oscars
- Thread starter staticline69
- Start date
It all depends on the size of the crayfish. If it will fit in his mouth he will eat it. Just a word of advice, take the claws off. First time I fed a crayfish to my oscar, he took it in head first and the cray crabbed both of his eyes and trashed them. Then I had to put him down or he would have starved to death.
smaller crays should be ok to feed now. I'd definitely pull the claws off though just to be safe. some cichlids are capable of taking a cray even with the claws but why take the chance. 
I have been lucky enough to have a good sized ditch that holds water most of the year and I feed the baby craw's to my smaller fish,but my half grown oscars eat all sizes. Even if the crawdad is big my 5 O's will gang up on it and rip it to shreds. If the head is not eaten by the O's my cat fish do a great job cleaning it out and I just fish out the remaing shell.
I have also taken large crawdads and boiled them and taken out the tail meat and shreded it up by hand and given it to my baby O's. I think by boiling it I'm reducing the chance of something being introduced into my tank from the ditch. When I boil them all the fish get to have some meat, even my angles ate it. If your crawdads are too big, I'd try that out.
The only problem with boiling them is trying not to eat them your self! LOL
I have also taken large crawdads and boiled them and taken out the tail meat and shreded it up by hand and given it to my baby O's. I think by boiling it I'm reducing the chance of something being introduced into my tank from the ditch. When I boil them all the fish get to have some meat, even my angles ate it. If your crawdads are too big, I'd try that out.
The only problem with boiling them is trying not to eat them your self! LOL
I'll second that. My CL experiment was costly before I could get the survivors out. And that took about as long as it took me to go outside to smoke.
I found that fiddler crabs work better when the oscars are young. Now that my babies are bigger they shred crawdads easily. Crawdads and earthworms are about all the live food my oscars eat. They'll eat a few types of fish but refuse goldfish.
