Menu
Advertisment
One of the species from the family of the cichlids is Astronotus ocellatus. This family includes fish commonly known as oscar, velvet circhild, tiger oscar, or marble cichils. Its natural residence is in South America, so you can often find it sold as a food in the markets, but it is also spread in Australia, China and The United States. Due to its slow growth, it has limited potential for aquaculture. Nevertheless, you can often find it in aquariums.
Their usual dimensions are 34 cm (about 15 in.) in length and 1.6 kg (2.6 lb). The wild species have a dark colour and you can see orange ringed spots also called ocelli localized on their dorsal fin and caudal peduncle. Some say they use these ocelli to protect themselves from piranha (Serrasalmus spp.), a species that lives in the same natural habitat as Astronotus ocellatus. Another trait is the fact that they can change colour. This helps them when it comes to protecting their territory from their conspecifics. You can separate the young from the old by their specific colours. The young ones have white and orange stripes and spots on their heads.
French Guiana, Brazil, Colombia and Peru are the native residence of Astronotus ocellatus and you can find it in the Amazon basin, in the Approuague and Oyapock drainages and along the Içá, Amazonas, Negro, Ucayali and Solimões river systems, under the submerged branches, in the slow moving water. Some populations were noticed in China, the North of Australia, and Florida, USA. They got there due to the trading of ornamental fish. Because it can't tolerate cold water (it can't survive under 12.9 °C (55.2 °F), the distribution of the species is very limited.
You can feed captive oscars with crayfish, feeder goldfish, worms, rosy reds, grasshoppers, flies and other similar insects. In the wild, Astronotus ocellatus eats sedentary catfish such as Bunocephalus, Rineloricaria and Oshmacanthus. The species has a suction mechanism wich allows it to capture the prey. They also use a technique called 'laying-on-side' such as the one used by Parachromis friedchsthalii and Nimbochromis livingstonii. Vitamin C is vital to the species, its absence may cause health problems.