I have 2 oscars, they are probably around 50 or 60 mil.Can they eat feeder fish yet ?

Also with the feeder fish, can i just put a whole heap of them in the tank, and let the oscars eat them as they feel like it, or should i only put them in when i decide its feeding time and keep it regulated ?

I would recommend not feeding feeder fish unless:
1) You raise them yourself, or quarantine them until you're sure they are healthy. (store bought feeders are typically chock full of diseases, due to their crowded conditions.)
2) The feeders are NOT goldfish, but tropical fish. (An oscar wouldn't encounter a goldfish in the wild! Goldfish are also not good for oscars because they're too high in the wrong type of fats or something.)
I have never fed my oscar live fish, because I believe it would make him too agressive, but if you want to feed live fish, they should be used only as a treat, not a staple diet.
And as for baby oscars eating feeders? I don't know, they would obviously have to be small enough for them to fit in their mouths....
I would recommend insects or snails for live foods. Apparently they love earthworms. I haven't tried those yet, as the ground will be frozen for quite a while here!

I think that they might be a little small yet.

As a word of caution, please be aware of the risks you are taking in using feeder fish. Firstly, you should not use cold water fish as feeders as they are high in fat that your O cannot digest, which could eventually lead to fatty liver disease. There's also a chemical found in them that's not good for tropical fish........I forget the name of it though

Secondly, many feeders are kept in poor conditions at the LFS and pose a large risk of passing on diseases if not quarantined for a few weeks before you feed them to your O.

Something that many people do not consider, and that I have encountered more than once is that your O may not be able to catch a particular fish, and may then give up chasing it altogether, at which point you have fish in your tank you do not want. Putting several fish in at once heightens the risk of this happening.

I am in no way against the use of live food and IMHO it's beneficial if used sparingly, but I use feeders that I have bred myself, convict cichlids are excellent for this, as are guppies and other livebearers.

So in summary, I advise that you raise your own fry and then just use as a treat every now and then and only a couple of fish at a time.

HTH

To echo some of the above ... feeders must be home grown or quarantined for at least 4-6 weeks to prevent introducing disease to the Os.

Coldwater fish are high in fat and can lead to the fatty liver disease. Goldfish (and probably other cold water fish) do contain a chemical that isn't good, it inhibits the absorption of certain needed nutrients that will make the O sick over time.

Other than maybe not being able to catch the fish ... an O can get quite enthusiastic chasing the prey, and have been known to forget its surroundings and hurt themselves quite harshly and there are horror stories of them dieing from a hard ram into the glass or other object.

All in all, feeders are not a good idea in an aquarium setting. There are other live food options that aren't risky. You could raise your own earthworms in a storage container filled with soil (don't forget to feed them) as well as raise other slow prey creatures to be sure of their health and they are free of pesticides. Gut loading them with vitamins too for an extra healthy treat.

I personally cannot do the live food route, I feel sad and guilty, even for a worm. I just use the frozen stuff from a quality brand that adds the vitamins for me as well (Hikari). It makes for a good treat that is readily eaten with the least amount of grody involvement on my part I had to give away a tank full of livebearers because I couldn't sacrifice them to the O

Great fish to use are livebearers. Platies, guppies, mollies ... they will have so many babies you will never run out of them. When I had them, just about every day I saw new babies, but at least once a week there was a birth. Went from less than 10 to nearly 100 in just a few months with absolutely no effort on my part. No breeder boxes, nothing of the sort. Just some floating plants for them to hide about in.

The Guys have covered most of it and i agree totally.

breed yr own guppies and only feed the O's as a treat if u feed them daily on live food they will refuse to eat pellets and if for any reason u run out of feeders you will be stuck with fussy O's

guppies breed easly so get a small tank(10g) to breed your own.

hi guys,,i feed mine feeder fish every now and then,,he would love to eat them all the time but then he'd prob not eat the pallets anymore,,the best thing i'v found that he LOVES is live crickets..he almost jumps out of the tank to get at em..have also tried live worms,he ate them as well but it took him awhile to work out what they were

Thanks some great advice there !

So the idea of quarantining the fish is to keep them in thier own tank for a period of time, to observe them, if they dont obviously have any thing wrong with them (or die mysteriously)then they are ok and i can feed them to the oscars ?

Or after establishing the stock is healthy i can just leave them alone and let them breed ?

I wouldnt know the first thing about breeding worms or snails, maybe i can research it that would add variety for the O's.

Lol i can see now why this becomes a lifetime hobby for some people its all pretty cool think im in danger of adding another obsession to my list !

So earthworms out of the backyard are not healthy ?

Furthermore with feeding the fish, how do i know whats enough ? Right now im feeding them a few pinches of flake, and half each little cube of frozen blood worms, i dont know if thats right but they seem happy

i will be careful not to spoil the O's on the good stuff alone too, i'v always done that with my dogs too, get them used to eating kibble or else they would rather become emaciated than eat dog food

edit: i dont know if i have super smart O's, but after just a few days, they are already coming to the surface and taking the blood worms right out of my hand.

The reason for the quarantine is not just to observe them and see if they survive, but a lot of people are more pro-active and treat for internal parasites and the like as a 'just in case' measure

Keep it up and you'll have multiple tank syndrome in no time

TommyGun wrote:

They are healthy as long as you can be sure they soil they live in isn't contaminated with fertilizers or pesticides.

I personally dont feed feeder fish to my oscars as i think its cruel and unnecessary. The link below shows an oscar being fed to a shark. In the video they are only doing on a bigger scale what someone is doing when feeding small fish to oscars. However lots of people do, remember most of an oscars diet in the wild is insects etc so if you do feed feeders do it sparingly

www.oscarfishlover.com/component/option,...ew/id,6239/catid,43/

metoo wrote:


There are several species of earthworms you can find in your yard, many are great for your fish, but certain species can contain toxins, specificly ones found in rotting vegetation. As Metoo mentioned, ones found in contaminated soil would contain the toxin that was put in your yard in that area. If you use Round Up or anything like that, it's best not to use those earthworms. I'd rather buy them from my lfs.(they do sell them)

usually feed what your fish can eat in 3-5 minutes two to three times a day during their growth stage, some feed less. When they get older, feed once a day what they can eat in a couple minutes.

Os will always act hungry, they are very smart, and will try anything they can think of to trick you, including manipulation. Mine will act sad by laying on the gravel sometimes when I put in pellets and he wants something more tasty like bloodworms, krill, or shrimp. If I show the container to said treats, he immediately swims to the top doing the little dance with much enthusiasm.

Os are smart, and some can be sweet, some can be terrors. I can feed mine shrimp and krill from hand ... and he likes to grab the frozen bloodworms like a predator when I drop them in

Be careful though ... if you think they are starting to get aggressive, then you may wish to stop it. Several problems can arise for an aggressive O. If they get 'jumpy', then you have to worry about them jumping out of the tank or knocking the lid off when you go to feed them.

If not that aggressive, but still a bit too enthusiastic, they can accidentally bite you, which isn't anything to laugh at. You may not be able to see them, but they have razor sharp teeth in the front of their mouth. One slip and you will be bleeding, and may not even feel it. They are set up with those more for grabbing the prey and biting it, the teeth in the throat do the grinding like our molars.

If your O remains more timid and docile, you should be able to get away with hand feeding indefinitely. Mine luckily is very gently, but, I have saw a few aggressive ones that gave their owners a sliced up thumb



So yes, quarantine any feeders you buy, and by all means treat them ... so if they do have something, you cure it anyway.

Raising live-bearers is pretty much no effort. They multiply like the proverbial rabbit. 6 can turn into 100+ in less than a year unattended. Clean warm water and a place for the babies to hide (floating plants or the stuff that goes on the bottom) and you have it made. Feed micropellets or microwafers (Hikari) and you don't even have to put anything special in the tank. After a while, you will see new babies every week or more often. Most live bearers only need to be impregnated once to have several sets of babies (they store the 'fertilizer' for the next round). So, you can see, once you get a few pregnant ones, they stay pregnant, then the new females become pregnant and it is never ending. My platies ended up showing the 'mickey mouse' gene after a year of unguided breeding from an initial 5. I gave them away because I couldn't do the feeder thing, and they over-ran the 29 gallon they were in very quickly to where maintenance became tedious for fish I wasn't thrilled about (like I am with Oscars and Bettas). The Bettas are getting the 29 gallon within a couple days


Definitely be careful with worms from the yard, because it is not just what you put in your yard that can contaminate them. It is your neighbors, and if you yard gets any runoff from surrounding areas. You have to be very careful. You can raise them inside though with soil and a bit of table scrap.


It is a good idea to get yourself on a habit of feeding pellets as well as the Os eating them. They will hold out for sometimes several days for treats if they are spoiled enough ... leaving you to scoop out pellets and throw them away. Usually when you go to take the pellets out, they do their hungry dance while snubbing at the pellets you are removing. After I finish the large Hikari Gold pellets, I am going to have to train my O to eat medium pellets (Bio-Gold+), because he thinks they are too small to be bothered with ... so that tells you how finicky they can be.


Welcome to the world of Os. Lots of personality. Very addicting. I had 5 tanks going in my house about a year ago, and I had to downsize. Back to two tanks. Bettas and my O So be careful, tanks seem to sneak into the house and you are spending quite some time doing water changes and cleaning filters before you know it!