i should put a disclaimer "WARNING: Individual results may vary".
the plants i can't explain, i've had the oscar for almost 3 years and got him when he was 2". never tolerated plants previously but when i decided to give it another try this past february he never ripped them up like in the past. i started by introducing 15 giant danios as dithers at the end of february as well. they are too fast to be caught and i thought it would be a good test. after a couple of weeks of that working out i added the 5 bolivian rams, oscar never even looked at them funny. next i added the lemon tetras, he ate one of those on the first night they were in the tank but none after that. a couple weeks later i added the black neons, again he got one the first day but then never again. having everything work out for the past couple months i decided to pick up the lamp eye tetras last week because petsmart was having a sale on them for only $1ea. i also removed the giant danios and brough them to a local LFS for store credit. its all worked out so far, and my ultimate goal was to have dithers that were more close to the "amazon/SA biotope" than the giant danios.