Begging Oscar

[hodge]

My lil oscar is constantly begging for food and was wondering if maybe I'm under feeding him or it's just being an oscar. It will stuff every piece of food dropped into the tank into mouth, leaving the 2 Sd's to fight for the spewed and chewed bits. I'm feeding a variety of floating/sinking cichlid pellets and an earth worm as a treat. I've been feeding 2 -3 times a day (maybe 6-8 pellets) with a one pellet snack here and there when I can't refuse his begging (difficult with that sad face)

Every thing I've read = feed as much as the fish will eat in 5 mins, but crap it would eat half a can of food in that time. lol

It has grown from about an inch since I've got it (one month) now 2 1/2" long and has already become a quite the pet, watching for any movement in the room, be it the cat, dog wife etc.

77 gal
one Oscar
two Sd's (moving out when oscar grows)
two pictus cats

[WaterPond]

Haha, its hard to resist.

Feed once daily... add a few veggies to the diet too, like spinach, and broccili, and peas (without shell) and (uh oh, i used and more than once in a scentence) zuccini.

Yeah, so feed once daily... just as much as you give it per feeding. Fish are always hungry and will eat until the explode. Feed sparingly and your fish wont get any diseases like bloat and swim bladder disorder.

[hodge]

Thanks for the reply... It is hard to resist its entertaining "feed me" performance tho !!!

[Melody]

You can also feed much less, more often/day. The fish utilizes all of the nutrition then and you don't have to say 'no'... to the fish or yourself....lol. One pellet as you walk by, share your veggies at dinner, etc.

With that amount, you'll be doing daily waterchanges.

If it helps, keep telling yourself that overfeeding has killed many times more fish than underfeeding. :yes:

[_Aaron_]

Sounds like typical O behavior.

[ChrissyFishy]

When mine was a baby he wanted to eat all the time and that never changed :NoWay: . They love food so much that you can teach them to eat from your hand!!! Their water gets dirty really really fast though and they can get HITH if you aren't careful with that.

[hodge]

I've been doing the "one" pellet feeding routine this week. I've already got it eating from the surface, from my hand...I'm afraid it's going to jump out, as it races towards the food at Mach II. lol

What a cool fish to own...going to be hard to own just one.

[ChrissyFishy]

It is only hard to own just one until you get two. Then you look at the 2 tanks one day and think about all of the fish you could have in those big tanks and they would still not make as big of a mess :laugh: :laugh:

[Melody]

LOL Well that makes sense - I can't imagine devoting a huge tank to one or two fish. I don't have the self-control.