South American Cichlids • Need help with not overfeeding my Oscars

[1020thirty]

Hello, I just recently set up a 75-gallon tank with very good filtration and all of the works and have just got 2 small Oscar fish. The problem that I'm having is that I don't know how much to feed them without overfeeding them. So far I have just been overfeeding them because I can see all the uneaten food on the bottom of my tank and an almost cobwebby like substance over the uneaten food. I have 1 albino oscar which is 3 inches long and another Oscar which is around 2.5. I have been feeding them Spectrum cichlid pellets that are about 1mm in size. I am lucky that I have 2 powerful filters but I'm scared that I'll kill my fish if I don't get this under control. In addition, I've only been able to feed them twice a day because I am not home for most of the day and when I feed them the first time at 5:00 am they don't eat it. I'm going to get an auto feeder soon but I don't know what to do.

[ken31cay]

You should take out any uneaten food at the bottom of the tank, don't leave it there to rot or your fish can get sick. Feed only what they eat within about a minute or so, a little at a time so none is left uneaten. Feeding twice a day is enough.

[fishguy1978]

I do not recommend auto feeders as they have a tendency to dump all the food at once. Single feeding times are sufficient for our fish or even every other day even. With the size of you oscars try getting a larger pellet 3mm and only feeding 2-3 to each fish. Vary their food types as well. Frozen, fresh and pellets.

[Ichthys]

At 3” long they can eat 4” worms, so they won’t be interested in 1mm pellets. In fact oscars don’t like dried foods anyway. Switch to meaty foods like whitefish, prawns and the various bigger frozen foods and they’ll eat ten times as much.

Do not use an autofeeder to feed them when you’re not there. They might not eat it (reason enough). Also make sure you’re doing plenty of water changes or they also won’t eat much.

You can’t overfeed an Oscar, they don’t get obese. But you can very easily ‘overfeed’ the tank, which will kill them.