I acquired my 2 14" Oscars 3 months ago and my 14" Indo dat about 1.5months ago. They all live in a 250 gallon. Peaceful until just 2 weeks ago, with my butti, the Indo dat went into some weird spawning thing. I don't see eggs or anything. They are just always together and the butti is the one digging. My dat then started picking on my Oscars every night. Note, this is all throughout the tank so it seems to be not a territory thing. The thing is he only chooses to pick on these 2 albino reds and it ONLY happens during nighttime. I observed them during the weekends. My other 2 Oscars, a red and golden one are not picked on. The 2 albinos are very scared and heavily battered now. A lot of missing scales and gorged side on one of them. I only have this other 20 gallon tank and thinking this is a spawning behavior I have already moved the butti there about a week ago. It stopped for 2 nights and then for 5 straight nights now, I have lost a lot of my sleep coz the dat keeps on chasing and picking on the 2 Oscars. It will stop for a few minutes and there he goes again. Do you know of any other way to stop this? I don't want to part with any of the 3 fish but it seems like that I need to. I want to put the dat in the 20 gallon but the water is not properly cycled and we have a hyper-chlorine outbreak just yesterday so I don't want to risk the dat (the butti is there though and seems fine). It is also only 12" wide. I am losing patience and if this goes again tonight, there will be one less dat in the world tonight. Thanks in advance!
Side Notes:
1. I love all my fish but I really hate mean fish.
2. I went into cichlid and monster fish keeping due to seeing these 2 albino reds in the LFS.
3. I changed my substrate from white to diamond black sand 2 weeks ago if that will be of any help.
4. Food is no problem except that the injured Oscars are now eating less.
5. My dat is more expensive than my 2 Oscars combined (I do not want to site this but if it comes to that then let it be stated.)
Side Notes:
1. I love all my fish but I really hate mean fish.
2. I went into cichlid and monster fish keeping due to seeing these 2 albino reds in the LFS.
3. I changed my substrate from white to diamond black sand 2 weeks ago if that will be of any help.
4. Food is no problem except that the injured Oscars are now eating less.
5. My dat is more expensive than my 2 Oscars combined (I do not want to site this but if it comes to that then let it be stated.)
