how do these fish interact together in aquaria? so long as I provide a large enough tank and plenty of food, do you think these species at full size would be functional/good tankmates?
Oscars mixed with pike cichlids
- Thread starter iHonesty
- Start date
bad idea man. At the store we tried to put them together in one of the tanks. The pikes killed all of the oscars.
and do you think the oscars would kill the pikes of i gave them some extra growing time before i introduce the pikes? my idea was to have a single oscar and 3-4 pikes, and the pikes couldn't do anything to a full size oscar when theyre 6-7", i'd just be afraid the oscar would kill them. is there any way this can be managed?? and @brackishman, do you have experience with this interaction? maybe its just whether or not you get crazy aggro pikes vs. a baby oscar or something. idk. i want it to work out for sure. i dont want to spend a lot on pikes and have them die or kill my prized oscar
we were keepin about 4 inch pikes with 3-3.5 inch oscars. But once you get a full grown oscar at 12+ inch they will easily be able to eat the pikes. A few years back when Snakeheads were legal a shop by me had a roughly 13 inch oscar kill a 10 inch snakehead and there about the same body type as a pike.
thats actually why im interested in pikes!! snakes are banned and pikes are a nice sub appearance wise imo. ive never had experience with pikes so im kind of just going to jump in i suppose. my oscar right now is about..eh let's say 7-8". if i put 5-6" pikes with him, there would be some bullying but im sure the hierarchy would be figured out before anything would be killed/mortally wounded. but i DONT know much about pike aggression. oscars are pretty bold, i wouldn't say mine is overly aggressive. hopefully i can make this work. what species have you worked with and had this experience? I'm planning on getting a 2x lenticulata, atabapo, and probably a cincta or strigata.
Pike can be very aggressive to each other, and other fish depending on the species and individual. There's a lot of variation in temperament between species and idividuals. You need to head over to the crenicichla section, and also maybe send PeanutPower a PM.
I don't think the larger Lugubris-type pikes would have any problem putting an oscar its place. As mentioned by aclockworkorange, there are tons of species of pike, and their size and temperament vary greatly. Mixing pike species may be something you want to avoid until you're familiar with pike aggression. I started out with a single pike species per tank. You also need to make sure you have an adequately sized tank/filter, as large pikes can be messy and sensitive to water quality, and the same can be said for oscars.
I visited the crenicichla forum, but theres not too much info on there about pike max sizes and aggression levels per species. I could pretty much only find ID's and whatnot. I stated the ones I'm looking at in another post ^^ up there, if you could let me know anything about these species I would appreciate it very much- lenticulata, atabapo, cincta, and strigata. If pike vs. pike aggression is too great, I'll stick to one species in the oscar/pike tank. I definitely do plan to mix oscar with pike though, so whichever species is most semi-aggressive would be best. and I am positive I can provide the best care possible for these fish, I just need to make sure that they won't try to destroy each other under perfect conditions!