CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

i have a question ...im new to keeping oscars
just how aggressive should they be with each other mine seem to grab each other by the mouth and do wat loooks like fight...is this normal or should they be seperated also the was a large channel cat in with them for less than a day he turned up dead would they kill him
he was to big for them to eat

What size are they? They may be in the process of mating.
Oscars will gang up on a new tank mate (even other oscars) and beat them up until they die
and if they are mating they get worse.

Regards


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TONY S

in regards to size one oscar is about 10 inches long the other is close to 8 inches i got no idea if they are male or female
...can you tell me how i can tell
i dont like the fighting betweeen them as i dont want my fish to turn up dead

Its not easy to tell maybe you could post some pics and let some one like Joe have a look. The males sometimes will have 2 or 3 eye looking marks on or around their tail fins. The female is suposed to have 2 anal like vents, but this is hard to see. Their are differences in fins ones more pointed, ones kinda round. I cant remember offhand which is which.
If they are getting ready to spawn they might start clearing some space on the tank floor for the eggs.

Regards


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TONY S

Have any pics? also, how much do they fight? all the time? any considerable visible damage from the fighting? how fierce is the fighting...etc...

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Joe
www.cichlidfish.com

like you saisd its hard to tell they both apear to be males not a lot of fighting ..they lock mouths and charge each other also a funny thing they sometimes make all the fins quivver like shake the both do it they dont seem t o any damage to each other just kind of aggressive behavior

Originally posted by oscar2001:
Its not easy to tell maybe you could post some pics and let some one like Joe have a look. The males sometimes will have 2 or 3 eye looking marks on or around their tail fins. The female is suposed to have 2 anal like vents, but this is hard to see. Their are differences in fins ones more pointed, ones kinda round. I cant remember offhand which is which.
If they are getting ready to spawn they might start clearing some space on the tank floor for the eggs.

Regards

the three spot test isn't always true, if they are tigers, the male will almost always have more orange pigment than the female, even the size of the dorsel fin can't alway determine the sex of the fish...all you can really do is to feed them a good diet, and maybe ad a bunch of arti. plants on one side of the tank, not too thick, but enough for each of them to escape from each other when it gets too bad.......

send the pic's to me, i will tell you what they are o.k or e-mail me the pictures

noahsarc@nbnet.nb.ca