OSCAR WILL NOT EAT

My fish Oscar might be dying. Oscar is an Oscar.

He is eleven inches long, which in sixty – gallon – fish - aquarium - language is HUGE. The trouble is, I haven’t seen him eat in almost a month. He used to eat immediately whenever I would put his huge fish pellet food into the tank. In fact, sometimes he would go at it with such gusto that he would almost jump at the food as it left my fingers.

Lately, though, he just sits there, lazily eyeing me as I deposit the pellets into the tank. I have watched him for minutes on end at times, and haven’t seen him eat.

Gosh, I think I love him, the big “he’s so ugly he’s cute” brute. (Someone actually said that about him once.) He’s just so unique, and there was a time when he had a very lively fish-onality. He would follow me wherever I went around his tank, swimming and wagging his tail (yes! Wagging his tail!) as I moved my finger across the glass of the tank.

Oscar is almost four years old. I raised him as a baby, when he was no longer than an inch and a half. He grew quickly, and has always been a topic of conversation with anyone who saw him. Now, he seems bored, as if he is just waiting to die.

Does anyone out there know anything about Oscars? Is this normal. Am I supposed to change what I feed him? I’d hate to think that I could have helped by changing his diet and didn’t. But I do know that in the past, whenever I changed his diet, he refused to eat.

So there you have it. Oscar will not eat, and if he doesn’t eat, he will die. Can anyone help? Please?