Teaching fish tricks

[Guest]

This is going to sound stupid and a bit weird but I was wondering if anyone has taught their fish to do tricks? I was thinking about teaching one (or both of my fighters to do tricks). If anyone has taught their fish tricks what was it and how easy was it.

[Nana Luke]

I know some people have taught Goldfish tricks.

Go do a search on youtube for this hilarious goldfish that can play soccer and stuff. It's hilarious.

[Afrikan]

I remember hearing about a guy who had a oscar who did tricks, and apparently oscars are one of the most intelligent and easiest to train.... fish doing tricks who would have imagined such a thing :roll: :lol: :lol:

[paul_r]

i saw in the zoo magazine a quik writeup about a guy who teached his comet to play soccer, rugby and baskeball

[Guest]

So no ones tried teaching their fish trick like to jump and get food out their hand or something. I've taught my female fighter to jump out the water and grab the food out my hand so far she can jump about 2cm and get the food. i started trying on saturday so shes learnt pretty quick. Now to think of a way to make her jumping more interesting.

[Afrikan]

Some fish don't need to be taught to jump out of the water to grab food.... get yourself a greedy Oscar, they will happily volunteer to do it without coaxing of any kind :lol: :lol:

[Guest]

Yeah :lol: :lol: . But to start with she wasn't interested and would only jump if the food was dangling down and a few mm's away from the water.

[Nana Luke]

Some fish don't need to be taught to jump out of the water to grab food.... get yourself a greedy Oscar, they will happily volunteer to do it without coaxing of any kind :lol: :lol:

I can vouch for that!! When I was a kid I had some big foot long Oscars. I used to get scared trying to feed them as they had jumped out of that tank and hung onto my finger once upon a time!! Horrifying when you are just young!

Would love to have a big enough tank to keep them in now. They're great fish.

[Tsarmina]

i would like to teach my female fighter NOT to nibble at my arm every time its in the tank :roll: :lol:

[Loopy]

4 spuralina tabs

roughly 15 minutes

Giant gourami can now jump 1ft high out of the water for a tab.

Shr doesn't really like jumping tho(i think because it requires a bit of effort :roll: )

Had been thinking of getting a bell for her just out of the water attached to a suction cup to see if she will learn to ring it.

[1/2waysgood]

I've had my s/f for not quite two weeks. He's quite content to eat out of my hand already and even follows my hand around if it's in the tank for any reason. In fact, he's so friendly that to catch floating weed is a prob because he plays with my fingers and the net! Silly poop... :roll:

Now that you mention it, I think I'd like to train him to do tricks such as the jumping for food.

Question: How long do bettas live for? Mine would be 4(?) months old.

[whetu]

That sounds like fun! Better make sure she only jumps when you want her to though - one day she might jump out when you're not looking! Uh-oh!

In psychology class at university we taught pigeons to do tricks (it's actually not as much fun as it sounds - my pigeon had been in this class before so he already knew the tricks - I think he was smarter than me... maybe he should have sat the exam for me... :roll: )

Anyway back on topic... the idea is to break a complex task down into smaller parts, and reward the animal for doing something that brings it closer and closer to what you want it to do.

For example, you want your fish to jump and ring a bell in your hand.

You start by holding some food in your hand under the water, until the fish eats out of your hand. Once you have it doing that consistently, you bring your hand just out of the water to feed it. As it achieves each stage, you hold the food higher and higher out of the water until you have achieved the desired height. Maintain this stage for a while until you are sure your fish will consistently jump when your hand is there.

Then one day you hold your hand as if you have food, but you have no food. The fish still jumps and touches your hand. Next time you do it again with food. You vary it so the fish never knows whether you have food or not, but it's worth jumping just in case!

You maintain this stage for a while (so you are sure the fish will always jump and touch your hand, food or not). Then one day you have a small bell in your hand. When the fish jumps, it knocks the bell and rings it. Then do it again with food instead of the bell. Vary the routine so the fish never knows if you have food or the bell.

Don't ever stop with the food completely, but you can gradually reduce the frequency so the fish might only get food every third or fourth jump. You will soon find out what your fish's tolerance level is!

If any one of these steps doesn't work, then go back to the previous step for a while to make sure the fish will always do what you want it to. Then try again.

Disclaimer: I have only ever done this with pigeons, not fish. But fish are way smarter than pigeons so it should still work!

[Matthew]

Does anyone remember the red tailed catfish at Hollywood Mt Roskill.

I tend to talk with my hands a lot, and on a number of occasions had that fellow leaping out of the water trying to eat my arm :lol:

[whetu]

Hey Cam, how are the fish tricks going?

[Guest]

I gave up on them :oops: :oops: . I was going to try with a younger fish as my 2 were really old.