hi, i want live fish to feed my oscar but not 1 of my shops sells them...

however they do sell neons and other small fish...am i ok to buy these and feed them to him?

the shop i go to does breed there own fish so they as far as i know theye are safe

that is a very expensive way to feed your fish, a good meal for a moderately sized Oscar will probably cost £5. We don't really like advising people to buy fish straight from a store and feed it to your Oscar because there is a chance you can pass on diseases. On a number of occasions, I have bought small community fish and within a day or two one of them has died, of course there is always a chance it could be diseased, you don't want your Oscar eating these type of fish. We always recommends quarantining a fish for at least a week, sometimes longer

If you really want to feed your Oscar on live fish, you could always breed guppies, anyone who keeps these fish will tell you that they are prolific breeders and once you get quite a few females and males, you should have some live fish to feed your Oscar. Personally, this is the onlyway I would advise feeding live fish to Oscars, at least you know they have been treated properly and haven't been kept in poor water conditions which is what often causes disease and illness in the first place

i was just thinking about keeping a tank for just feeders..i only have a space of lengh 13 inches depth 11 inches hight 10 inches..would this be big enough for a tank to keep them in? other than a just a tank will they need a heater,light, and a filter? im just thinking of the cost to set it up...

i would not have it conected to my main tank though unless this is easy to do..and cheaper lol

Let's put this into perspective. How often would you want to feed your fish feeders? How many would you give them at a time. But you've got to remember is you're not going to have a steady supply of fish overnight, it's going to take many weeks, or even months before firstly, you have got enough to feed your Oscar, and secondly, they are big enough to make a worthwhile meal. The tank you have just mentioned is not big enough to breed the amount guppies you would need.I'm sure there's someone on here who knows a lot about guppies, I have kept them but I didn't really take them too seriously and I haven't got any anymore, they were just in a small 20 gallon community tank. now I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong but if you have a tank with lots of copies, you'll actually have one dominant male that will service all of the breeding females. From my limited experience keeping guppies, if you have 2 males,one of them will be top dog, it will become a lot bigger and more aggressive to its weaker counterpart. so what you want is more females than males, luckily, it's very easy to tell the difference between male and female guppies so you can actually buy your females and get maybe two or 3 males.

If it was me doing it, I would probably feed around four full size guppies a week week. However, you would have to have the guppies constantly breeding because obviously they are born alive but very very small and would take take a few weeks before they would be anywhere near big enough to make a substantial or worthwhile meal.

So really, you would want lots of females producing lots of young. It's difficult to really suggest a suitable tank size without getting down on working out. I would say nothing less thas 40 gallons. Guppies can grow to around 2 inches to a tank size must be taken into consideration.

sorry for the long post, and if anybody has anything to add, or maybe correct me, please do so. Remember, I've never done it myself although I have kept guppies

i was thinking more like maybe a once a month treat or a max of every 3rd week...

do guppys need a heater?

thanks for all the info...im defo getting a feeder tank

there is also another train of thought that probably would be more successful in providing you with a constant supply of feeder fish, however tank size is also an issue. Many people breed convict cichlids, these guys breed on a regular basis and produce lots and lots of young, I'm not entirely sure how quick the young grow, I did have a few years ago and it didn't go as fast as Oscars, but you could grow them out to a suitable size in a reasonable time I would have thought. And if they're breeding every couple of weeks, you would always have a supply of young to grow on to a good size for a tasty snack. But like I said before, this would mean having a very big tank, or probably more than one holding tank for live young. convicts get to up between six and 8 inches so a 40 gallon tank would be okay for them, but you would need your holding tanks. if you leave the fry in with the adults, they would just start eating them when it comes around to breed again. From a personal point of view, I think that breeding your own life food is more trouble than it's worth when there is already food available that is very healthy and important to most people,non-expensive.

ricky1987 wrote:


yes, guppies come from South America, their aquariums need suitable heating to maintain a suitable temperature

is there any type of goldfish i can use?

im just trying to find the cheapest way to do this

if you want to breed fish then you need to do it properly, the last thing you want is to be overrun with young fish. I am afraid to do what you want to do, you're going to need suitable size tanks, there isn't really another way around that without exposing the fish to poor water conditions.

I recommend pellets as the staple diet with other things chucked in other supplement, live fish, shrimps, krill, cockles, muscles. I cannot remember how close Truro is to the sea, you can always catch shrimps or prawns and feed them to Oscars live, they absolutely love them. And you can actually keep them alive for quite a few days if you give them oxygen and change the water every day, obviously for salt water.

yeah i think i will save for a propper set up...

i live about 10 mins from a beach so we might go rock pool fishing...

wat do i put in the net to atract them?

will oscar eat the little fish to from the sea?

i have bred convicts and ofl is right they breed like rabbits. now you will have to have a tank for the breeding pair and another tank for the fry to grow in. its been my experience that they do not grow that quickly and it could take a month or two before they reach a large enough size to feed to your oscars. personally i dont think its worth the trouble when there is so many different foods avilable commercially for your oscars.

well i have never done it before and i think it will be a good experiance to try it