toys for fish

karimwassef

karimwassef

Active member
So ... there's a thread here about fish being bored.

Here's an interesting accident / observation.

I think I have a monster eunice worm in my tank, so I made a monster worm trap.

I left if in the tank during the day and noticed that the behavior of EVERY fish in the tank has changed.

They're literally trying to figure out how to open it up to get to the food inside. There's little aggression - more curiosity and experimentation. They're actually occupied in trying to figure this out.

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/1623AB79-8993-4C71-AA7B-C5B5952CA21F_zpssnyej9fr.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/1623AB79-8993-4C71-AA7B-C5B5952CA21F_zpssnyej9fr.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 1623AB79-8993-4C71-AA7B-C5B5952CA21F_zpssnyej9fr.jpg"/></a>

So, it reminded me of parks, zoos and reserves where animals are given challenges to keep their minds occupied and keep them healthy. Taking it a step further, nature creates CHALLENGES that animals need to overcome. In contrast, a glass cage that's 3' x 8' where food falls from above is a complete bore. Just waiting to die. Maybe being challenged and getting food as a result of solving the puzzle at hand is a potential source of vitality and health?

Corals are different - but fish need something to do.

So, maybe there's an opportunity here. A DIY challenge of ideas to keep fish challenged to get their food - maybe requiring them to work together like they would in nature?

JUST AN IDEA... thoughts?
 
thanks

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uNGUMk9uQlw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
That's great! You could tuck something behind a magnet to keep them busy too. Or maybe a mesh floating rig that really makes them chase/ work for it? It'd be messy but pretty funny
 
karimwassef said:
So ... there's a thread here about fish being bored.

Here's an interesting accident / observation.

I think I have a monster eunice worm in my tank, so I made a monster worm trap.

I left if in the tank during the day and noticed that the behavior of EVERY fish in the tank has changed.

They're literally trying to figure out how to open it up to get to the food inside. There's little aggression - more curiosity and experimentation. They're actually occupied in trying to figure this out.

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/1623AB79-8993-4C71-AA7B-C5B5952CA21F_zpssnyej9fr.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/1623AB79-8993-4C71-AA7B-C5B5952CA21F_zpssnyej9fr.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 1623AB79-8993-4C71-AA7B-C5B5952CA21F_zpssnyej9fr.jpg"/></a>

So, it reminded me of parks, zoos and reserves where animals are given challenges to keep their minds occupied and keep them healthy. Taking it a step further, nature creates CHALLENGES that animals need to overcome. In contrast, a glass cage that's 3' x 8' where food falls from above is a complete bore. Just waiting to die. Maybe being challenged and getting food as a result of solving the puzzle at hand is a potential source of vitality and health?

Corals are different - but fish need something to do.

So, maybe there's an opportunity here. A DIY challenge of ideas to keep fish challenged to get their food - maybe requiring them to work together like they would in nature?

JUST AN IDEA... thoughts?
Click to expand...



Are you really serious with this thread? Injecting a human emotion (I am bored.) into the phychalogy of a fish does not connect for me. As an avid observer of nature I have seen mamals, including porpoise, play. I do not think that fish have the intellect to be bored. Reproduction and survival motivate fish in their world. Survival means to eat without being eaten.

Good luck with your fish toys.

PS. Nice picture. Good looking tangs.
 
Some people give their goldfish little balls filled with food and they have to roll them the right way to get it out. :lol:
 
Big fish keepers (groupers, sharks, rays, etc.) enrich their fish' environments. I see no harm or reason to not give the fish something to do. Maybe fish don't need the enrichment that higher level mammals like cetaceans, pinnipeds, and primates do, but that doesn't rule out that they /might/ need it. It might be something as simple as giving a crannied rock with algae or meaty food stuff that fish like butterflyfish or Zebrasoma tangs would eat in the wild (as opposed to pellets). Zooplanktivorous fish might not need enrichment, since we already add small foodstuff that moves in the current. Small amounts of buried food in the sand for sand sifting gobies. Live food. Stuff like that.
Subsea, I agree with you about not anthropomorphizing the fish. However, one can't rule out all the possibilities.
 
As a psychology minor I find this thread extremely on point. I have had similar thoughts in the past and have always wondered what we could do to improve the life of our fish.

To quote Culum Brown, "Fish are more intelligent than they appear. In many areas, such as memory, their cognitive powers match or exceed those of "˜higher' vertebrates including non-human primates."

One idea was a floating sheet of Nori, the power heads would push it around.
My suction cup Nori holder falls all the time anyways!
 
When my Clowns were in QT there was a handful of bio-balls in the bottom that they would push around. They were juvenile though, if you put 2 kids in a room with a ball they are going to kick it against the wall (how is that for anthropomorphism)

The dartfish that are in there now seem perfectly content with the three stages of Hide under rock, wait for food, or eat food. Not much of a unique personality there.
 
So... Life exists in a constant state of economy.

This means that life is hard and struggle develops robustness. If life is easy (aka boring), natural mechanisms get soft and weak and unable to deal with stress.

If you snorkel or scuba, you see ENERGY!! Constant energy, stress, problems, evasion, solution, triumph... Even when things are slow, there's natural conflict.

Humans, and higher mammals that have a much easier go of it, quickly determine that their offspring need CHALLENGE to prepare for real life. We do this with PLAY.

Play isn't optional. It's a critical need that develops physical strength, endurance, emotional passageways, neural networks (fish have them too), etc... Problem solving is an acquired skill.

So, for fish living in glass houses, they need challenge. They need to play or they get weak, soft and vulnerable. We want robust energetic fish. Positive stress (Eustress) and triumphing over obstacles... Is necessary.

We tend to do it with distress (because we're all imperfect stewards of our tanks), but if the life was more robust, it could handle the distress better.

I'm not anthropomorphising when I say that a healthy challenge followed by developing the needed robustness to overcome the challenge is key...

When they built the biodome, they had trees in there that never experienced a strong wind. They grew from saplings with plent of dirt, but their roots were shallow. They didn't need deep roots. Roots are a biological response to stress. No stress = shallow roots. Then one day, for no reason, a massive tree fell over!!

The ants got in. The ants were foraging in the tree and their constant stomping caused enough weight imbalance and vibration to topple the tree. Maybe if they'd given the tree time to dig it's roots in, it would have survived, but being ants, they didn't consider this... They came one, then 10, 100, 1000, ... And down came the big tree.

No good stress = no resilience = small fast change causes death
Play = robustness = can handle much more
 
As an aside - the tree/ant story above is one I use in talking about the impact of human rate of development on the planet... We're the ants, the tree is earth. If it had a few million years to deal with the stuff we do, it could recover and develop into a more robust environment. As it is, we're coming in fast & it's starting to lean over.

I wonder if we, not being ants, would stop to consider this...
 
My koi have one of those fishy floating domes in which they can rise above the surface and get a look around. The domes also magnify, so when my largest (over a foot by a fair bit) rises to have a look you mostly see one giant curious eye.
 
I did a small toy for one of my baby cichlids once when I was new to the hobby. I took a bobber and used fishing line to hold up a small 'fish' that I made out of an old airstone, hotglue, and aquarium background. Went through a few iterations, but he would only play for around 5 minutes a day. I still have pics somewhere...
 
karimwassef said:
As an aside - the tree/ant story above is one I use in talking about the impact of human rate of development on the planet... We're the ants, the tree is earth. If it had a few million years to deal with the stuff we do, it could recover and develop into a more robust environment. As it is, we're coming in fast & it's starting to lean over.

I wonder if we, not being ants, would stop to consider this...
Click to expand...

Very smart Karim.
I grow tomatoes and it's the same way. You have to withhold water occasionally, and blow a fan at them, or else when you plant the seedlings they blow over and die. We've taken to calling it "affluenza" when a seedling doesn't make it cause it got spoiled :)

I don't think it's anthropomorphizing to consider ourselves as defined by our struggles. You see it in lots of species, from orca at the zoo to house cats. You need balance, joie de vivre alone just produces ennui. We are built to fight for our lives. That's why a good adrenaline rush, or endorphin push is called a "high." I don't think fish are in danger of becoming emo nihilists or anything if life is too easy, but why wouldn't they get fat and sick from sloth?
 
Thanks. A little 'hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy' influence in that thought pattern. :)

I was also very pleasantly surprised to see that a challenge reduced aggression. The yellow tangs can be vicious when none of the bigger fish are around, but with a 'toy', their excess energy was diverted into trying to gain access to the food source.
 
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