One oscar beating up on other

J

JimT

AC Members
Feb 22, 2005
27
0
0
Indiana
Hi guys,
We recently put two young Oscars (~3-4 inches) in a 125 gallon tank. One is a tiger and one is an albino tiger. Well, the tiger is a little bigger and is beating up on the albino. Now "Whitey" hides in a corner under some driftwood most of the time. If he comes out, the tiger runs him right back. Whitey's fins are a little torn. Before I bought these I searched the forums quite a bit and saw several references to people keeping two in one tank. Is this just standard Oscar behavior? Is the tiger gonna lay off anytime soon or is he gonna beat Whitey to death?
Thanks!
Jim
 
Try adding lots of line of sight breaks so they don't always see each other. They are aggressive fish and are being kept in a small environment compared to what they would have in nature.
 
the best option is to have about 5-6 juvenile oscars in there and allow them to form a monogammous 'pair'. then remove the unpaired oscars and you should have no problem. you're trying to 'force' pair cichlids which rarely works.
 
liv2padl said:
the best option is to have about 5-6 juvenile oscars in there and allow them to form a monogammous 'pair'. then remove the unpaired oscars and you should have no problem. you're trying to 'force' pair cichlids which rarely works.
Click to expand...
Exactly. You don't even know if you have a male/female pair. Once a pair does form, get the rest of the group out of there, stat.
 
liv2padl said:
the best option is to have about 5-6 juvenile oscars in there and allow them to form a monogammous 'pair'. then remove the unpaired oscars and you should have no problem. you're trying to 'force' pair cichlids which rarely works.
Click to expand...

I kind of disagree with this. I have two female Oscars. One is a Red Oscar and the other is a Tiger Oscar. The Tiger Oscar was in the tank first and she grew to about 6 inches before I introduced the 2.5 inch Red Oscar into the tank. The Red Oscar is now an inch or so smaller than the Tiger Oscar and they get along just fine. Occasional skirmishes break out from time to time but nothing serious.
 
Fish in general and larger cichlids in particular seem to have a pretty broad range of individual personality traits. One oscar may accept others unconditionally, another may attack any others in sight. For the *best* chance of having two live together peacefully, raising a group is the way to go. Can you do it any other way? Of course — but you'll have to be lucky.
 
i think a 125 is fine for 2 oscars of that size or even a little bigger. if he continues to beat on whittie, meybe you shound get a divider or do a 75-80% water change and change all the deco around.
kyle
 
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