Okay, I know this is retarded, and I'm not making it up. About 8 months ago I "inherited" a 55 gal tank, complete with a full grown oscar, 2 large algae eaters, and a goldfish. Yup, a goldfish. Apparently it was purchased about a year before as a feeder, however Oscar seemed opposed to violence, so the goldfish grew up instead of becoming a meal. We named him Lucky.

About a three months ago, Oscar had a change of heart and decided to start nipping at Lucky's fins for some reason. Lucky almost immediately started losing scales, and developed white spots on his fins. I cured the white spots, and Lucky has since grown his tail fin back to normal (the scales never came back, but he doesn't seem to feel self conscious about it). All was going well again in my "Paradise Pond" and it was smooth sailing until Oscar started acting up again.

I've since put a few driftwood "dividers" wedged in between the front and back of the glass, spaced apart enough for Oscar to get into Lucky's little area, but where he can't navigate in very quickly, giving Lucky plenty of time to hang out elsewhere for a bit. I initially had a complete little separation area just big enough for Lucky, but Oscar REALLY did not like that and proceeded to destroy, turn over, rearrange, and wreak havoc like some crazed lunatic in the rest of the tank. He even started biting at and harassing the algae eaters! I took away the total "blockade" and he almost instantly was fine again.

I'm wondering if his sudden aggressive behavior would be either the recent addition of the occasional earthworms, or perhaps Oscar picked up on Lucky being sick (before any symptoms became visible) and was reacting.

how big is the goldfish? reason i ask is a 55 is fine for a full gorwn oscar as logn as the filtraion is up to scratch however if the goldfish is very big it may be that the oscar feels it is a threat to his territory and thus is attacking him.

Goldfish is about 2" long. But they've been tankmates for over a year now, and this is a recent occurrence. They were happy as clams together, and oscar never even took a nip at him before, which is why I can't make sense of it. The filtration and water quality is all up to snuff. Like I said , the only thing I can see different was giving oscar the occasional earthworms, and the goldfish being sick... But I'm not sure if the sickness was due to stress of oscar harassing him. It all sort of happened about the same time. Why would Oscar suddenly have territorial issues?

if oscar (assuming that is his name) is hungry, then lucky is living on borrowed time.

has the oscar grown alot in this time? it could be that it is finally big enough to see the goldfish as food

or the territorial issues may be because the osdcar has just hit maturity

On theother hand goldfish should not be kept at Tropicsl oscar temperatures.
They will be more suseptable to disease at warmer temps.
I say rehome the goldfish...

probz 4 the best

u may find yr oscar is alot less stressed on its own

Big thanks! I think I'll get a small tank just for Lucky. I'll resume the earthworm feeding too, Oscar is pretty fond of them (and I mean fond in the way that a crackwhore is fond of crack). Also, I've been feeding him two of those frozen bloodworm cubes (the ones slightly smaller than a sugarcube) twice a day, once in the morning and once at night, does that seem like too little, or too much? He's always acting like I starve him! Literally, the frozen little blood-blob gets sucked down before it hits the water. (The first one I just drop in becasue he's too excited to hand feed, but the second one he's calm enough)

lol to b fair those crackwhores do love there crack, the little tykes...


oscars are greedy as hell whenever i feed mine, no matter how much they have had they will inhale there food like iv been away for a month and they havnt eaten lol

im not sure of the sizes u mean so cant comment on that plus i use pellets as staple diet 4 mine n use bloodworm etc as a treat...

oh and in regards 2 the goldy, probz the best for both fish that he gets a new tank! ul se a marked improvment with both

you'll have to rename him Lucky-2 after surviving that and getting fancy new digs!

lol good point