Hello,

Please could you advise.
I have had an Oscar for about 10 months, from a baby lol
He has grown to about 9".
I decided rightly or wrongly that he needed a buddy!
So i was lucky to win one on EBay for £5 he is also about 9"
I introduced him to my Oscar slowley, they scared me with there posturing and the new Oscar was taking a bit of a beating. I thought he was probably shocked from his journey so put in a divider into the tank to seperate them.
I then read on this web site that "you should not panick when Oscars scrap as they seldom damage each other and soon settle down". So the next day i took out the seperator (transparent plastic sheet) and left them too it, thinking that everything would be all right. How wrong was I after returning from work 8 hours later my poor Oscar that i thought was lonely had taken a right beating!! Scars all over and also the other Oscar was STILL attacking him. Fearing for his life I have re introduced the divider and can only hope he picks up but not looking too good. Help what can i do as scared to let them at each other again.
Regards Stu.

Introducing a new oscar to another can be fraught with difficulty. Sometimes they just will not get on.

What i would do in your situation is put the divider back in and leave it in until your injured oscar is back to full health. Adding a treatment for the fishes skin will help him, something that treats fin rot or body sores will help the injured fish heal.

Once the injured fish is healed wait until you have a day off work and can spend all day watching/checking on your fish. Put the aggressor into the injured fishes side of the divider. Ignore any of the usual gill flaring or even mouth to mouth grabbing. But if one fish starts to get injured separate them and accept they wont get on. If they dont injure each other after one day then they will probably be ok. Leave for another couple of days then remove the divider. If they start injuring each other then again accept they wont get on and rehome the aggressive one

You got a bargain with an 9in oscar for a fiver. Most shops will give you at least a fiver credit for it if you return it to a local fish shop.

All fish are different and you may have got a really aggressive oscar so dont give up on getting a tank mate. Alternatively think about some tank mates that are not oscars. Just make they arr big enough not to get eaten

welcome to the site. First of all, how big is your tank? Aggression problems can be made worse when 2 fish don't have enough room to move around in. I suspect that your Oscars have reached adulthood. Any animal can become more aggressive once maturity sets in, I expect this is what has happened in your case.it is often hit and miss when introducing 2 Oscars together, it can either work, or it won't.

if your fish are not going to get on, you can't keep them together, which really only leaves one solution to your problem, rehome one of them.

Some people suggest rearranging your tank. Doing this may falsely introduce a new environment to both fish. You could try this and see what happens, I can't promise tha it will work though.

welcome to the site