Have you seen fish with personality?

My home breed female Dwarf Gourami would always spit water at me whenever I open the top of the tank. She would think I was able to feed her.








She had a smart daddy to begin with.

Look at him built a bubble nest for spawning

I'm can't find the links.looking forward to watch the videos.

Many years ago I kept a few fish. My favorite was a Red Devil. He liked to pile his gravel up across the front of the tank, hide behind it and peek over the top at you. If I thought he needed some exercise I would turn his tank around. Just to be honest, I did it for my own amusement because he would switch the gravel again. He would also come up out of the water to take food from my fingers.

(02-23-2012 01:16 AM)bw Wrote:  Many years ago I kept a few fish. My favorite was a Red Devil. He liked to pile his gravel up across the front of the tank, hide behind it and peek over the top at you. If I thought he needed some exercise I would turn his tank around. Just to be honest, I did it for my own amusement because he would switch the gravel again. He would also come up out of the water to take food from my fingers.

That is pretty neat lol.

You should have made a video of him take food from your hand in the air!

My German Blue Rams would dig on the substrate and push them aside to create a shallow hole at the bottom when they need to lay eggs. They supposedly to lay eggs only on big flat surfaces, and they dig because there is no such big flat rock in my fish tank. It was weird the first time I saw both of my German Blue Rams were pushing the substrate at different directions at the same spot in the middle of the tank. Apparently they decide it is not a good spot and moved to a corner behind the tank the next day.

(02-23-2012 12:06 AM)Monica9975 Wrote:  I'm can't find the links.looking forward to watch the videos.

You must be behind a firewall that blocked Youtube videos.

That is too cute!! You have a beautiful tank. What type of plants are in your tank if you don't mind Me asking.

(04-12-2012 12:36 AM)tdOtjunior Wrote:  That is too cute!! You have a beautiful tank. What type of plants are in your tank if you don't mind Me asking.

edit: I forgot I put two videos in this thread
The main plants in the first video were some seeds from Walmart lol. I planted 5~6 of them, only one actually grow. I forgot the name of it, but there were two different packages available at the time. One is the plant with those leaves you see in the first 10 gallon tank video, the other one is the lilly plant in the second video with those red floating leaves. For the lilly plant, one out of the two seeds grew.

In the second tank, there were
Anubias hastifolia,
Anubias Nana,
Java Moss,
Java Fern,
Anacharis,
Cabomba caroliniana,
Cardamine lyrata,
Water Wisteria,
Water Spirit,
Dwarf Baby Tears,
Pellia,
Lloydiella,
Myriophyllum Tuberculatum.

The name of some of the plants are hard to remember. I had to go check.

Thanks!! It's limited places here to find nice plants they go as soon as the truck arrives lol..I might have to order them online.

(04-12-2012 01:12 AM)tdOtjunior Wrote:  Thanks!! It's limited places here to find nice plants they go as soon as the truck arrives lol..I might have to order them online.

I bought most of my plants online too. There is simply a much larger selection online. I even bought most of my fish online. There was no local fish store beside Walmart which sells weak sick fish.

Gourami are known for be able to spit water in the air like an archer fish. It is rare however to have a Gourami keep doing it under the same circumstances. Not easy to recreate it. Most of them will spit water when they feel like it. I have also seen a video where a Gourami spit water to get a piece of food stuck on the side of the glass above the water. Quite neat.

I had a large pearl gourami in my tank years ago. He didn't make the move He was similar, though he never did it constantly.

The two clown loaches I have are the most personable fish I have ever seen. I used to get them snails. You know how allot of stores plant tanks have snails? I would go in and they would give them to me allot of the time. Or I would buy a plant I didn't need and scrape the snails of off it. There is a "popping" noise clowns do sometimes, I think it is a puff of water to dislodge the snail from the glass. They would swim up to the glass and do this when I walked in with the bag. They didn't do it when I fed them their regular brine, mysis, or anything else. Those two knew and got excited when they saw a bag from the fish store.

Though, they did do this when I brought home a clown knife, I assume they recognized the bag. They were never nice to that guy, he only made it a few months.

My Dwarf Gourami developed this behavior when she was about 3 months old. I guess being born at my home had made her extremely human friendly. Home bred fish are easier to interact with.

I had a pair of oscars that would circle my hand, much like a cat does with your legs. It took them a while to learn, but I was able to hold a feeder by the tail and one of the oscars would jump up to get it. I only did that a couple of times because I felt bad for the feeders. But it got to the point where it was harder to clean because they would not leave my hands alone, kept circling and getting in the way. I had those ones for well over 9 years...I think they were about 11? when they died. and something that size is really hard to clean around when they refused to move. there was one feeder that they both let live, and it got to be large too. they became friends with it which I thought was odd. I finally had to give it to a friend that had a pond.

I've also had mutant fairy cichlids. I felt sorry for them because their mouths were really disfigured. I bought both of them and they lived for quite a while. They stayed hidden most of the time, in their lil cave. But they got to know that I was the one bringing food, so they would come out when I walked in the room. They acted like they had never eaten before....much like how my dog acts....

@ jeeplassie,

Hand feed fish is indeed fun. That is probably the highest level of interaction with them. You are the first one mention this can cause problem for tank maintenance when the fish associated your hands with food. I'll take a note of them.

No need to feel bad for the feeders. It is the way of life in the wild too. Big fish eat small fish, small fish eat small shrimps. Without this chain, there can be bigger problem. Many large fish keepers feed their fish live fish as food. Even some keepers of smaller fish would feed extra fry to their other fish. You know most fish would eat their own fry. It is the way of life. No need to feel bad about it.

When you mention "mutant fairy cichlids", that sound a lot like blood parrot. It is a crossbreed of several different cichlids species, their mouth can't close either due to deformation.

Most fish can have the habit of associate your presence with food. Since you have to be there to feed them. If the fish tank isn't at a busy location, the fish will follow whoever pass the tank, because they would think it is feeding them when a human show up.
Yep, they have their own little mind.

Check this video out, a fish that can follow the voice command.
Jackie Chan trains a fish.

I know this doesn't really count as a fish but he lives in an aquarium and never leaves the water so I thought I'd mention him here. I hand feed my clawed frog. His food isn't alive so I started off using my fingers to animate the food and make it seem alive and now he just associates my finger with food! I don't know if that can be called a personality trait but it's still pretty cool to see.

(04-26-2012 03:46 PM)Ram Wrote:  My Dwarf Gourami developed this behavior when she was about 3 months old. I guess being born at my home had made her extremely human friendly. Home bred fish are easier to interact with.

Agreed, Ram. We have a lot of Guppies and some Sail Fin Mollies that we've bred from fish we bought at the pet shop. Whenever my husband goes near the tank, they head for wherever he happens to be standing. And when he does a snail patrol, they come and rub against his hands, just like a dog or a cat coming up for a stroke.

Although all the fish come to the tank in expectation of getting fed, it's only the ones we've bred that come for a 'stroke.'