Looks like it's decision time, I knew keeping these together for life probably wouldn't work but the last couple of days my tank has turned into a war zone with the Gold Saum reaching the stage where he wants 75% of the tank to himself.
My current stock in 2 x Oscars, 1 JD, 1 GS/GT with 5 Silver Dollars and 2 Pictus cats. The Cichlids are all Juvies the Oscars are about 5-6 inches, the JD about 4inches and the Gold Saum about 3.5-4 inches. When I first introduced them the GS was the daddy and very aggressive to the others so I put him in a different tankfor acouple of months while the Oscars grew a bit larger hoping they would hold their own a bit better and when I put the GS back in he tried lip locking with the larger of the Oscars and the Oscar had his entire head in his mouth and luckily let go after a while and that was that for a couple of weeks. The GS seemed to settle for his place in the tank, he would chase the JD but left the O's alone but in the last couple of days he has been attacking them all, to the extent of taking scales off the O's.
He was launching his attacks from a root ornament and taking cover when the larger of the O's decided to retaliate so I removed that ornament hoping he'd settle for a territory at either end of the tank but he has decided to just stay in the middle with no cover attacking anything that comes out of the corners of the tank so it looks like I may have to decide if I want to keep the GS and get rid of the others or vice versa?
I have waffled on for a while so here are some pics:
Here is the Tiger Oscar:
This was him on August 26th, he has grown at least 2.5 inches since then and filled out loads. I feed them on Hikari Gold pellet, he gets several prawns a day taking the first few from my fingers, peeled peas and beefheart.
My common Oscar back in July (the guy at the bottom):
The Gold Saum (anyone know if he is a male or female from these pics?)
The tank is a Juwel Rio 400, 5ft long.
What would you do/keep?
My current stock in 2 x Oscars, 1 JD, 1 GS/GT with 5 Silver Dollars and 2 Pictus cats. The Cichlids are all Juvies the Oscars are about 5-6 inches, the JD about 4inches and the Gold Saum about 3.5-4 inches. When I first introduced them the GS was the daddy and very aggressive to the others so I put him in a different tankfor acouple of months while the Oscars grew a bit larger hoping they would hold their own a bit better and when I put the GS back in he tried lip locking with the larger of the Oscars and the Oscar had his entire head in his mouth and luckily let go after a while and that was that for a couple of weeks. The GS seemed to settle for his place in the tank, he would chase the JD but left the O's alone but in the last couple of days he has been attacking them all, to the extent of taking scales off the O's.
He was launching his attacks from a root ornament and taking cover when the larger of the O's decided to retaliate so I removed that ornament hoping he'd settle for a territory at either end of the tank but he has decided to just stay in the middle with no cover attacking anything that comes out of the corners of the tank so it looks like I may have to decide if I want to keep the GS and get rid of the others or vice versa?
I have waffled on for a while so here are some pics:
Here is the Tiger Oscar:
This was him on August 26th, he has grown at least 2.5 inches since then and filled out loads. I feed them on Hikari Gold pellet, he gets several prawns a day taking the first few from my fingers, peeled peas and beefheart.
Here he is chowing down on cubes of beefheart (I don't give it them too often).
My common Oscar back in July (the guy at the bottom):
Now (note the missing scales):
August:
The Gold Saum (anyone know if he is a male or female from these pics?)
The tank is a Juwel Rio 400, 5ft long.
What would you do/keep?
.