Oscar got hungry.

[clancaster23]

I finally moved my oscar out of his small tank and into my 75 gallon. I added two convicts into the tank at the same time and at that time, I didn't think the female was small enough for the oscar to eat him. Well I looked a few minutes ago and I see the tail of the female convict hanging out of the oscars mouth. I am guessing the convict is dead cause the tail isn't moving at all. Question is should I just let the oscar go and do what he does or somehow get him out of there and pull the convict out? The oscar is about 5 inches long right now.

 

[clancaster23]

Ah, he spit it out. Man was it chewed up! He must have decided his eyes were bigger than his mouth.....

 

[littletankbigworld]

Remove the cichlids from the oscar tank. Oscars will eat anything smaller than them and keeping smaller cichlids in the tank with him is a bad idea. Did you cycle the 75 gallon tank?

 

[clancaster23]

Everything except the water came over from an existing tank. Filter, live sand substrate, ornaments and anything else had been moved from an established tank. What I did was fill the tank with dechlorinated water, let it sit for about a week then transferred the substrate. Gave that two days to settle then moved the filters over to the tank. It's been running over a week now and all numbers are good and although the silver dollars in there hide a lot, the oscar looks fine. He even had a mark on his head when he was in the smaller tank that has now disappeared since getting in the big one. If I had to guess, he has grown a fair amount since then too.

I was well aware that he may eat smaller fish or at least try to. I thought the female was definitely big enough to not go through that but I was wrong. The male is larger than the female was so I may just look into getting a larger female.