I have been feeding my fish small O.S.I floating/sinking pellets (my ryukin feeds on top, oranda is more of a bottom scavenger) on occasion but they seem to have issues with them. I soak them for about 5-10mins. before feeding, my oranda will eat a few, then seems to go to his hiding place and looks like he is chewing and gagging (yawning?) Eventually he'll 'burp' (bubbles come out of his mouth) and be off to get more pellets... Is this OK? My goldfish are about 2-3in. are they too small for pellets? Is this normal behavior?

Also, my fish love freeze-dried daphnia (hikari)... how often should I feed them this along with there regular feeding? I have been giving it to them every other day as a 'snack' so to speak.

Mine do that all the time - take some food, and also few pieces of gravel and than chew, and chew...

I give them a variety of flakes, pellets, and veggies.

I feed granules to my fish (soaked) and I hardly see them chewing more than a couple of seconds. But the behaviour you've mentioned sounds normal to me.

Thanks for the input... I am gonna try feeding them romaine lettuce, peas, zucchini, spinach, etc. in the next week. Being that I work in a restuarant it'll be easy to hook these guys up. I tried orange bits today, but my fish didn't seem real interested and it made a bit of a mess. For now, they've been getting Tetra Fin crisps, Nutrafin max flakes, O.S.I pellets, and freeze-dried daphnia from hikari.