Oscar whispering :)

Rusty my oscar has turned into a monster at wc time. He attack the syphon or my hands, my normally well behaved oscar had turned into a biter

I carefully observed what triggered his attacks on the syphon. He was fine when I did the first go over the tank just lifting the surface debris off the gravel, yet as soon as I sunk the gravel vac into the substrate this would trigger an attack.

I spent some time watching both Rusty and Chops and noted when they were in a bad mood they would grab a mouthful of gravel and spit it around, I then remembered watching a documentary on gorilla's where two males would bend and thrash bushes and tree's about as a display of strenght, a light bulb popped over my head....

Next wc on Rusty's tank I watched him while I hovered over the substrate with the vac, no reaction from Rusty, as soon as I started going deep into the gravel and lifting the vac back up to let out some of the gravel he attacked. Putting two and two together, I have come up with the assumption that Rusty is now seeing the gravel vac/me as another oscar type challange, showing its strength by spitting gravel. This wc I allowed more gravel to go into the gravel vac and when Rusty started flaring and coming towards it, I released a load of gravel in his direction slightly flilcking the vac up towards him. He stopped straight away and swam down the other end of the tank, when he came back up again I again got a load of gravel in the vac and flicked it towards Rusty, and again he swam away. When I had to go to the other end of the tank I experimented by pointing the gravel vac towards Rusty empty, this provoked him into a really nasty attack on the vac, I filled it again and repeated flicking a load of gravel towards Rusty and he swam off up the other end of the tank again leaving me to peacefully continue cleaning his tank.

I tried the same with Chops with the same results I just need to figure out now how I can touch the wood in Chops's tank without getting bitten! lol

If you have a problem cleaning the gravel in your oscar's tank, give the above a try, the more gravel you can spit from the vac the "bigger the threat" is and your oscar "should" leave you in peace.

Interesting. I will try this if I ever have a problem with trouble.

It does seem to be working, but you know oscars lol

Typical as anything with oscars, flicking gravel worked for a while, now it doesnt, so I have switched to a much larger gravel vac, oh boy he dont like that one, he has gone back to hiding and sulking lol