Strange Angelfish behaviour

[Hassan 2021]

Hi

I feed my angelfish every morning before going to work and once a week religiously do partial water changes.

I've had my Angel for almost a year now and he is happy eating really well in fact he shows no fear even when I am gravel vacuuming.

Just by chance yesterday as I came home and was watching my Angel and feeding him my wife came over to the tank as well to talk to me and my Angel left the food became flighty and went to hide so as an experiment I asked my wife to stand away from the tank after couple of minutes I resumed feeding him and his behaviour became normal again he was up eating normal.

Can someone explain this strange behaviour please?

 

[Byron]

This is not uncommon, I have read of it occurring with discus too. The fish can learn to recognize you as the source of its food. My Corydoras always scampered to the front of the tank every time I entered the fish room because they associated me with food appearing. Other individuals however are more likely to be seen as possible dangers, and the fish will usually try to escape.

 

[Colin_T]

I had fish tanks in the lounge room and my fish would watch everyone in the house but just swim around normally when other people were there. However, when they saw my bedroom door open, or they saw me come into the house form outside, they all raced down to the end of the tank closest to my door or to me. They would follow me along the tanks as I walked past.

I tried to get other people to feed my fish when I was at home and away from home, but the fish wouldn't eat unless they were really hungry. Then they would wait for the person to move away from the tanks before eating.

We had a display tank with discus on the counter in the shop. Every customer that bought anything stood next to the tank. Kids would tap the glass and people would stare at the fish. The fish didn't care and used to breed every month or so. They just got used to people being near them and weren't afraid.

Your wife might have startled the fish when she approached or the fish just doesn't trust her.

 

[Hassan 2021]

That's really interesting other fishes in the tank are not bothered by her presence close to the tank but the angel just gets flighty and only approaches when I come in to feed

 

[SomethingsFishy24]

It happens here also, depends on what is going on in the house. Usually they go about their business when my husband/kids are in front of the tank. Hubby was helping me change out the background on the tank and he came up to it with a large black sheet of poster board. You would have thought he was an axe murderer. The fish flipped out. Once he lowered the piece of poster board and they saw him, they were fine. Maybe she wore her hair different or the color of her clothing, could be the fish did not immediately see her off hand and was startled. Try having her feed them, it would be interesting to see if this would help the fish have a better association to her presence.

 

[itiwhetu]

My Discus come to the front of the tank when they see me, but don't care about anyone else. Cichlids are very clever.