They are omnivores, but if they were strongly herbivorous, I think the
Amazon river would be stripped of all vegetation by now ;~). I always
thought of Oscars as piscivorous carnivores (specialized hunters of fish
and appropriately sized invertebrates) and opportunistic herbivores (a
side of salad if the plant was right, and the hunger was there), but I'm
always interested in reading from credible research papers which might say
different.

cheers
--
www.NetMax.tk


They are predators.
You would kill them with a vege diet.
My oscars get NO vege food.
They don't need it. They spawn every 2 weeks or so and the closest to a vege
they get is the odd earthworm.
Their attacking plants is prob more just them enjoying a bit of destruction.
Live food, frozen seafoood/brine/bloodworm/beefheart, and good old protein
pellets works fine for me.
Some people use a bit of spinach in their frozen foods but I just feed my
feeder fish a vege based flake. The old gutload trick.
In closing they are strongly attracted to any surface movement. They seek
out and kill. Hunters.
Predators.
And yes hundreds of studies on them, thousands of gut samplings.
predators