of the 75 gallon aquarium. He spent a good bit of time in there once I got him home so that he could slowly get accustomed to the water chemistry of his new home. He's actually a little pale in the pic. They can lose a bit of color when stressed and he'd just had his whole world changed on him. The olive-colored areas on his body have already become a bit more black as of this morning. He's really quite pretty with the orange glowing against his dark background.
Oscars are cichlids and, thus, rather territorial. They tend to prefer being alone except when spawning. Since they're sexually monomorphic, it's pretty much impossible to tell their gender without either seeing a pair spawning or a close up medical inspection. So, unless this one decides to randomly lay eggs for no reason some day, I'll probably never know whether it's a boy or a girl. Dunno why, but I just seem to assume male.
He needs a name. 'Bubba' has been suggested. Ackbar is kind of an obvious possibility. Of course, he could end up like probably 90% of the oscars out there and end up called 'Oscar.' I dunno. I'm open to suggestions.