What do they eat?

Question
What should i feed my brand new baby oscars, they are about 2" and i currntly have flake food, they seem like they wont eay feeder fish just yet, maybe they are still young? please help!thanks, Roger

Answer
Hi Roger;

Yep, they are just little tiny babies right now! Your oscars will grow to be over a foot long and live to be 10 or more years old. They will need a 70 gallon tank or larger very soon because they grow fast.

Get them a good quality cichlid basic pellet diet. There are some made for baby fish and you buy them larger and larger as the little guys grow. That's the best basic diet for them because they get the vitamins they need. Flake won't work for much longer because it's pretty messy as they eat it. Pellets, as long as they aren't overfed, will create less mess in the tank. Oscars like to spit their food in and out sometimes. Very messy eaters. All fish need a variety of foods, including vegetables. In nature oscars feed on plants and algae too. Peas, lettuce, earthworms, shrimp, beefheart are all very good supplements to a basic pellet diet.

Please don't give them live feeder fish, even when they do get big enough to eat them. Live feeder fish are kept in very stressful conditions before you buy them. They usually aren't healthy, carry diseases, and have been stressed and starving for several days before they even get to the fish store. The poor feeder fish are shipped in big plastic bags of 1000 fish per bag. (yes, I said "one-thousand") This makes them not very nutritious and actually dangerous to feed your oscars. Your oscars can easily be infected with various types of diseases as well as suffer long term effects of malnutrition.

Here is a link to a good article that tells even more about oscar care;

http://www.oscarfish.com/

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins