Another fish to do this especially if water conditions are not to there
liking are Discus


"Nicole" wrote in message
om...
(Mark Stone) wrote in message
. com...

Happy Camper and Bassett are both right -- That's one of the cool
things about Oscars is their ability to change colors with mood and
stress. It's a trait common to very, very many species but especially
evident with Oscars. If something happens in your aquarium that
changes the water quality or temperature (like the heater breaking
down, or something like that) Oscars tell you about it right away by
changing color and/or lying down on their side on the gravel. The
reason why it's "cool" is that they give you this radical, obvious
response long before the aquarium condition(s) are bad enough to
actually do them harm. The word of caution here is that if they are
allowed to be under this stress for a long period of time, it can kill
them; so we need to make sure whatever is causing the stress is
rectified. Sounds like you may have saved this little guy's life by
rescuing him from the LFS!

--Mark


Mark Stone tractorlegs at msn dot kom
OSCAR Lovers! http://www.geocities.com/cichlidiot_2000/oscar.html
The ".Edu" meens i are smart.

Thanks, everyone. I just thought that since it was such a radical
color and pattern change that maybe something was really off. I was
wondering if Osacars
had camouflage abilities since the background he's against now is
black/dark river rock and the one in the LFS was white/light blue.

The little dude seems very happy, he's mingling well with the other
fish and even coming to the top of the pond to eat with the rest, even
though he's about 1/4 or less of their sizes right now.

Makes me wish I had room to rescue some more of his tankmates. They
were all the same color... Hopefully it doesn't mean he was unstressed
in the store and is now really, really stressed in the pond! :-)

Nicole