so... hard to train fish, a sign of intelligence, stupidity, or just how they are???

[Magnum Man]

some fish are easy to train, Cichlids in general have no problem figuring out a feeding routine... my Tin Foil barbs, are way to the opposite side of the scale... anything new in the tank, even if intended as a benefit to them, takes over a month to get used to, and mine ( going on 3 years now ) still totally freak out if they can see me... they got moved to a barb tank, a couple months ago, and feeding is still a challenge... there are more Pothos roots in the new tank, and the top water is not completely unobstructed, like it was on the Hillstream tank... their previous tank, had a rather coarse river gravel, and they ate off the bottom nearly every feeding... the new tank has sand, and they don't like to eat off of it... that just got me thinking, who's smarter, easily trained, or very hard to train???

 

[seangee]

Your barbs sound like my dog
I turn my filters off when I feed. They are on smart plugs so I use my phone to turn them all off together and turn them back on 15 minutes later. I don't have a regular time for feeding but when I hit the button from outside the room and go in they are all waiting at the surface for food to fall in from the sky.

 

[Back in the fold]

All I have to do is walk past my single Angelfish and she goes ape expecting to be fed .

 

[GaryE]

I like fish that look at me with confident disinterest. I go out of my way feed them at arm's length from the side, and to avoid routines they can figure out. Feeding times are irregular (I'm retired so I can do that). I don't like things that beg.

I figure any really intelligent fish is not going to trust a human. By that measure, I have a number of species that are geniuses.

 

[gwand]

I read about an experiment with Zebra fish where the investigators were trying to determine if the fish could process the passage of time. The fishes were placed on one side of the tank and had 5 seconds to cross over to the other side of the tank before they received a mild shock. Once the fishes in the experiment received a few shocks and understood the rules, they would spend just a hair under 5 seconds in the dangerous half of the tank before scooting off to safety. Some fish can tell time.