hey all,

i love my oscar, he is about 10 cm long, just a young adult,
i wanna make him feed in my hand and make him a hunter,
i puted a fish into his tank (i made sure that the fish was small enough for his mouth)
he tried to catch it, but then stoped, is there an age so that he can catch another fish? and i wanna feed him out of my hand, but i give him grain food with all the nutriments, what do i do to make him feed out of my hand/ please post it very clear, i only have him for bout 2 n a half weeks.

hey there, and welcome to OFL!

If you want to handfeed your oscar , first thing to do is to stop feeding live fish.
lots of reasons why not to feed live feederfish, but imo this will make your Oscar more docile.
Secondly you go and get some (frozen) bloodworms.
At feeding time dip your finger into the bloodworms and move your finger just above the surface of the water.
The oscar will follow your finger and jump to get the worms from your fingers.
After that you can grab some bloodworms with 2 fingers and put your fingers in the tank.
The oscar will come and eat the worms from your fingers.



Please beware that your oscar will jump at the food, and is likely to get so enthousiastic that he may jump out of the tank, so it's better to try if he'll come to your fingers when you put them into the water.
I started to put my fingers in the tank several days after my oscar started to jump for the food.

If your oscar is 10 cm allready you could also start with mealworms instead of bloodworms.
They are easier to get a grip on and are excellent training food as well.



I have been able to handfeed my red oscar from the first week i got him, and my tiger, whom i bought at 7" took less then a month and eats out of my hand too.
Just don't be scared to get bitten, for that will happen for sure eventually.
It may hurt and bleed a lil' bit, but it's worth the thrill!

When your fish get used to you they will take food directly from your hand. However, they can often get quite excitable at feeding time so they may well grab hold of your fingers as well as the food. My fish will lunge out of the water given half a chance. Oscars can draw blood so be aware of this.

that very true, as i've learned from expierience...



i guess handfeeding my Gar puts handfeeding my Oscars in a different perspective

If you want to hand feed you oscar a good food to use is earthworms. You start with your hand out of the water and the worm in it. Slowly over time you can move your hand closer to the water until it is in it. Eventually your fish will go for the worm and ingnore your hand holding it. Then you can move to smaller worms/foods until your oscar will take food from your hand.

A word of warning, if you get your oscars hand feeding they wont be frightened of your hand and wont move away from it, in fact they will associate it with food. This could turn out to be a pain when you need to put your hand in the tank for maintanence. Imagine, there you are trying to clean/move something and a big 12inch+ oscar is attacking your hand expecting food

OFL wrote:


Yeah...mine always meets me 'halfway' when I'm putting a frozen fish...he goes nuts and lunges out of the water--

He also lunges at the gravel vac, giving it a few bites and following it around the tank when I'm cleaning, and if i put my hand in the tank to move stuff around he'll approach my arm...I have to shoo him away with the net so I can work around the tank.

Anyways, tiga, your oscar doesn't need to be 'trained' to be a hunter...it's instinctual...so you don't need to use feeder fish with him. I would just use frozen fish and worms, krill, mysis shrimp, pellets, and crickets/beetles etc.

i can guarentee he wont eat out ur hand for a long long time my o took about five months so no i was the one feeding him and then he trusted me i wouldnt feed him feeders for HITH but i hand feed him cichild sticks dont trie to hand feed him it wont work he prob wont trust u for a while and welcome to the o life

thx im gonna try that,
and one more thing,
is it possible to train him to like jump out of the water? without food at the top?

it only depends on the indiviual fish annythings posible with oscars

tigathecool wrote:


Why would you want him to jump? Keep in mind that Oscars often jump. But normally when this happens you will find them on the floor the next morning...

Teaching an Oscar to jump out of the water is an overall BAD idea.

k thx all,

and,when the oscar wants food does he like run evrywhere? cause i wanna know when he is hungry, cause if im hungry i eat, i want him to feel that way

tigathecool wrote:


If you feed him that way you are going to run into MAJOR water quality issues... Those water quality issues will lead to all kinds of diseases and illnesses that could reach the point where they kill him... It is best to feed on a schedule. He will not starve I promise.