i was just on cichlid-forum site looking at members aquariums.

it supprised me just how many what i thought were not suitable as oscar tank mates where sharing the aquarium and looked great together. for example in just 125g tanks there were oscars in with midas, jaguars, texas, flowerhorn, green terrors, red terrors and one in with a wolf cichlid! all these fish were adult in size.

is there a certain way to introduce these fish so they dont rip eachother up or is it sheer luck? i know in a malawi set up one way to control agression is overstock, but if you did it with large cichlids the mess and water would be a nightmare!

i could understand if you had a huge aquarium that theres room for fish to get out the way, but these seemed to average 125g and smaller.
ive had jack dempseys with oscars and have been ok but jags?and flowerhorns? or texas? any of you guys got any real mean fish in with your oscars?

I have a jag that is nearly full grown. I have heard they are aggressive but mine is a big softy. He likes to make the other know he is the boss but no bullying. I added him when he was small and there was a bigger oscar in the tank(unfortunately the oscar died). The jag dont seem to mind oscars, he is ok with my JD. However i had 2 frontosas in another tank and one was being bullied and hid away all the time so i added the bully to my jag/oscar tank(yesterday). The jag doesnt harm the frontosa but he isnt happy with him. Time will tell if they get on

I have had bad experiences with a green terrors and a festae. I have had both these fish and they both gave a bigger oscar a real hard time with bullying and nipping fins (they both ended up back at the shop)

Its difficult to say if there is a correct way to get these aggressive fish living with others but i suspect its jjust down to luck as all fish are different

Yes, guess it's a question of luck.

Out of the listed ones, I would only ever dare to try a Texas or green terror. Seeing now how it works for Delboy with the jag, it obviously is possible for some. For me it works with a (false) green terror so far, he is only half as aggressive as my Nicaraguan or firemouth's. But anyway not comparable with a red terror or so from what I've heard unless you get a true GT.

For myself in the past, I found that trying to add one new fish would make all hell break loose, while adding several at the same time worked just fine. Or two fish were always fighting, and after I moved a rock 1" to the side, they were fine with each other. My old tank was really overstocked with CA and SA cichlids (none of the known bad boys at all though), and it seemed to work most of the time, but I wouldn't do it again.

ive heard a few people say that there jags are big softys, i wonder if they just got that reputation as being bad through books that were written in the seventies, its just like jack dempseys,ive kept these since i was a boy. ive never had one that has been a problem, trouble is i guess when tropical fishkeeping came popular fish like oscars and jack dempseys would have seemed ultra bad boys compared with guppys and neons.