Veggie Oscars?

[Silversun5]

my mom and dad are very pure veggies and will never touch meat in thier lives. but sadly we have 3 oscars and they will not let me fed live food to them. I dont personally care, but i know an oscar needs a certain type of diet. We feed them some chiclid pellets and after that my mom will sometimes put vegtables in the tank, the oscars favorite, frozen peas. i know they are receiving what they need in thier diet from the fish food, but are vegtables ok for them. i hear that it's actaully a good thing to once in a while feed them veggies but i could have heard wrong so lemmie know. thanx guys

 

[Tolak]

I've had friends with oscars, just picked up a small one a while back myself. From what I see & hear, they eat anything. I have yet to give mine feeders I've heard that they really don't have much nutritional value compared to your better brands of cichlid pellets.

Mine eats sinking veggie pellets that are meant for plecs, I figure the veggies will keep him/her from getting constipated, a common problem with oscars. He/she also gets frozen brine shrimp a couple times weekly, and an assortment of different flakes that I feed to my angels.

Tolak

 

[Silversun5]

yeah i heard the same bout live food. my mom gets wild sometimes and will experiment with differnt types of veggies and amazingly they LOVE peas, but hate the skin around it. mine eat broccli once n while and destory cabbage. hopefully my mom knows what she's doin. my oscars are pretty large and we've been doin this for awhile now, i woudl say 7 months and in those 7 month they grew MASSIVE from 2 inches to almost 6.

 

[juanveldez]

O's are indeed omnivores. while the veggie matter is alright for them it shouldn't be the staple of their diet. the pellets should be, and should be fed to them every day at a minimum depending on size. the larger they are the fewer times per day they need to be fed. with exception of my juvie festae all of my fish only get fed once a day about 2 hours before lites out. though a varied diet including meaty foods will ultimatly be better for them it won't hurt them either.

 

[guppymonkey]

I have had my oscar for a little over a year now and feed him veggies all the time. I usually give him cichlid pellets from various brands and then sometimes supplement his diet with frozen and freeze dried foods and the occassional veggie. Mine seems to like peas and carrots. I guess the carrots would be a natural color enhancer wouldn't they?

A lot of people think that feeders are a necessary part of an oscars diet but they actually are usually TERRIBLE for them. Any feeder from a pet store is probably infested with parasites and nutritionally empty. No pet store that I know of ever feeds their feeder fish. It would be more work for them because the tank would get dirty very very quickly from a thousand goldfish pooping. So when you buy them they are mostly emaciated from starvation and so have no nutritional value (besides the intestinal and surface dwelling parasites that infest them).

So in comparison veggies are pretty good. Anyways, from what I have read oscars don't usually eat fish in the wild. They obviously will eat anything that fits in their mouths but most of their natural diet is made up of crayfish (at least the articles I read said that) and other invertebrates.

 

[freddyk]

A lot of people think that feeders are a necessary part of an oscars diet but they actually are usually TERRIBLE for them. Any feeder from a pet store is probably infested with parasites and nutritionally empty.

Live food is always a good think until someone mentions feeders, as if somehow fish, the staple of so much aquatic life, is useless. The truth is feeders do contain nutrition, but because like all live food it's made up of mostly water, it take much more weight in feeders to equal the nutrition of a condense and vitamin enriched pellet. This goes for any fresh food. In addition, feeder can be infested with parasites, but to say they are probably infested is being melodramatic. Lastly, feeders tend to be half starved from the store, which is what makes them least nutritious, so to make them worth feeding they would need to be fattened up.

Of course, no predator needs live food, but I'm commenting because misguided statements like above put unnecessary fear into people. Feeders can be very healthy supplements if they are quarentined and fed first, or if they are bred by the aquarist. Is it worth all the trouble? Probably not for most, but let the individual decide that.

 

[juanveldez]

Of course, no predator needs live food, but I'm commenting because misguided statements like above put unnecessary fear into people. Feeders can be very healthy supplements if they are quarentined and fed first, or if they are bred by the aquarist. Is it worth all the trouble? Probably not for most, but let the individual decide that.

I agree for most people it is just impracticle to raise up their own feeders and not really worth all the extra work. personally I give my fish a mixture of frozen plankton, shrimp( brine and cocktail), and scallops. this is in addtion to having a feeding of pellets.

 

[Synirr]

Maybe your parents would go for letting you give your oscar some live ghost shrimp? You could also give him live nightcrawlers/earthworms you can buy as bait (I get mine from the sports section of Walmart).
That's the only kind of live food my oscar gets, and even that's pretty rare... kinda a treat. He actually seems to like his pellets more than the shrimp or live earthworms I give him on occasion.

 

[guppymonkey]

Of course, no predator needs live food, but I'm commenting because misguided statements like above put unnecessary fear into people. Feeders can be very healthy supplements if they are quarentined and fed first, or if they are bred by the aquarist. Is it worth all the trouble? Probably not for most, but let the individual decide that.

I was not saying that feeding live food is bad. I was saying that ANY feeder that is bought from a pet store has a very very big chance of being sick of parasite infested. Is it a scare tactic to say feeders are bad? I suppose so but shouldn't people be scared to hurt their fish? I don't even know how many people I have seen with oscars that only feed them feeders or give them feeders once or twice a week and then wonder why their fish stopped eating or never grew or died suddenly after a couple years. It is possible to quarantine them and treat them for their various parasites (although the internal ones are hard to spot and harder to treat) but most people simply don't want that extra work. I guess its much simpler to just use frozen or freeze dried for the most part. Earthworms or meal worms are a good treat but are usually really messy when eaten by oscars ( that can turn people off especially if its around dinner time when they see the feeding).

 

[Dwarfs]

IMO, don't give your fish feeders, unless it is crucial to said fish's survival---leaf fish for example, they only eat living things, they will refuse to eat ANYTHING without a heartbeat.



About the oscar, it's been said, oscars will eat just about anything. The best thing for oscars is probably cichlid food (sticks, pellets, etc). Vegetables can be fed on occasion, but sticking to a nutritious staple food will be the most important thing for your oscars diet.