hi, i just bought two oscars, one tiger and the other albino. they haven't eaten the green pellets that i bought for about 4 days. i bought rosy reds hoping it will trigger their natural instincts and want to eat them. at first my oscars were afraid of the little feeders. then about an hour in, they chase them, but stop and go back to clinging on each other. thats another question, do oscars CLING ON to each other ALL THE TIME? its weird, i almost feel bad for them because i feel like they can't move freely.

How big are the Oscars? I wouldn't rely totally on them eating live fish. You are better off feeding them on good-quality pellets anyway. If they are having problems catching the food, give them something easier to feed on. They should eat their pellets at some stage, I would take the live fish out of the tank. Oscars aren't really the sort of fish that will chase after their prey for a long time, they would be more ambush prey. They will also feed on food that is easy to catch. In many cases, they would feed on insects. So if you try and feed them on fish that swim very quickly, they will not be able to catch them because they are not the sort of fish that hunt by stealth and speed

I highly advise not using feeders/ rosies. Rosies and feeders carry many diseases that if spread to your oscars takes a lot of time, money for medications, and a lot of effort to ween them back to health.

The only way I would recomend using feeder fish the safe way would be to set up a 30-55 gallon tank and keep just goldfish or roises. Use this tank as a quaranteen. Over a 3 week peroid, the weak and probally diseased ones will die off.
Feed these feeders tiny pellets ment for Oscars-- i.e. Hakari floating pellets, or the generic kind.

Still the best diet for a Oscar is a varied diet consisting of, nightcrawlers/ fishing worms, Crawdads, Crickets that are store bought, uncooked market fresh shrimp,
Bloodworms, Superworms, and the main diet staple should be Hakari Floating pellets. All the other foods I listed should only be fed as treats every so often.

Your oscar will not go hungry. Eventually they will eat. They sound pretty tiny.
Start them off with some flake food. They should start to take that. Then buy some floating pellets that will fit in their mouth. Being juvie oscars you should feed them small portions 3 times a day, once they get 6" feed them twice a day, within a year they should be around 10"-12" growing at 1"-2" a month at this point feed them once a day.

As for clinging on to eachother. It's perfectly normal. My 2 Oscars like to do that until I turn the lights on then they tend to lip lock and chase eachother the rest of the day. You will see a lot of personality start to emerge from these soon to be monsters!

Hope this helps!

Hi, thank you guys for replying. Now when you say market fresh shrimp, are you talking about shrimp that you and i eat, cut up into pieces? And also, whenever i come around they act dead, but once i leave they start to swim around. i heard that is normal. but damn, that sucks. haha

Shrimps/prawns are perfectly okay for fish, after all, fish will eat the same shrimps/prawns as we would in many cases. You often see the Indians catching river shrimps, the fish will be feeding on exactly the same food. Uncooked and unpeeled is much better than cooked because they retain more goodness. Freeze dried is better than frozen but you can't be live. It has already been mentioned that buying live food from shops isn't a good idea. You can breed your own if you like, it's very easy to do. If you live near the sea and there are prawns there, catch those, again they are very easy to catch with a drop net and a piece of fish. Fish shops normally sell live caught shrimps so you don't normally have to worry about diseases there.