# Cross-breeding oscars & goldfish??????



## Guest

In my mind this sounds crazy but I dunno I just started in this great hobby but the guy at petsmart was telling me that you can cross-breed an oscar with a goldfish. He said it's easily done and alot of people doit . Ok I'm thinking this guy is a little off but since I'm new to this hobby I just wanted to ask the guys and gals who know??


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## Cichlid Man

It's impossible. Cichlids and carp are sexually incompatable.
If you are telling the truth (which I doubt you are), then that LFS guy has either no experience in fish, or is having you on.


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## Georgia Peach

thats the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard....


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## wildtiger

I would have to agree, thats it's not possible. TBH I've never heard of Oscars crossing with anything.


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## Guest

Well that's what I thought but the guy told me that and cichlidman I'm not just makin this up. I even said to the guy wouldn't the oscar kilkl the goldfish pretty quick and he said well it's gotta be a really big one. But they are still to peacful for an oscar no matter the size. I dunno what was up with this guy.


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## wildtiger

I think he was just pullin your leg. You know us Texans like to tell tall tales. 

Whoops I'm not a Texan anymore, but I'm a native Texan. :lol:


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## Georgia Peach

lol Wildtiger - it definately sounds like a tall tale to me!


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## Cichlid Man

Really? Well if I was you, next time you go back to the shop tell him what you think about his idea.


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## Georgia Peach

Lol Cm, Lfs Fos


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## TheOldSalt

The guy works at petsmart. Of _course_ he's a moron. Duh!
(hehheh..jk Paul)
Who knows? He might actually believe it. Sad, eh?


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## Guest

Yeah well I thougt I was right just wanted to check since I'm no pro. But the sad thing is he wasn't jokin or atleast it didn't seem that way at all but it seemed like he was serious must have been a real dumbass


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## solar-ton

just to make this clear to everyone oscars are in the genus _astronotus_ and there arent that many other fish common in the hobby to cross with them. goldfish are in the genus _carassius_ (atleast the common ones anyway). so for soemthing to even have a remote chance of crossing they would have to be in the same genus i think there is a very small chance theyll do it if theyre in the same family but i doubt that... goldfish come from all the way around the world and that would never happen in the wild whoever that guy was mustve dropped out of middle-school to be that stupid they teach you this stuff in the 8th grade!!!


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## fishboy

people at petsmart are mostly idiots, i asked them if they sold ammonia to aid a fishless cycle and they said that fish make ammonia and it's always in the tank so i shouldn't add more of it or my tank will be "off balence". Then i asked them if they had Bio-Spira and the girl said that they had stability which is a mixture of bio-spria and cycle in a bottle which was better then regular bio-spira. I got out of their before i got into a argument. It pissed me off when i tryed to explain a fishless cycle and she rolled her eyes and said, "Well, if you think you're an expert." Don't trust em or ask them a question that you know the answer to like, "Will a pleco be okay in a 20 gallon with my goldfish?" then you can judge them


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## garfieldnfish

I know this is off the subject a little, even so I know goldfish and oscars won't have babies together. Heck, the oscar would rather eat the goldfish then get romantic in any way with him/her.
But what the people/experts in LFS/chain pet stores in general tell you could make your hair stand on end. There has been so many times I either just walked away, shaking my head and hoping for the best for the fish and people that bought them or where it got so bad I had to open my mouth (always a bad thing, lol). My 11 year old daughter has gotten so upset with me many times because I had to intervene, like when I saw a goldfish sold to go into a 10 gal tank with a Chinese Algae eater, etc.
But I do have 2 stores close to me where the employees know most of the basics and at the salary they are paid, you really can't expect a marine biologist to advise you. I am very happy to go to those two stores and ask them for advice, but to be honest, I still check the internet after what they say before I buy the fish. It's best to go to the fish stores knowing what you want and do your research first before you buy.


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## amelia

-chuckles- this is really very funny. I've been keeping fish most of my life, and I went into walmart to gawk at the poor little koi fish.. (I can't help but bring one home every now and then.. they all deserve a chance.) A man came up and started talking to a guy who was dipping dead fish out of tanks, asking about how big koi fish and goldfish get. I butted in before the wal-mart employee could answer (This is the same one that couldn't run a python a few months back), going on about everything from basic aquarium setup to the size different kinds of fancy and common/comet goldfish and koi got, how they put off so much ammonia, the correct filtration, etc. The man was quick to "correct me" saying that a goldfish could live in a bowl and be okay, that you didn't need to change the water but once a month and that filtration was not needed. He said that the goldfish would grow to the size of the bowl it was in so it would never need an upgrade. He also went on to say that koi did fine in ten gallon aquariums all their lives and that goldfish life expectancy was only 3-5 years. PPPPFFFFTTT. Needless to say, the man listened to the wal-mart employee, commenting something about "what does a teenager know anyway. you don't work with the fish." 

I could only walk away and shake my head at this. T____T idiodic people. As for goldfish and plecos--It can be done. XD I've got an 8 inch pleco with my goldfish in a 55 gallon and a 3 inch pleco in a 10 gallon (temporary) with 3 inch koi fish and tinsy shubunkin goldfish. As long as the tank is big enough and the water stays room temperature (and your house is neither an igloo nor a hut in the desert) it's really not hard to keep the two together.. I know many people are against the idea, but I've never had problems with Plecos in coldwater tanks before so.. hummm...  

Employees are paid low wages to tell people what they want to hear. end of story.


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## Damon

Why is this thread still going?


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## Cichlid Man

You tell me Simpte, you tell me.


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## Fish Friend

I think he was pulling youre leg and you didnt notice...only when you fell over HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA
nah i just killed it now couldnt resist wanted to say it


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## micstarz

LOL! Their breeding methods are different anyways, and youre right, all the oscar will see is a meal of goldfish. I'm lucky my region does not have walmarts or petco's or i'll be so frustrated that i'll get brain damage haha


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## Fishfirst

> The guy works at petsmart. Of course he's a moron. Duh!
> (hehheh..jk Paul)
> Who knows? He might actually believe it. Sad, eh?


oh sure lets all pick on the petsmart guy... I didn't come across this thread in time... dang... its a good laugh! What's even funnier is it sounds like someone that actually works at my store, he's our new pet care manager, and he's from the coorporate store in AZ, sadly enough he's been brought up on what customers want to hear. I've corrected him numerous times, and he still keeps giving plecos to people with 5 gallon aquariums, irridecent sharks to people who have "huge" 29 gallon tanks, and goldfish to people with bowls.


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## oscar_breeder

thats bull **** man!


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## TheOldSalt

Yep. Sure is.
How Petsdumb ever got so big is simply beyond me.


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## DUSTIN323

That's actually kinda funny. I guess it wouldn't be to funny to the customer if they actually tried it .


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## Fishfirst

Its because we are more orientated upon our cat and dog supplies... so people who have cats and dogs (which is a great deal of our population) come and get grooming services, training, food and toys and other crap like that... Our speciality department is 1/8th of the store. That is 1/8 fish, reptile/amphibian, bird, and small pet; 1/2 dog, and 3/8ths cat. The employees are trained by books that are written by higher up petsmart employees that are obviously not very intelligent as I can go through and correct almost every care sheet ever written on fish/tank and contradict our books which say 2 gallons/inch of goldfish, and 1 gallon/inch of fish which obviously isn't the case, and obviously isn't the case with most of their information. The sad part is I corrected the book for one of our employees that was going to work the register, and my manager "corrected" me and informed me that we are training him "the petsmart way".... I just shook my head and continued to tell him that the 1 inch per gallon rule was only a guideline for small community fish and not applicable in most situations... and that if he really needed help to ask me or eric (one of the other employees that I have trained extensively about fish care).


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## DUSTIN323

Yeah you gotta a point there. Honestly Petsmarts is probally the worst for fish I like Petco & Petland they have more of different fish not just the old commons like Petsmart. Gotta a question fishfirt do all Petsmart not sell SW fish or is it just some because neither around here do?


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## Guest

i dont think any do. none here do, and i think i heard that they dont because they dont think it's right. however im not sure, so fishfirst probably knows why.


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## Lexus

Dont get me started on idiot employees... what gets me is customers trying to correct me when they are wrong and I am right... I am back in pets one day a week and by god I get so mad those days. And of course age descrimination they dont believe me, few and far between do but they just come back a day I dont work and buy it.


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## ron v

IDEA!!!!!! What if all the pet shops in the world just quit giving advice. Just give the new customer a card with fishforum.com on it..... Wait...That wouldn't work tho, would it? .... No one would buy fish for a month after purchasing a new aquarium and they wouldn't spend money on "cycle" and "PH down". THAT is the problem. Pet shops don't tell new customers the truth about lots of things because they would lose sales!!!!


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## Fishfirst

now that is simply untrue ron v... I have asked customers to join here a lot of the time, especially if they are genuenly concerned about doing things right. Now wether they do or not is another story... there are only a few that I see on here... one is stealth, another is kaybee, lunabetta was another (although I don't see her on here much anymore). The simple fact is: most people are to lazy to go look it up themselves or to ask a question on a forum. They rather hear it when the purchase it, and they usually don't want to hear that one fish will out grow their tank, and blah blah blah. In my opinion, most of the public around Central Wisconsin, is not READY for fish forums.


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## TheOldSalt

Actually ron v is closer to right than he should be.
Many shops carry a few fish books, but almost none carry magazines, and in those areas which have a local fish club, the shop staff usually won't tell anyone about them if they should ask.
Informed customers are unprofitible customers. Sad but true. Fish stores make their money selling crappy stuff to newbies and high-end stuff to advanced hobbyists, but not many of them will risk losing the noobs in an attempt to educate them. Knowledge leads to things like buying online, ordering stuff in catalogs, getting fish from club auctions, etc..., and that just won't do. You'd think that it would pay to educate the customers, but it usually backfires instead. To top it all off, most shop owners and staff are people who really have no business being in the fish business in the first place, and they really don't like exposing their ignorance to a mere customers who learns something they don't know.

There really should be a standard exam that anyone wishing to open a petshop should have to pass before being granted a license. Luckily, that very idea is gaining some steam among the right people, so who knows, maybe someday.

C.A.R.E.- Captive Animal Retailer Examination.

Of course, getting rid of the incompetent shops won't necessarily get rid of the _bad_ ones. There are a lot of fully competent scumbags out there, ya know. In a perfect world, a scubalike certification program would be in place for the hobbyists as well when it comes to certain things like reeftanks & live corals. Passing a course & exam would get the hobbyist a C-card allowing him/her to buy certain things that uncertified people cannot. Going up the chain, uncertifed shops couldn't buy livestock from certified wholesalers, and uncertified wholesalers couldn't buy from certified exporters. THAT would put a stop to a whole lot of bad stuff. The best part is that it would be voluntary self-regulation by the industry. Either we do something like this while we have the chance, or uncle sam will soon likely decide to start regulating things *for* us, and I'm pretty sure that we WON'T like their version.


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## Lexus

I would be interested in getting business cards with fishforums.com on there to hand out to the customers I see while I work in pets. Its true though most pet stores dont educate because the customer will keep screwing up and buying more and more fish and supplies. Walmart doesnt have those practices but just dumb associates. I send people all the time to True Value for fish, I tell them its cheaper for supplies here but the quality of fish there is superb.


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## ron v

Let me say that my hat is off to the fishshop employees who the are also members of this forum.... Lexus, Fishfirst and others. Just being here shows that you are dedicated to our hobby as well as your jobs. After spending all day at my job, I surely don't go looking for a forum so I can talk about it somemore LOL. I just wish there were more fishshop employees and owners like you...


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## DUSTIN323

Well you know most people just want the job cause it's a job not cause they're interested in fish. The people at Petsmart always acted like I was dumb but I knew more than most if not all of the people in the fish department. When I had my oscar I wanted to put three tinfoil barbs in there with 1 oscar I did research before I bought them and they said I was basically stupid for doing that and the oscar would kill them. Well they did fine and everyone on the internet says they'll do fine like they did with an oscar.


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## Cichlid Man

Yes it's good to get away from your job when the clock strikes five. But that's why I chose a job that I enjoy, I run my own fish consolidators. It gets a bit fustrateing at times, but overall it's worth it.


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## Fish Friend

The guy that told you that is/was officially bent


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