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How often do Oscars spawn and how long does it take for eggs to hatch? When we got back from vacation, we had eggs - so exciting, but our pic got to them. For some reason Oscar let his/her? guard down. Also, I'm really not sure which one laid the eggs. The one we thought was the female was guarding them and the one we thought was the male looks fat. I need all the info I can get. Thanks.

Hi,

It really depends on how you feed them and simulate climatic changes etc...water quality matters also of course. Should not be too hard to get them to breed at interval of about 3 months. Shorter is definitely possible. I've done 2 months interval or might have been little shorter than that.
Take out pleco's etc.. next time. Or keep a light on all the time, better to just take out other fish. The MALE usually ends up guarding the eggs if he is bigger and stronger than the female. Also, you can tell if the female is really "packing a lot of eggs", ie and is "ripe" for the picking.....keep an eye out for reddish dirt color on the bottom of their bodies. But again looking at genital papillae is good for sexing. Male has longer, thinner, more pointed "tube", while female's ovipositor is shorter, bigger(wider), more oval(barrel) shaped...just remember that it needs to pass 2mm eggs through there. Have pics of them?

Joe
www.cichlidfish.com