CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

i was told by Joe that i was not feeding my oscars enough. my tiger oscar eats everything that goes in the tank.while my common oscar barely gets anything.the tiger oscar has eaten (at one time)about 10-15 med.pellets plus 10 guppies.im trying to get my gar to eat the guppies but he doesnt get a chance.the oscar is only 5-6ins.i alternate between guppies and the frozen foods for the oscars.should he really eat this much?how do i get the others to eat without him eating it all.

There are several ways to deal with piggy oscars
1.) Team feed-my bf and I stand at opposite ends of the tank and feed each oscar individually.I hope you're feeding more than two kinds of food especially since guppies lack a bit in the nutient area.
2.)Scare tactics- Poke your piggy oscar in the nose whenever it comes to the surface when you begin to feed. This technique cures jumping so it should work for a piggy oscar.
3.) Put a tank divider in temporarily while you feed. The divider will probably scare the fish the first few times you use it so try putting it in randomly before you use it for the feedings.
4.)Joe won't like this one- Feed the piggy oscar until it is too full and fat to chase the guppies that are for the other oscar and the gar. I wouldn't recomend doing this very often as you oscar might suffer a fatal internal rupture but I also wouldn't recomend feeding guppies that often either.

This worked for me: My 2 tigers were battling over food and the male usually won. Instead of poking at him, cause I didn't want to screw him up mentally, I tried the drop all the food in at once technique. This seemed to work at first. I would take the frozen cubes 4(2 at a time) drop one in front of the hoss, and then while he was kinda gilling it in I would drop the other one in front of her and she would gobble it up and then repeat. After a few weeks the male started catching on. He would catch the first cube then halfass swallow it and chase the female. This is when the "show him the net technique" came into play. Anything to scare him off just for a second. The female has "caught up" as far as size goes with the male. Now they know there role and do take turns with the cubes(weird I know)learned behavior I guess. But when the pellets hit the water, it's fair game, thats when they kinda go crazy. Feeding Frenzy! But anything it takes to scare him off for a bit so the others can get their turn. I don't think the overfeeding applies to the adults as much as the smaller less mature O's. But to try and overfeed an O can be kinda rough on the pocketbook, if ya know what I mean! C-ya!

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Chuck
www.kickstart4@aol.com

i only have one but the one where you use the divider souds safe an effective while the whloe "spend a ton of money and risk rupture thing " sounds kinda dumb sorry but wadda i no im only 13.

Hummmmm??

There is yet another good solution. Barbecue the "piggy" oscar

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Joe
www.cichlidfish.com

Joe, you sound like you are missing summer already! Either that or hungry! LOL

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Jen

Actually, it's just that I havn't gone fishing lately and I was thinking about how great that fresh cooked fish tasted hmmm, well now that I have my tanks in the garage, they're real close to my fishing poles

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Joe
www.cichlidfish.com

hey joe wanna dive me one of those tanks?

Hi Thomas,

Well, I can't right now, I have fish in all of them, and out of space. I'm looking for a good deal on a BIG tank, when I get one I can get rid of some of my other tanks. Where are you located? in California?

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Joe
www.cichlidfish.com