I don't feed my oscars live fish except o nce or twice a month but I must stress the importance of giving them a good quartine time. I have a pond out back so I buy 50 small gold fish and put them in the pond in the beginning of the summer. Every once in a while I give my O's a treat. I added 30 and in the past3-4 days 10 have died most likely from disease which could have been passed onto my O's. I would say if you buy fish from a lfs and feed to your O's there is a 50% chance of disease or internal parasite. Just be careful. To be honost I prefer feeding meal worms crickets and krill but like I said occasionaly I go for the feeders.

very good point.If you think about it, quarantining goes on in many different walks of life. The reason being, because you don't want to pass diseases on. Obviously not everyone has got a quarantine tank. In cases like this, I would try and find a fish stall that you can trust. I would trust a couple of the shops years to provide me with disease-free fish.. I can say this because I've had lots of fish of them over the years and I can't remember ever receiving a diseased fish.

Jelimafish wrote:


I have to disagree with this statement. I have bought many fish and other than white spot i only once had a problem with fish mysterious dying. The reason for putting fish in quarantine is because even the best LFS will have a disease sometimes. A good sign that your LFS is on the right track is when they have a sign 'fish not for sale, in quarantine' or some such sign