CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

everytime i put a heater in the tank the Oscar ram at it with there heads until it breaks what should i do about this???????????/

Aren't Oscars great?!  There are a couple of approaches you can take. 

1.  If you have a subersible heater, mount it horizontall, and low on the "wall".  This may discourage them from using it as a punching bag.

2.  With some cannister and wet/dry filter setups, you can get a module that allows you to add an inline filter.  That way the fish have no access to it.

3.  Some cannister and wet/dry sysstems come with a built-in heater.

4.  Buy a titamium heater -- harder for them to destroy.

Good luck!

I would try a heater guard. It worked for my Oscars.

Oh i would love to tell you how to solve the problem but i haven't figured it out yet. My oscar hits that all the time. Thankfully he hasn't broken one yet. They say that they hit it because of the light. So if you have a heater with a light on it maybe turning th light to the back of the tank would help? Sorry.

There's all kinds of theories why Oscars break their heaters. Some folks think it's the light (as mentioned above), others the heat, etc. etc. My own personal opinion is that Oscars abuse everything in their aquariums, and the poor heaters are fragile and don't stand up too well when abused in that regard. My solution has been simply to use submersible heaters, and then hang them by their cord in the center of the aquarium so they can't hit anything. The Oscars nose them around, etc., but the heater only swings freely.

Give him some dithers to abuse