What makes your fish "smart"?
- Thread starter Slippery K
- Start date
That was bad, but funny.I tend to view fish with structure-oriented behavior that display a high level of cautious awareness and curiosity to their surroundings (knife fish, puffers, to some extent cichlids and some catfish) as more intelligent than fish that just swim around all day (tetras)... if that makes any sense.
I guess you just have to be subjective on "smart". If doing what fish usually do, that doesn't seem smart to me. I consider smart fish to be something that understands it's owners patterns and learns to interact with you.
The prettiest fish I currently own is a synodontis cat that is just GORGEOUS. I never see it! It's so skittish that I don't know what to do.. It hides constantly and can only be seen if the light level is really low and I hold completely still at the side of the tank she'll swim up and stare at me with her amazing fins all extended ready to rush back into the plants. I'm not sure that makes her smart though..
What kind of synodontus is it? My syn cat also hides, but every time I drop rehydrated earth worms in the tank, he will come out behind his rock, get a couple and swim back...
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RBP are naturally a skittish fish however when mine see me come up with either pinched fingers or a water cup in my hand they swim right to the top left where I feed them. Pinched fingers are usually a bug in my hand or a water cup is thawing fish or shrimp I have thawed. They hide whenever someone else comes up but they swim right up and circle where I put food in. This wouldn’t be much excitement for an Oscar or a lot of other fish but for RBP I am under the understanding this is not normal. My wife is grossed out by the dead bluegill so she doesn’t feed them. If she walks by with the same cup they don’t react the same way.
It's a Syno Eupterus. I actually don't know the sex but my wife/kids call her "miss kitty" because she's a cat. Amazing fish.. definition and fins are majestic but almost impossible to photograph except a piece at a time. Dorsal fin is most awesome I have ever seen and almost twice her width when fully extended. It's not a fin, it's a SAIL!
"She" does come out every other day. I make a cocktail of tank water, frozen blood worms and brine shrimp and once everything is thawed I pour it into my tanks and she does take several adventurous quick trips out to catch some of the good stuff. It's just a flash though, I could video it but I doubt I could photo.
What's in the tank? They typically settle down and be out a lot more often...
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That was my thought as well. I put in a juvi pleco in that tank along with Nigel the gigantic balloon molly and 4 black skirt tetras that are all pretty chill to calm her down. Hasn't worked although I have seen her getting pretty cozy with the pleco in the dark.
Oh and the black skirts peck at each other a lot but leave everyone else alone. For psuedo-dither fish they really remind me of piranhas. They fight each other for little pieces of algae wafers and swim with them for at least a half hour in their mouths.
