What Do Oscar Fish Eat and What to Do About White Spots on Oscar Fish

The oscar fish is a very interesting tropical ornamental fish. Although it looks a bit clumsy, it swims very quickly. Moreover, oscar fish are not very difficult to keep, and they are also easy to breed, which is why many people like them. However, the most important thing in keeping oscar fish is the feeding method. Let us take a look below at what kinds of food they eat.

What Do Oscar Fish Eat

Oscar fish are highly accepting of food. They eat dried food, small fish, small shrimp (remember to remove the shrimp spikes when feeding), tadpoles, bloodworms, loaches (must be cut into pieces, otherwise the loach may pierce their intestines and cause death), and mealworms; but to avoid making their diet too monotonous, you can also feed them some lean meat and so on. Although they also eat beef, pork, chicken, and animal organs, it is not recommended to feed these often, because they easily spoil the water quality. Oscar fish have an astonishing appetite and are very greedy. They will swallow almost any acceptable food, but their favorite food is still live small fish and small shrimp. When eating, they will even chase and catch another small fish with one still held in their mouth that has not yet been swallowed. Their greed is evident from this.

What to Do About White Spots on Oscar Fish

First observe the symptoms of the oscar fish: white spots and ulceration on the fins and body, dull color, and a feeling that the oscar fish is less active than before. This disease first appears on small fish and fish with weak resistance, and it is a bacterial infection. The triggers of illness in oscar fish are basically changes caused by water pollution, so treating this white spot ulcer disease involves slowly changing the water on one hand and adding medication to kill bacteria on the other. Next, a brief explanation of how to do it:

First cut off the power to the aquarium, and drain 1/4 of the water from the aquarium. Prepare the medication or sea salt you purchased; the effect is the same, both kill bacteria and reduce inflammation. Use a small spoon to measure a certain amount of sea salt or medication; the amount should be proportional to the size of the aquarium. Then pour it into the aquarium and let the medication fully dissolve and react in the aquarium for more than half an hour.

While the aquarium is without power and circulation, clean the filter cotton of the aquarium and the areas inside the aquarium where debris has accumulated in the gaps, to ensure the aquarium environment is hygienic. After half an hour has passed, you can fill the aquarium with water and turn the power on to let it circulate. When fish are sick, they need the owner's careful care. The whole treatment period may take a week or longer, and the owner must not be too impatient. Also, after the fish recover from the disease, the owner still needs to pay attention to the aquarium environment to avoid recurrence.

What Are the Reasons Oscar Fish Lose Scales

1. Improper handling. When catching fish or extracting waste from the bottom of a dedicated aquarium, hard objects such as tools may bump into the surface of the oscar fish's body, causing the scales on the oscar fish's skin to fall off.

2. Improper feeding method. This is caused by mixed keeping of oscar fish or an unsuitable size of the dedicated aquarium, leading to scrambling for food during feeding, collisions, and similar situations.

3. Being frightened. When oscar fish are first being kept, they are not suited to the new environment and are easily frightened, bumping into the tank walls while darting around.

4. Fighting. The oscar fish is one of the more aggressive ornamental fish, with a very strong territorial nature. When first keeping oscar fish together, it is very easy for fighting and brawling to occur.

5. Illness. Vertical scale disease is one of the common diseases of oscar fish, and it can also show scale loss in oscar fish. It is a fish disease caused by parasites. If scale loss is found during keeping, integrated analysis is needed to find the cause of the oscar fish's scale loss.

Notes on Feeding Oscar Fish

1. Oscar fish like eating small fry the most, so never keep them mixed with other smaller fish, to avoid them becoming their snack!

2. After oscar fish have eaten and drunk their fill, they sometimes lie on their sides flat at the bottom of the aquarium; at this time, do not think they are uncomfortable, they are just being lazy and taking a short rest.

3. It is best not to feed them livestock meat (beef, pork, chicken). Not only does it easily spoil the water quality, it is also hard to digest and easily causes enteritis.

4. Oscar fish are really like pigs: they can eat, sleep, and also poop (they will excrete a large amount of feces). Therefore, oscar fish are not suitable for laying bottom sand, because the bottom sand will accumulate large amounts of oscar fish feces, causing water quality to deteriorate, while nitrifying bacteria generally live in glass rings, and the water flow through the bottom sand is very small, so it is hard for nitrifying bacteria to clean up the fish feces. Therefore, generally keeping oscar fish in a bare tank is more suitable.

Many people say that oscar fish have living habits very similar to pigs, because oscar fish have always been known for eating. So from feeding when they are small to their development after they grow up, careful care is needed. Some notes on feeding are also introduced above for everyone to refer to.