Messy Oscar

[brentw]

I dont know if he's just a slob or its his way of telling me he's had enough to eat. Seems like when I feed him pellets he will eat half of it and send the other half through his gills uneaten. It also seems that he doesnt know how to eat for himself and requires me to hand feed him most of the time or else the jack dempsey (1/3 his size) will eat all the pellets leaving him none. I fed him an earthworm for the first time yesterday. It's funny because he will wait for the JD to show interest in the worm before he decides to eat it.

[Northernguy]

Yews Oscar are total slobs .Very messy fish but are fun to keep.
HOow much filtration are you running on your tank.
Get a pleco to clean up all the food waste.
Pleco poop as much as an Oscar too! lol
You should have put this in the Oscar subforum

[brentw]

I've got a fluval 405. Thinking about getting a HOB in the not too distant future. My convict fish loves going through my gravel picking up any uneaten food.

[MCHRKiller]

Good job on keeping the convict in there to scavenge up the uneaten food from the oscar. Feeding a smaller pellet size will also help reduce some of the mess. Oscars "chew" larger pellets and loose a good bit threw their gills and mouths doing that.

[chipper]

That is true they are slobs. My three are big slobs but then they pick at the bottom of what they miss.

[brentw]

I may have to switch over to sand. I've got large gravel and the food just seems to sink through the cracks where my convict cant reach it.

[chipper]

The oscar does not like going to the bottom to cleanup mine do. lol

[Northernguy]

It will make cleaning easier but I think the sand would look dirty all the time because of all the waste.I have been thinking about it for a while now!lol
I may go with a gold play sand mixed with the white pool sand.It will help to hide some of the crap!

[MCHRKiller]

A finer grade dark colored gravel IMO is your best bet. Estes makes some lovely smaller grade of gravel that seems to work really well for my Os.

[Northernguy]

I find the hikari pellets turns their crap a sandy color.Thats why I would go the light gold sand route.:hmm3grin2orange:
It all depends on you though.The Este's sand is really nice stuff but unavailable up here!:11:

[Oscar_freak12321]

To take care of the mess that the Oscar loses through his gills, I added some Tinfoil Barbs and they eat up the mess so fast it never even reaches the bottom! But I agree...Oscars are very messy eaters. Fun fish though!