Everyone in an Oscar group is saying I’m a moron

[Jacky12]

Geez! Here’s what happened. I have always wanted a pink Oscar. I thought the first ones I saw were photographed under pink/red light or photoshopped, but learned these are albinos. My subsequent readings confirmed this. I’ve seen several that are yellow or orange as well. These fish have a light colored body with streaks of either pink, yellow or orange. The LFS sometimes gets in the yellow variety.

So I joined a Oscar Facebook group, asking if anyone knew of a good online source. Thus began a disturbing discussion of how these fish are tortuously injected with dyes. It made me sick to my stomach. They said I’m a horrible unethical person to support this practice. I debated back some, but left. I was greatly outnumbered & don’t like arguments.

Are their suppositions Old School? Or am I terribly mistaken?

[m.j.gomez]

Originally Posted by Jacky12

Geez! Here’s what happened. I have always wanted a pink Oscar. I thought the first ones I saw were photographed under pink/red light or photoshopped, but learned these are albinos. My subsequent readings confirmed this. I’ve seen several that are yellow or orange as well. These fish have a light colored body with streaks of either pink, yellow or orange. The LFS sometimes gets in the yellow variety.



So I joined a Oscar Facebook group, asking if anyone knew of a good online source. Thus began a disturbing discussion of how these fish are tortuously injected with dyes. It made me sick to my stomach. They said I’m a horrible unethical person to support this practice. I debated back some, but left. I was greatly outnumbered & don’t like arguments.



Are their suppositions Old School? Or am I terribly mistaken?

Hello, I never heard of a dyed Oscar. I may be wrong. I know they will do this to blood parrot cichlids. They breed a female blood parrot w/a pink convict male. Then strip slime coat & dye or inject fish w/dye. They will promote as jellybean. With both of these methods the color will eventually fades & causes stress & health problems for fish.
I've had my albino red for over a year & he's the same if not a brighter orange. Hopefully this helps you!!!!!

[Jacky12]

Wow! I never heard that about those jelly bean hybrids.

Your Oscars are lovely. How old are they? I’ve read a pair can become very aggressive (as in lethally) around age 2-3 and it scared me off from keeping a pair together.
But then again there are many who say an Oscar & Jack Dempsey are a recipe for disaster & my two get along swimmingly.

BTW, I find all of your posts super helpful!

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by Jacky12

Geez! Here’s what happened. I have always wanted a pink Oscar. I thought the first ones I saw were photographed under pink/red light or photoshopped, but learned these are albinos. My subsequent readings confirmed this. I’ve seen several that are yellow or orange as well. These fish have a light colored body with streaks of either pink, yellow or orange. The LFS sometimes gets in the yellow variety.

So I joined a Oscar Facebook group, asking if anyone knew of a good online source. Thus began a disturbing discussion of how these fish are tortuously injected with dyes. It made me sick to my stomach. They said I’m a horrible unethical person to support this practice. I debated back some, but left. I was greatly outnumbered & don’t like arguments.

Are their suppositions Old School? Or am I terribly mistaken?

Sadly, with the invent of glo fish technology after the painted fish craze, many hobbyist thinks that an unnaturally colored fish is dyed or artificially colored. For the Oscars, there have been color variants for a long, long time. The first color variant was the Red Tiger which was obtained through selective breeding. After that was the solid Red. Then Albino. Then a whole bunch of other colors. No dye necessary. I imported a pair of emerald green Oscars back in the late 60s. (They looked like green Aneas cories in an Oscar costume. LOL ) When you can manipulate the gene pool with DNA testing and what not, it gets easier to create new colors. Again, no dyes necessary. As such, I would really reconsider going back to that Oscar group or taking any information from there as Gospel.
On a side note, I also take umberage with the internet's info on wild Oscar specs. My mentor's breeding pair of wild Oscars grew to be 20" and 24" long. Of the 13 breeding pairs of domestic colors I was working ( Reg, Red Tiger and Reds), most of them reached 16"-18". A few of the older fish were even larger. The only reason I can think of for today's domestic Oscars only reaching 12"-14" ( according to some sites I have been to) is because of all the inbreeding it took to obtain the color variants. Oscars are a large fish which have a large fish's mentality even when it's small. This is why keeping them in large tanks when small is recommended.

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by Jacky12

.....I’ve read a pair can become very aggressive (as in lethally) around age 2-3 and it scared me off from keeping a pair together.
But then again there are many who say an Oscar & Jack Dempsey are a recipe for disaster & my two get along swimmingly.

It's all about tank size. If there is enough space, no reason the fish can't get along.
As for them getting aggressive, yes a breeding pair will get aggressive towards their tankmates but just keeping 2 or 4 or 12 Oscars together when they are all one gender, is not an issue if the tank is large enough to handle them all.
Just sayin'

[ColdKoi]

They may not (most likely not lol) dyed, but like many fish nowadays come from a long line of selective breeding to achieve the particular colours they want. Which leads to poor genes and likely won’t have the health or longevity of a more pure gene line.

Really, a lot of fishkeepers can be thrown under the bus for owning anything a lot of our fish lol

[m.j.gomez]

Originally Posted by Jacky12

Wow! I never heard that about those jelly bean hybrids.

Your Oscars are lovely. How old are they? I’ve read a pair can become very aggressive (as in lethally) around age 2-3 and it scared me off from keeping a pair together.
But then again there are many who say an Oscar & Jack Dempsey are a recipe for disaster & my two get along swimmingly.

BTW, I find all of your posts super helpful!

The big red female is almost 3 & albino male is almost 2. I've had them together about 9mo. In the first 3wks together there was some aggression but nothing major. I grew him out in a 55gal before introducing. They've been together ever since.
They are cichlids & one day may decide they don't like each other any more. If that happens I have a spare 90gal to move one to. I was thinking of adding some lace catfish & about 3+ silver dollars as dither fish so they aren't concentrating solely on each other.
I've learned a lot from people in group & just trying to give back. Your welcome!!!!!

[Colin_T]

If you post pictures of the fish you are interested in, we can tell you if they are injected, painted, or just natural man made colour forms.

To my knowledge, the only fish that still gets painted is the coloured glass fish. It is a Chanda species and lives in fresh to brackish water. They use a paint brush and oil based paint to paint a coloured stripe on the fish. The scales eventually drop off and the colour goes after a few months. This painting process puts the fish under a lot of stress and many die within a few weeks of being painted, while others get Lymphocystis (a stress virus).

They used to inject a coloured dye into these fish 30 years ago but people in shops and importers said that going too far and the practice has stopped.

There is a variety of smaller aquarium species that are genetically modified and have a jellyfish gene added to the developing embryo. These fish are made by the GloFish company and luminesce under certain light or no light. To my knowledge, they have not done this to Oscar cichlids yet. The GM process is only done to one batch of eggs and after that the fish are simply bred and pass on the jellyfish gene.

[Caliban07]

I wouldn’t take it personally. Facebook is notoriously toxic. Unfortunately, from what I have seen the toxicity stems from the administration so you will always be outnumbered.

[Jacky12]

Thanks, I do not take comments from misinformed fools seriously. & oh, yeah, the site admin was the leader of the pack. It was my first post in that FB group. They jumped me like a pack of starving hyenas. Such folks get off on meanness & would have been delighted had I stayed rather than made a hasty exit.

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by Jacky12

Thanks, I do not take comments from misinformed fools seriously. & oh, yeah, the site admin was the leader of the pack. It was my first post in that FB group. They jumped me like a pack of starving hyenas. Such folks get off on meanness & would have been delighted had I stayed rather than made a hasty exit.

The biggest problem imo is that people with limited experience THINK they have all the answers so they answer questions like that. Instead of educating people, they would prefer to show their superiority. In my career in the fish business, I've worked for people who thought they knew more than I did but in fact didn't, had customers that thought they knew more than I did but consistently lost fish like a rookie, and even here, when I first came onto the site, had people refuting vigorously, my responses because it didn't mesh with the internet's answers. (thankfully that's not the case here anymore. ) The issue is that EXPERIENCE trumps any online site. The more you have it, the more information you will have. When you breed so many species, there's a lot you need to know to do it successfully over and over again. I'll take the advice of a fish farmer over a hobbyist any day of the week because their knowledge base has to be better than just keeping the fish alive in a container.
So keep asking your questions here. There's enough of us here with experience to answer them.

[Jacky12]

Kudos, Andy! You are spot on! You speak wisdom & truth.

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by Jacky12

Kudos, Andy! You are spot on! You speak wisdom & truth.

I truly believe I was a fish in a former life because we just understand each other so well.

50+ years ( actually coming up on 58 years ) of being a hobbyist adding 45+ years in the pet business specializing in fresh and salt water fish to the mix and you learn a couple of things. One thing I know for sure, not every fish reads the book on them. So things happen. Doesn't make it normal. The goal is to know the difference.
But Thank You for the nod.

[Jacky12]

It’s been my pleasure to interact with you, Andy. Thanks for being here. You’re one of the good ones.

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by Jacky12

It’s been my pleasure to interact with you, Andy. Thanks for being here. You’re one of the good ones.

Thanks. You're making me blush.