I was wondering if anyone knew what to do in this situation. I have a tiger oscar that is still pretty young( i've only had it for about a month or two)and is very shy and won't feed. It seems that when i go to feed it, it backs away to a corner and wont eat the food i drop in, even if i leave the room, i don't want to keep just dropping food in if he doesn't eat because that will make the tank filthy and clouded, but i dont know what else to do. I gave it a beetle once and he backed away when i was in the room again but he did eat that when he thought i was no longer in the room(i was in my closet. you must imagine how silly i looked spying on my oscar:laugh: . If anyone knows how to help make him less afraid of me and how to get him to accept the food i put in please explain what i should do.
thank you.

Firstly, welcome to oscarfishlover

It isn't uncommon for new and young Oscars to be very timid and shy in their new environment. However, this type of behaviour doesn't normally go on too long. I would please ask you to first at your water for an ammonia, nitrite, nitrates and pH. Could you also tell us if you cycle the tank before putting the fish in? We obviously have to rule out water conditions for being the cause for your fish behaving the way it is.

If the water checks out okay then that's is great. I would advise you to leave the lights off all the time at the moment. I shy Oscar will prefer being in the dark a lot more than if the lights are on illuminating the tank up. Have you put anything in the tank for the Oscar to hide behind? This is always a very good idea, fish will look for place to hide, if they can't find somewhere, they might get stressed out which won't help the situation.

You said that your fish did actually eat a beetle when you are not looking. This is a good sign, obviously the fish does want to feed, just not when you are around, he obviously feels threatened. However, he must get used to you feeding him, the best thing to do is spend a little bit of time with him every day, maybe half an hour. And then a bit later on, try and feed him. If he is still frightened, just leave it like that. What you could do is make him hungry, Oscars often put food before everything. If he is extremely hungry, he might just forget that he is frightened of you and start feeling okay. It is worth a try. However, I think the best thing to do is just let him settle in for a few days, I'm sure he'll come around.

Thank you for your help. I did run test on the water i forgot to add that they all came out to be normal except the ph test which showed the water to be slightly acidic( a ph of 6.8)im not sure if that is enough acidity to affect his eating habits. I do have a couple fake ornamental plants and a nice size rock in the tank that he often hides and sleep by. Other than that i have just a few seashells that i threw in to make the tank look colorful.I did try to just stand by the tank for a while just to see if he would muster up enough courage to eat from me. After about 2 hours all he did was swim around a bit on the bottum avoiding the where my hand was.Im not sure what else i can mention that will help you all guess what might be up. Other than a nice size pleco it's just him in my tank. Once again thank you for your help.

okay, your pH is just about perfect so don't worry about that
Regarding the other matter, I think you are just going to have to be patient and give the Oscar time to settle in. I would advise you not to put the lights on for too long in one given.. Maybe an hour a day for the first week just to get him used to it and then start increasing it slightly.

By all means try and feed him every day, hopefully he will start associating you with food and then everything will work out fine.