I bought some plants and put them in my tank and left for a little while. When I returned I noticed something was wrong with my filter, apparently they pulled a few of the plants out and they got sucked into my filter which cause a drop in suction which hurt my biologicals because my water is getting cloudy. They only messed with the one type of plant so do they just remove things that they don't like and why would they do this? Any insite?

Jelimafish wrote:


Anybody who has been keeping Oscars for a while will tell you you're wasting your money



I have no idea, maybe they just don't like plants

Maybe they like where it is;)

Hehehehe
Oh I sure bet that scenario sounds familiar to many many Oscar owners, with Oscars just being famous for messing with plants.

Two more possible reasons I could think of regarding why they do that:

1. Some plants make a yummy Oscar salad

2. With Oscars being territorial, plants may be in the way when it comes to defending their territory; they need free sight to spot any possible intruders. Or to watch their keepers and family
My Oscar has always had a big piece of slate that's HIS. He won't tolerate any plants close to that thing. He will pick at times at some plant that's growing beside a piece of bog wood I used to try to define "territories", but it's well rooted on a rock and hard-leaved (hope that's a word). I've had no problems yet with hard-leaved plants growing directly on the background or on the side of the tank of the tank that's opposite of his piece of slate. I may be just lucky though. There is no way any soft-leaved plants will last in his tank.

I used to have a 3ft x 1ft x 1ft tank with a baby oscar with 3 other small cichlids (in my bad old days when i wasnt informed on size of tank needed). The oscar used to pull the plastic plants out of the gravel until i got fed up with putting them back in the gravel and removed them. When i got my 100g i put 2 of those plants that have a sucker and hang down and also 2 small plastic plants in the gravel. My oscars surprisingly left the 2 plants in the gravel but they kept lifting the sucker plants (one in each corner to cover pipeowrk) up and each arm kept floating. So i put a little lead on each arm to weight it down and i have not had any problem since

I have been told that if you have living plants (ie java fern) attached to bog wood oscars leave them alone. I have never tried this but would be interested to hear from anyone who has used this successfully

delboybully wrote:


Oh, heard that too from ppl where it worked, as well as from ppl where it didn't. I keep trying plants as well ... attaching a crappy pic showing the tank (4 feet) sometime ago. If you look at that big piece of wood in the left corner, there used to be a really big and nice java fern growing on it for about a year .. and there was no way the Oscar would leave it there after he matured, lol. On the right side then, there are some smaller ones on wood or between rocks, and the Oscar would not bother them ever. Same goes for the anubias. On the very right side there was some hygrophila even growing in the substrate he'd leave alone. Guess it comes down to how indivual Oscars like their tanks decorated

(Just noticing I been contradicting my previous post now about soft-leaved plants like hygrophila Had forgotten about that)

Well the oscars tore all of them out but 3 so rather then trying to replant I just put them in my feeder fish tank and so far the oscars have had little interest in the remaining plants so hopefully it works out because I am pretty sure there are some really good benifits to live plants.

ive had oscars for 8 years plus now and never has any plants lasted,when i immigrated to new zealand and started over with little juvies i figured ill put plants so they can grow up with them a month later these plants have had it,so i can confirm that oscars and plant dont go together

I avoided real plants for the longest time, because I've heard/ read that they won't leave them alone. Sure enough, my oscar would constantly toss the plastic plants around, and I'd find them either moved to the opposite side of the tank, or just floating.
Then I got a really good deal on some very tall (over 2 feet) plants..... (don't know what type, looks like grass)I thought it would be a shame to trim them to fit a shorter tank, so in the oscar tank they went! They've been there maybe 6 months now, he never touches them. If I put in a plastic plant, he'll move it before I leave the room. I guess he knows what he likes!

It seems from this thread that some things work for some oscars but not all. When it comes to plants (real or plastic) its a question of try it and see but prepare yourself for a disappointment

Some people have siliconed plants to the the glass to stop the oscars from moving them about. Kind of hard to remove though:laugh: