Oscar picky eating

Hello,
I have 2 Oscars in 2 separate tanks (wanted to house together but the elder wouldn't have it). Both have now decided they refuse to eat pellets and will only accept a variety of frozen foods. I just tried Seachem Entice and it not help. I also tried soaking pellets in Entice with minced garlic but that also failed. Any ideas on other options. I'm trying to keep things easy. I'm considering trying to find a liquid vitamin supplement to soak some of the less nutritious frozen food in prior to feeding. I'm most concerned with disease development from vitamin deficiencies. I'm considering housing live crickets in a 10 gallon and feeding those daily but that is kind of a last resort for me. I don't test water parameters unless I detect a problem. However, I did just test both oscar tanks with the master test kit and registers all 0's for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Both tanks have large amounts of malaysian driftwood to help keep the ph on the acidic side. Any advice from experienced oscar fish keepers is appreciated.

180 gallon w/ divider oscar, jack dempsey, and texas cichlid (120) and flowerhorn (60 gallon)
75 gallon planted community tank
75 gallon w/ oscar and royal pleco
55 gallon planted w/ 1 angelfish and 1 rope fish (considering making this a ram tank)

 

What about feeder fish or frozen thawed fish and shellfish, like tiapia, shrimp, mussles, flounder,haddock, polluck. beef heart. Have you tried any of those. ? I used to have an Oscar about 30 plus years ago and used to feed him feeder goldfish which he really liked amoung other things. Although I don't know if people do that any more. Alison

 

I haven't used feeders at all cause if the infection risk. I've thought about housing my own guppies so I know they are disease free. I just don't like doing that though. I think the vitamin deficiency problem would be present with any of the items you mentioned above aside feom the feeders . I'm sure they would love all of that but may still lack essentials. I've looked at the back of some of the frozen stuff like the variety packs and they add vitamins to those. Very messy when feeding to an oscar though. Definitely appreciate the suggestion though.

 

Firstly check your nitrates. You need to bang reagent #2 on the table before shaking it, every time you test. You do not have zero nitrates with large cichlids.

This is common with Oscars. What has always worked best for me is this... feed them as much as they want of the foods they like most, and keep them topped up. This stretches the stomach, so they will need more food inside them to feel "full". This makes them even hungrier, then they usually become less picky. After a few days of this, miss a day, and they will be starving and eat anything.

Obviously keep on top of water changes.

 

Not a bad idea. Would never have thought of feeding them more of the stuff they love. I'll give that a shot for sure. Thanks for the tip on the nitrates. I thought I was being pretty careful in following the directions but you're correct that 0 is unlikley

 

I started semI thawing various frozen foods like those San Francisco Bay variety packs and mixing in different high quality pellet foods. Seems to be working great so far. In those variety packs there is one called freshwater frenzy which is veggie based with added vitamins. I use those and mix up a batch of new life spectrum dough mix and spread it on like peanut butter. They chow it right down. Just some tips if anyone ever has this issue.

 

Glad you found a solution. Alison