i have a serouis problem

[sierra]

i own two albino oscars, the male is about 8 inches and the female is about 5 inches they have recently produced babies and the male has become exstreamly agressive towards the female. i have tried to separate them with a divider in the tank but he keeps knocking it down and attacking the female. she is looking very sick and all her scales are ripped up. the male also wont let the female anywhere near the babies. what should i do? and is this normal behaviour?

[Lady Hobbs]

Oh Boy. The downside of cichlids. Is there a friend or anyone you know who can take him for awhile? I honestly don't know what you can do. Hopefully someone will have some ideas here but other than separating them, I have no clue. How big is the tank? Have you only just got them or have they been together since young? It almost sounds as he is trying to protect those babies and that's why he's going after her. If that's the case, it may be her that needs to be on one side of that divider with him and the young on the other? Or the fry removed.

They need a lot of room. It sounds like they're in a small tank.

[kimmers318]

I have also heard that cichlids can get very ugly while raising babies...you may just have an overprotective male who sees everyone as a threat to his offspring. I didn't think the parents would go after each other though, I thought they worked together.

[Fishguy2727]

Do they have fry or are they still egss? If you can remove the eggs (they laid them on a piece of slate) do so. If they are fry you may want to just pull them out and raise them in their own tank.

What all did you do to trigger them to breed?

[sierra]

thanks everyone who has replied, to answer all of your questions, the tank is a really really big six foot tank, so room is not the problem. i didnt do anything to get them to breed i was just lucky i guess, there is about 100-200 babies, they have grown up together and the male has always been a bit greedy towards the female i guess thats why he is alot bigger then her. i also thought the parents worked together and was only protective toward other fish. i have separated the parents now, but i think the male is protecting them from the female because when they had the last lot, before these babies, only three survived not getting eating from the parents, so do u think female is the one eating them? or do ya reakon they both eat them. i dont know anything much about fish, when i got them i just thought they were cool because i could feed them real fish and not fish food.

[Lady Hobbs]

Fish will often eat their babies. Sometimes once or twice and then not do it again. I almost feel sorry for the female. Sounds as he's been bullying her for awhile. Your tank sounds nice and it's good they have plenty of room.

[Fishguy2727]

How do you know their sexes? Is it possible you got them reversed? How is the tank setup? The best way would probably be with clay pots or just big PVC pipes and T-connectors. YOu can post the dimensions of the tank in cm and we can figure it out so we all know what we are dealing with here.