Hi again...so glad ur oscar is feeling better....!!! :-D
That was a truly interesting post thekoimadien...kinda have mix feelings... Not that I dig aggression, but I truly love the varying personalities of oscars...
I think a great deal of past aggression with cichlids (as opposed to today) has to do with increased understanding and better practices... Here's a longwinded example: when I started raising oscars, there was no Internet - you relied mostly on ur local pet shop employee or a book (if u were lucky) at a public library... Feeders were largely a staple then and encouraged by those selling them (surprise surprise) ... You learned largely by trial and error about water conditions, compatable fishes, lighting, plants, temp, feeding, breeding, heck just about everything! There was also a completely different ideal pertain to appropriate tank size for large fish... Fish unfortunately suffered, unless u went the extra mile, and a lot of times u had no idea what that extra mile was...
Today, we know that fish keep poorly largely are either listless or aggressive (take tiger barbs for example - housed alone they are prone to fin nip - in a group, almost acrobatic in their swim behavior and little to no aggression. Just the wealth of knowledge here would have been mind boggling to the average tank owner in the early 1980s. Poorer conditions back then = meaner fish. Today, look how far we've come... Poor conditions is completely shunned by us a community and we get angered by less then ideal conditions for the fish we raise. We collectively share information and denounce a LFS that would jam 3 pacu 3 oscars and a large Pleco in a 50g tank (not an uncommon sight back then). I think the fish community is thus largely responsible for the lessening aggression in our tanks, not primarily due to breeding - but the bettering of this art. An art that also recognizes and accepts the natural behavior of a fish species (aggressive or passive) to be an ideal rather than mere entertainment.... Ok, I'll shut up now... Good night all...