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Wow, Narler,
your fish are very friendly with you!
I only started hand feeding my fish a few months
ago, and my bristlenose is definetly not friendly
like that!
He wont come anywhere near my hand!
That is fabulous how much your bristlenose likes you!
What kind of barbs are those? They are gorgeous!!!

Come Play Yahtzee With Me!
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Http://www.myleague.com/yahtgames

My fish will come touch my arm while I'm cleaning their tank, especially my sailfin molly. My pleco runs and hides. I've never tried to hand feed my fish but I think I'd like to after watching those. How do you go about starting out? just stick your hand in with food and hope? lol


-Amy

My krib tasted me once when I had my arm in the tank, she'll take food from me but she's like lightening when she does it. My danios will nibble my fingers when I just float them barely in the surface of the water. The tiger barbs always nip around hoping I've got food for them whenever my hand is in the tank. The sharks and foxes though head for the hills whenever I approach the tank and only come out when I've put food in the tank LOL. I'm going to try hand feeding Buddy, my betta, my cousin had one he trained to jump for food, but it jumped out of it's bowl once when he was at work, luckily my aunt put it back in and he's kept the bowl covered since then!

Just would like to add that I have now tried hand-feeding the tank and the result is, the danios were the first to zip in and have a bite, the krib finally took some, she was scared at first but now she takes it fine, today the barbs also took some and so did the flying fox (one of them). It is so cool to be able to hand-feed them!

Last edited by luvmykrib at 15-Nov-2005 16:04

"If you're afraid you'll make a mistake, you won't make anything."
-Family Circus

I have never attempted to hand feed my fish. But they do come right up to the glass if i am sitting at the tank. If i put my hand on the glass, one of my aeneus cats comes up and sits sideways, almost like i am petting him. He doesn't do it all the time but it's very amusing when it happends.

---

"it's the neck, it creaks under the weight of too much heavy thinking."

My oscars eat from my hand, I taught them to "eat nice" seeing that I am a little jumpy if they touch me while cleaning the tank, so it helps me and them....means they wont be so vulgar when taking food from the top.


My angelfish HAS to eat by hand, from a culmarious (sp) breakout, she lost her bottom part of her jaw. It is comming back at full force though.


Other then that everything is to skittish

Last edited by angeleel at 12-Nov-2005 12:57

almost all my fish will eat out of my hands, and my killis will actually jump 2-3" clear out of the water to grab a bloodworm from my fingers.

Some of my fish like to nibble at my arms, my betta girls will eat from my hands... I'm feeding my BN with my planting tongs. She's still a bit shy. I think my hand moves the water too much and she can feel it when I get too close to her... Ah well... perhaps in the future.



~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Mine are little pigs
They allways come asking for food
My male bettas allways try to attack me at the same time though

The barbs and rainbows pick at my arms when I do water changes. Everything else runs from my huge pink tentacles

I strongly recommend getting your cuticles done by cleaner shrimp, the finish is impeccable

Last edited by longhairedgit at 12-Nov-2005 02:22

I have 5 Tiger oscars, 1 Brown Bullhead Catfish, and 2 Kenyi Cichlids that all take from my fingers, my O's are from 12" to 7", my Bullhead is about 11 -12". My two largest O's may nip my fingers the first bite of their food but after that they are gentle, which is good because from what I have felt already they could probably draw blood. My largest O usually ignores any food that falls out of my hand and eats directly from my fingers. My Catfish is the coolest to feed because he goes to the top of the tank and holds his mouth open just out of the water for me to put the food right in it. If I hold food above the water they will jump right out of the water to get it. (For obvious reasons I dont let them do that.)

Hi,

Thanks for all the replies.

To ckk125. It's strange as my clowns never venture anywhere near the surface, even if they see food staring to float they will only go about 1/2 way up (so about a foot from the surface) before they retreat back to the substrate.

To dan76. The bristlenoses in my other tanks are very timid and it took a while before these come upto the hand. It's quite strange really. I feed at the same time each day, and the bristlenoses will be sitting waiting on the substrate where I feed about 10 minutes before normal feeding time. They don't own a watch but yet they still know..

To Calilasseia. I thought someone might have a problem with video codecs, but any MPEG4 codec should do the trick. Or get FFDSHOW (directshow filter) as that can decode just about anything. The Spanner barbs will stay around longer to feed, but the Geophagus intimidates them a little so when that's around they stand off a little. But they are cool fish to watch, especially when I feed food that floats. They are spectaular to see them go from the tank floor at full speed to the surface, hit the food, do a 180 degree turn and retreat back to the substrate. Of course even with lids on the tank they still manage to splash water everywhere

Keeping plants with a Geophagus. Yes that is a huge chore, but the trick is cover the plant roots close to the base of the plant. For example I cut a piece of P.E.T plastic (like soda bottles) use the neck of the bottle for the plant base, then fan out (for 2 inches) either side, so you get a __/ \__ style piece of plastic, now cover it in substrate, so when the Geophagus digs around it can only dig down to the plastic, and leaves the roots protected. Once the plant has established you can safely remove the plastic, or if it's not impacting on the plant, just leave it there. The Geo goes nuts and moves all the substrate around if I feed live blood worm, so not many plants survive that even with the plastic if worms are found in close proximity Each week I "re-locate" the subtstrate and redistribute it around the base of the tank, as the Geophagus likes to mound it up all the time. But that's part of the fun of owning such a fish.

If you're interested the large leaf plant on the left is Echinodorus grandifolius. Another plant that copes well (which is not in view in the footage is Echinodorus amazonnicus) The plant on the right is Hygrophlia polysperma. It grows insanely fast (like 2 inches per week) and can cope with any damage inflicted by the fish. The clown loaches also like to dig and burry around plant bases. I've tried to stick with plants that can cope with low to medium light that look and stay green.

To bettachris. If not being able to view the clip is due to a codec issue, then you can try installing FFDSHOW (1mb file) and it will beable to decode any MPEG4 based avi file, plus many other avi variants and MPEG1, MPEG2 if needed.

To kmlubahn6609. Fish kisses. hehee sounds about right, although when a Bristlenose attaches to your arm, it's more like being scraped with a wood file. Boy they are rough, but their underbelly is super smooth, yet the bristles on their nose are also very soft. Strange and amazing at the same time.

To sham. Luckily I don't own any skin removing fish, although sometimes the Geo grabs my finger aswell as the food and with a quick thrash of that powerful tail, I instantly lose skin on the finger and start to bleed. Same goes for my Oscar. The other fishes mouths are too small to do any real damage. During tank maintanence everytime I put my hand in the tank the fish will investigate to see if I have food (especially the Geophagus), but will eventually swim away (almost with a disgusted look on their face) if no food is detected. Or usually the Geophagus (and Oscar in another tank does this aswell) will nudge my hand and progressively hit harder and harder until I produce something. And yet people keep saying fish only have such a short memory?.. I've never witnessed that with any fish I own.

To Cup of lifenoodles. I guess the age of the fish and the amount of time they are exposed to human contact may contribute to their reaction? Thanks for the comments on the footage and the tank.

To So Very Sneaky. It took ages before the bristlenose would come up like that (about 2 years). Once one did then the others did aswell. There are 3 large males in that tank and all 3 will take food from my hand. But two of them don't like to hang off my skin as much as the one in the video does, instead they wait for me to place my hand a little lower to the substrate then they will take the food, but in the video if I do that the clown loaches are a little more timid, and I didn't want the video to be too long. You can see one of the others hanging around below my hand but not wanting to swim up.

There are two types of barbs visible in the footage. The two larger ones are Spanner Barbs (have vertical stripes then a Horizontal stripe to the tail), then there are Striped barbs which are much smaller and only have horizontal stripes. The Striped barbs don't come up to take food from my hand, instead they hang back and grab any food that escapes the notice of the other fish. I quite like barbs and have had many different types. Another one that would hand feed is the Arulius Barb. I gave those away though because I found they were not all that pieceful once they reach about 4 1/2 inches in length.

Regards
Nigel

Hi,

Just curious how many people interact with their fish?.

I like to interact with all my fish to try and gain their trust, and some fish that I though would be quite elusive have been the opposite.

I thought I'd share some short pieces of footage of a daily occurance in my tanks - feeding time. sorry the footage isn't high quality but I was trying to keep the filesize down (and I only have an old analog video camera). for the avi files you'll need XVid, Divx, FFDSHOW or some other MPEG4 codec installed. (windows Xp should have a MPEG4 decoder installed by default)

Feeding Take 1 (7.1MB) Here I have a Geophagus Surinamensis, 3 Clown Loaches and a Bristlenose that take food from my hand. Food is Frozen Bloodworm and Frozen Fish Dinner.

Feeding Take 2 (5.1MB) Here I have a Geophagus Surinamensis, 3 Clown Loaches and 2 Spanner Barbs that take food from my hand. Food is live Meal Worm.

There are a few other fish in this tank that also hand feed but they didn't come up today.

If you don't want to download an avi file Here is a jpeg taken from the avi showing 3 Clown Loaches and a Bristlenose taking food.

Oh I should mention the above is a 6 foot x 2 foot x 2 foot tank and all fish are over 4 years of age (most are almost 6 years old)

I'd be curious to know if others have had success with hand feeding bristlenose ?

Regards
Nigel

Everything I have dashes like mad away from me except the L-174s.


EDIT: Excellent videowork and tank in general.

Last edited by Cup_of_Lifenoodles at 09-Nov-2005 03:36

All my fish will come up to my hand at the surface but usually it's to try to eat my fingers. My boyfriend always sticks his fingers in the tank to get attacked by the congo tetras. Luckily I have nothing dangerous in there but if you leave your hand long enough you might lose a layer of skin. The farlowella will swim into your hand if you put your arm deep enough to reach him. The plecs aren't so interested. They just wait to see if you have food then swim off if you don't.

My Blue Paradise is the most friendly, and I've observed the same at the fish store I work at. I've taught him to suck food off of my fingers, which is a little like fishy kisses!

I've got a fever... and the only prescription... is more cowbell!

I can hand-feed my intelligent fish, but not any of the more primitive ones...

---

I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

i cant see ur clip, but my fish dont feed from my hand, but they like to touch me during water changes,

depends on what you consider friendlyMy malawi tank used to totally eat from my handsthough the rusties sometimes mistaken my hands for foodbut yes, they used to eat from my hands...

My guppies quite often think my arms are dinner when i'm doing water changes. As do most everyone in the 125:%)

Now the bettas, they are a different story, 1 will jump out of the tank to get at you if you open the lida couple others might eat from your hands if the mood strikes them, Margarito does sometimes, Lucky, well he thinks he's a bottom feederI can't seem to convince him otherwise...so some of the fishies yes will eat from my hands, others will eat my hands, some will jump to attack my hands, and some will run from my hands:%)what can I say, my fish are senile

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

Had a minor problem with those files - Windows Media Player said there was a codec error. Fortuncately, VideoLAN VLC Media Player came to the rescue and played it (minus sound). That Geophagus is quite some fish ... and your Bristlenose seems to LOVE your hand!

Even the Spanner Barbs get in on the act in the second video clip ...

Mind you, one question I have to ask is how you can keep those luxuriant plants with a big Geophagus eartheater - aren't those things underwater bulldozers?


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

my cl eat of my hands too but my plecos and bn are very skittish

OH TOLEEDY!