Our oscar killed three fish in 12 hours.

[VenusRising]

They have been living happily together for months. There was a bit of territorial chasing, but that was normal. I got up this morning and both of the julii cories were dead. That was sad enough, because I love my juliis!! About 30 minutes ago I cut my finger and had to go upstairs and get a band aid. After I took care of my finger I walked by the tank and looked inside, and there was the oscar with the back half of the clown loach sticking out of his mouth.

I've never seen such annihilation in a tank. I guess it's just going to be that oscar and the snails in the tank.

What a bummer. :(

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

1. You put cories and a loach in with an oscar?

Those are oscar food.

[VenusRising]

3. They've been in there for months.

It was never a problem before last night.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

5. The thing is, it's just a matter of time with a combo like that

Fish don't form bonds with each other. All it takes is for the Oscar to get a teeny bit annoyed or hungry.

[VenusRising]

9. I guess so.

Like I said, the oscar is the lone ranger from here on out.

[astonamous]

37. We had an Oscar...named Oscar (the kids named him)...

He was a lone fish for years except for the occasional feeder Gold Fish we would give him. He would eat them all except one or two. They would live happily for a few weeks and then all of a sudden, Oscar would eat the left overs. Oscar would also eat right out of our hands.

Oscar was a well traveled fish. He moved with us from Maryland to Wyoming and when we moved to Utah, he was re-homed with a friend in Wyoming.

[Arugula Latte]

2. Oscar is ... another fish?

Or a mammal?

Anyway, sorry to hear. That's got to be a nasty surprise. :(

Oh, wait. On edit, I guess an oscar is a kind of a fish. I'm an idiot. :banghead:

I've just got goldfish.

[VenusRising]

4. It was a surprise all right!

I do love goldfish. What kind do you have?

[Arugula Latte]

6. Two are just plain orange "feeder" fish from a school carnival.

They've survived, though, and are getting rather large. The third is a mostly white fancy-tailed one.

Oh, and we have two little cloud fish living with the goldfish. The pet store people said they were hardy, and they have proven to be so.

This is all in a 20 gallon tank.

[VenusRising]

13. I love those fancy goldfish.

Their tails are so pretty. Maybe one day I'll dedicate a tank to them.

My personal tank is dedicated to Endlers right now, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to give them up. The males are so vividly colored and the females are a creamy yellow.

[Arugula Latte]

14. Whoa!!

What a cool looking fish. That is just spectacular.

I've never seen a fish colored like that. :wow:

[VenusRising]

25. They are awesome.

They are live bearers, too, so it's always fun to find new little fishies in the tank.

Their habitat was destroyed when a dump was put in next to the pond where they originated. It's the aquarium enthusiasts keeping this breed going. If you put them in with other guppies, they will breed with them, but it destroys the natural line, so it's just the Endlers in my tank. They have a lot of energy and always rush to the front of the tank when you peek in at them. I highly rec them if you ever decided to get more fish.

[Fire Walk With Me]

34. Those a prettier than one of my favorites, the neon tetra.

[AlCzervik]

7. we used to have a fish tank, we had a couple of different types of fish that all

seem to get along just fine, so one day when we went to cat fish pond my daughter caught some non catfish and my husband decides it would be fun to bring it home and put it in the tank. The next morning every fish in the tank was gone and the one he brought home was dead, i'm pretty sure he pulled a Mr. Creosote.

[VenusRising]

11. Oh, no.

Chalk that up to a lesson learned. :banghead:

[MrCoffee]

8. Oscars are mean little bastards...

My parents had one that, I kid you not, used to jump out of the tank at people when they walked by. We got tired of wrestling the little shit back into the tank, so we put a brick on the lid.


That fish ate whole hot dogs.

[VenusRising]

12. Wow!

He must have been huge.

[jobycom]

10. Heath Ledger is a shoe-in.

:smoke:

[flvegan]

15. I had a huge oscar a long time ago.

Mean sob. If you stood at the end of the tank, he'd frantically swim against the glass facing you, mouth open, ready to eat you alive.

[VenusRising]

19. This one is going to be that way, too, I think.

Maybe he just hit maturity. :shrug:

[La Lioness Priyanka]

16. your snails may not last long... i googled oscar fish

since i had NO idea what they were and apparantly these fish eat everything

check the vids on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0RTnzDkWFU&feature=related

[VenusRising]

20. That's ok.

That's the reason we originally got the clown loach. They are notorious snail eaters. If the oscar will do the job, then I'm okay with that. The snails we have in our tank reproduce asexually, so there are always more running around.

[suninvited]

17. An Oscar will eat anything that is smaller than his mouth.

Maybe he just discovered his mouth was big enough to eat them?

Oscars should be alone. They won't bother some bigger fish like a large plecotomus.

[VenusRising]

21. I didn't think the cories were smaller.

They were pretty fat. I guess not fat enough. :(

Yep, the oscar is going to be the in solitary.

[suninvited]

22. Oscar might not have killed the cories, though.

You only caught him with the clown in his mouth, right?

[VenusRising]

26. Yeah.

They were both dead when I turned on the light this morning. :(

[seemunkee]

18. Oscar is back?

[Greyskye]

31. Would that it was so.

That was my first thought as well. :rofl:

[Bertha Venation]

23. Bummer.

:hug:

[VenusRising]

28. Thanks.

:hug:

[Bertha Venation]

24. Bummer.

:hug:

[Blue Diadem]

27. We've had that happen before.

It's awful isn't it? It stinks to lose so many fish in one day.

When our son moved into his own home a few years ago, he conveniently left behind his 11 ft wall of fish tanks in our living room. So I am now keeper of the grandfish. There is a Jack Dempsy in a tank by itself because it's so nasty. The 6 ft tank has a Jaguar that eliminated the last of the smaller fish(about a 5" long Bala) last year. The last 5 have grown bigger than him now so he can't eat them but he'll sure try occasionally. He's shared the tank for 6-7 years now with Bala sharks, a pleco and I think the others are Silver Dollars. There are only 2 left of the sharks and two of the big round silver guys. He eliminated their friends. I have to admit I do get amused watching the pleco get mad at him and kick his tail fin.

Anyway, like you said, cichlids can get along with other fish for great lengths of time and then suddenly attack. If it'll fit in their mouth, it'll be gone.

[VenusRising]

29. That's a lot of tanks!

You are very nice to care for all of that.

It's just amazing at how fast they turn. One hour here, the next gone. I won't be wasting any more money putting fish in that tank. 20 gallons long is a lot of room for one fish.

[Blue Diadem]

30. He's close by so he cleans and does the maintenance and meds.

I feed and add water and break up fish fights. He's still working on remodeling the room he's eventually moving them into so hopefully this summer I'll have my 11ft of wall back. I'll miss them, I've grown attached to the finned little creatures but we'll still have our granddaughter's 7 yr old goldfish we keep on one of the kitchen counters.

Yeah, it's just crazy the way they can turn. When they get large, you should hear the crashes when they hit the sides of the tank or the top of it.

[kaiden]

32. VenusRising, how big is your tank?

I've got my oscar and a pleco in a 55 gallon (both of them are about 6 inches long), but I'll switch them out to a 120 gallon in May -- and they'll be the ONLY two fish in there. I have julies and yellow labs together now in a 10 gallon -- they'll go in the bigger tank once I get the big boys moved.

[VenusRising]

33. They were in a 20 long.

I still have 2 juliis in my 20 high with the Endler's and a violet dragon goby. At least they didn't all die.

[Lyric]

35. Yeah...pretty much the only fish you can keep with an Oscar are big ones.

What stinks is that a clown loach usually *is* a good tankmate for an Oscar, but only if it's one that's about as big as the Oscar is. Honestly, though, unless you have a 100 gallon tank, it's probably better to just keep him alone. I'm sure you know how big he's going to get; he'll need every bit of space that you can give him.

One other thing--you might want to reconsider the snails, especially if they're larger versions of apple snails. They're fine when they're little, but when they get bigger, they can pollute a tank faster than just about anything but a big pleco, and *that* could be what's stressing out your Oscar and making him more aggressive. I found that out the hard way about ten years ago, when I had my first two snails. As they got bigger, I didn't realize that their size was a problem until my tank chemistry started going haywire and my other fish got stressed out. I started looking for information and found out that two grown snails were far too much for my 29-gallon tank, unless they were in it alone. I wound up trading them in for a couple of teeny snails, and then just kept up that system for years, trading them in every time they got big.

:hi:

[VenusRising]

39. They are malaysian trupet snails.

So they breed like crazy and really come out and clean the tank at night. In the day, they go under the gravel or under a rock. The java moss that is in the tank does a great job at keeping nitrates down and oxygenating the water.

[southpaw]

36. Back when I kept aquaria

I went throug a 'large predator' phase.

I had Oscars for a while.

An Aschara Catfish, which was beautimous,


But my favorite was an Arowana.



After my fascination with big, aggressive fish passed, I got into community tanks featuring all manner of tetras.

[VenusRising]

40. We have 3 tanks.

The oscar is in my husband's tank. My tank had Endler's in them with a couple of juliis and a violet dragon goby. Then I have a two gallon with a betta.

We go through fish phases, too. The oscar is relatively new, so I guess he's the new phase. :rofl:

[CreekDog]

38. That reminds me of a 3rd Rock From The Sun where Dick had to watch Mary's fish

and released a giant angelfish into her tank of goldfish.

who promptly ate all of them. :rofl:

[VenusRising]

41. Because most people don't realize that angelfish are cichlids.

I do remember that episode. :rofl: