Oscar and Blue Jack will not eat except live foods

[raynist]

My baby oscar and Jack will not eat anything other than live crickets. The jack can't eat a whole cricket, he can only take bites of ones I chop up.

Everytime they take a bite of any pellets/flakes, they chew them and then spit them out. I have tried 2 different flake foods and 4 different cichlid pellets, I even chopped them up in case they are too large.

Are they sick? How can I get them to eat other foods, the crickets are fine for now, but when they get larger (if they do!), it will be too expensive.

Thanks
Ray

 

[Vip]

there not sick, there fussy! cichlids are like that there kinda like humans they prefer foods over other foods, dont stress alot of us go through this because there just like kids arnt they What to do is put the flake food in the tank or any other food you want to feed them and leave them alone they will soon figure it out thats all they are going to get and they will eat it. It might take a couple of days but it does work.

 

[fufanu360]

it also could be that they are full... my oscar used to do that... but more likely what vip said, i dont think theres such thing as a full oscar lol

 

[mwm]

When i got my jacks the LFS had been feeding them feeders every day for llike 2 months so i just put pellets in there and thats all they had so eventually they ended up having to eat them now thats their normal food and they eat it with no problems.
What im trying to say is basicly what VIP said, they are picky but they will usually eat what they have to

 

[Discomafia]

Same way you train arrowanas to eat pellets. Don't feed them for a few days, drop in some pellets or something, and it's natural instincts will kick in and it'll realise that's the only food it's going to get, followed by a fish