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I have a pair of o's in a 75 gallon, according to the petshop my 12" is a male, so I'm assuming his buddy is a female, (she is 10", they are inseperable, there is lots of head and tail twitching, and slapping. He likes to redcorate the tank, and they both kept trying to move a huge rock in the middle of the tank till I moved it for them to the corner. Now I see her going up to the glass with mouth wide open and then pushing as hard as she can against the glass. This sends her sliding down to the bottom and pushes all the gravel away. There are no eggs yet, and the water conditions are almost perfect. Does anybody have any ideas?

My oscar did this too. As for moving the decorations, welcome to the world of oscars. You don't decorate the tank, they do. As for the opening her mouth and pushing, mine did that a LOT and I could never figure out why. I thought it had to do with hunger but if I feed him, he would stop for a while, but then start up again.

This doesn't sound like breeding behaviour in any way. Generally, they with lip lock as courting. Then they will find a flat surface (if you have a flat rock, they will use that, if not, they generally dig a pit and use the bottom glass. They will clean the surface REALLY well, and mate (female lays eggs and male fertalizes). Then after they mate, they guard the eggs and fry.

What are you feeding? I notice my Oscar did this more when he was fed live food than when on prepaired.

My guess is that it is just acting out for attention. My 3.5" recued oscar is nuts. I step into the kitchen and it is bashing at the glass asking for food. Yesterday I got him to take food out of my hand and today I got him to jump out of the water and take it. Oscars just need stuff to do I think.

55G Planted tank thread
19G Container Pond
[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/Wingsdlc/Ric

Thanks for the input...I usually feed them anything from hotdogs to steak, occasionally they will eat a few pellets, or flakes (the only vegitation they will touch), I also have a Brown Bullhead, Albino Channel Cat (Probably going to be dinner sometime in the future lol...), and 4 other Cichlids. As far as breeding behavior they seemes to have died off since I took out the other 3 tigers out.(They are 6" to 8", when they started to clear away gravel and acting weird they would chase the 3 into a top corner and they would stay there until they were allowed back out. It was that and the struggle with amonia that I moved them out. Now they still hang together but thats about it. The other 3 are now miserable but I'm sure that will change when I get my new 100 gallon for them.

Thanks again