Hi all. My Oscar is about 5 inches long and quite hefty. I feed it Hikari Gold medium size pellets, floating type. It could eat all day long as usual. My question is, how much do I feed it. Now I feed it about 6-8 pellets twice a day. Too much? Should I feed larger pellets? All help greatly appreciated. I always think it is underfed since it almost jumps out when I add the pellets. I have to keep the lid 1/2 closed or it will jump out. TIA-C.

I'll get straight to the point without confusion, you can feed your Oscar twice a day and give it as much as it will eat in three minutes and it will get more than enough and grow properly.

hi, there.
Sounds OK, twice a day.
You're lucky he eats pellets.
I fed ciclid sticks when he was small, and medium pellets later on.
I trained my O to eat out of my hand and i use bloodworms for that.
He got used to those and the handfeeding real quick, but he never eats any pellets anymore, just worms and bugs.

When he still ate pellets, i'd give him and earthworm as a treat.
I just love to see a tiny O eating a big worm.

your so lucky your O still eats pellets lol, my 2 O's will only eat pellets if i secretly stuff it inside a shrimp or else they would just spit it back out. 6-8 pellets a day is a okay amount but i bet it can eat more.

I have got an Oscar that absolutely will not eat any pellets whatsoever, I even tried starving him for two weeks, he will not eat them, as soon as I put some frozen Lance fish in, he is on them straight away, scoffing down so I know there is nothing wrong with him.

Some people, even myself suggest starving nd Oscar if it will not eat foods such as pellets, I can categorically say this does not always work.

O's tend to get spoiled real easy.
Mine went off his food several times and just demanded a change in his diet.
Nowadays i now what he wants and i change diet real easy with him but pellets, no way...

Thanks everyone. So far he eats them with no hesitation. Guess I'm lucky so far. I really don't want to feed him frozen food if the pellet stuff is working ok. Maybe I'll try some freeze dried bloodworms or krill. What do you think? Thanks again. -C. BTW, he eats algea wafers too. They are for the pleco but he gets them. Now I use a clear 1 inch tube, aim it to the bottom, and drop in the wafers! Otherwise my pleco goes hungry.

oscars are so messy i doubt that the pleco goes hungry but the tube is a good idea to get food down to him........

Plecs are nocturnal. Switch the lights off and after about half an hour when the tank has been in complete darkness, drop some food in for the plec. If you drop food for the pleco when the lights are still on, of course the Oscars are going to eat it. You can also try a nice big chunk of cucumber weighed down with some plant weights, plecs absolutely adore this type of food and when you come down in the morning, you will find that they have eaten nearly all of it during the night.

Yeah, that tube trick works great. Pleco sees the wafers coming it seems.

My Oscar started with the hikari gold red package small then medium pellets... i switched him/her to hikari gold plus and he lovesss those pellets so muchhhh... but still cant get him/her to feed from my hand which sucks... but he/she is slowly allowing me to touch him/her sometimes so thats a plus...

A plus side of hikari gold plus... he/she is growinggg like weeeeeeddd


the he/she him/herrrrrrr

mrmagoo wrote:


I just gotto have a tube like that.
My plecos eat a complete zuchinni every week and all the other fish steal their wafers.
SD's , Oscar and even my Gar sometimes grabs one.