# How to train your fish like you train a dog



## FishyFaceFriend (Feb 23, 2013)

A short explanation I wrote on how I taught my fish to do tricks and why

http://thedo.gs/2013/03/training/how-to ... 2117/7844/


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## FishyFaceFriend (Feb 23, 2013)

This is the content:

Karen Pryor, the long-time dolphin trainer who brought clicker-training for dogs to the mainstream, has trained a wide range of animals. In her book about working with marine animals, Lads Before The Wind, she writes:

"Penguins are stupid, but they are active and greedy, and you can train any creature with those attributes."

My fish, a small African cichlid, is active and greedy. He has proven himself to be highly trainable. For the last three weeks, I have been training him to do a variety of tricks, using positive reinforcement and some simple tools, like a hoop, a wand, and a handful of other props available as part of the R2 Fish School training kit. Here he is performing some of his feats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLAsUsWo ... r_embedded

Communicating with fish using a light

The first thing I did when I got Erasmus was to get him to associate a flash of white light with food. I wanted to communicate to him that the light always means "food is coming." At first, only the food triggered the reward centers in his brain, but soon he set up a direct connection between the flash and the food. Each time I flashed the light, I fed him. Easy.

In case you're wondering, this is what a fish looks like when his reward centers are being stimulated:

(image in the original article)

His whole body perks up when the light flashes. It may not look like much to you, but when you get to know your fish, the transformation is impossible to miss. As one of my friends in a fish-keeping forum wrote, "He gets so excited he had me laughing." Fish-people understand. Your dog gets the same thrill when he hears you click your clicker - the sound of the clicker is always followed by food, and the repeated pairing eventually makes the noise meaningful in and of itself.

Next step was to teach him that he could control the white light by doing stuff that caused it to come on.

Teaching a fish to "target"

Targeting is something easy and useful to train a dog. You can quickly teach most any dog to touch an object, be it your hand or a piece of paper. This can be a stepping stone towards teaching a wide array of behaviors, including the all important "come." Once you can get your fish to target, you can lead him through hoops, tunnels, and slalom posts. The first thing I taught my fish Erasmus to do was to target a dot on the side of the tank. Here's how you can do it too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb1TGMTW ... Gw&index=1

Why your fish wants you to train him

A trained fish is a happier fish. Fish share several basic emotions with us humans. "Seeking" is one of them. Dr. Jaak Panksepp says that Seeking is "the basic impulse to search, investigate, and make sense of the environment." Like us, and like dogs, fish need to satisfy their seeking drive in order to be behaviorally healthy. In the wild, my fish would be foraging all day for little bits of food. In a tank, food comes independently of his actions. How boring.

Why your dog wants you to train a fish

Your dog will benefit from your sharpened training skills. You can't touch the fish, and you can't talk to the fish, so you will be forced to train by engineering consequences and marking correct behaviors. The same works for your dog. Talking and encouraging usually only add confusion. What's more, you don't have unrealistic expectations that the fish will just "get it" right away. And finally, you will gain confidence. You know you can teach any dog to spin on cue after you've mastered the skill with a fish.


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## rgr4475 (Mar 19, 2008)

Nice write up!


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## FishyFaceFriend (Feb 23, 2013)

Thank you.

Training has practical advantages too. When I moved my fish from one tank to another, he freaked out. Everything was the same: same pH, same exact temp, the substrate was already moved from old to new tank, his house was in the new tank, and even the water was identical because I had spent all day pouring water from one tank to the other. But he still freaked out. I'm sure he was disoriented. He swam frantically up and down the side of the tank, overwhelmed with panic. So I flashed my light and gave him a little piece of food. He froze, shot up to get the food, and then became calm. He continued to explore the tank, but his motions were controlled and deliberate. He was no longer panicked. We're always talking about stressing the fish and how to avoid it because it's so dangerous for them. He became calm not because of the food, but because of the flash of light. He is wired to feel good when the light flashes.

I've seen people comment along the lines of, "I don't need my fish to do tricks for me." It's not like that. I want to emphasize that I am training my fish to enrich his life, and not just to amuse myself. People think of trained animals and they think of a bear dancing on a ball while being whipped by a gypsy. You know.. coercive, useless, and undignified exploitation. The fish is not "doing tricks for me." He is training with me, and he does it because he loves to use his brains to get what he wants. Your fish gets bored, and sometimes he gets scared.

Erasmus and I are still training. At first I did a lot of prop work with him (hoops and balls), but now I'm trying to capture some natural behaviors. My next project is to get him to show off his vibrations on cue. I'll share the video when we get there


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## FishyFaceFriend (Feb 23, 2013)

There's another advantage to fish training.

Most fish owners don't take great care of their fish because they don't go out of their way to find out how. They go to the pet shop, buy a tank, cram it with fish, buy corn-filled food, and call it a day. When the fish die, well, what are you gonna do. Fish die. It's just a fish. It just doesn't occur to people that there can be more to it. But when people begin to train their fish - even if it's as simple as targeting a dot - they become attached to the fish. The fish is being rewarded, but so are you. There is tit for tat, back and forth, you do for him and he does for you. You are building a history of positive reinforcement with each other, otherwise known as friendship. I think pet fish will be better off if they could get their owners to become attached. When the fish is your friend instead of a piece of decoration, you go to fish forums to find out what he needs. Quality of life, size of tank, and adequate filtration, all improve when the owner loves the fish.


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## FishyFaceFriend (Feb 23, 2013)

Here's the latest! Left and right turns on cue. Still working on it, but it's pretty cool!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFkUugwQ ... jAEdlih3Gw


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