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do fish have pretty good memory? i always wonder, if i transfer all of my fish to a different tank, will they still know the tank mates are the same since the new tank setting is a little different?

like if i have a pair of angels, and i transfer them separately to a tank with 20 other angels in it (transfer male first, then transfer the female, or vise versa), will they still be a pair? and recognize each other?

i know they recognize me when it comes to feeding time, but if i pull one fish out of the tank for ... say a day, and put him back, will rest of the fish in the tank say WELCOME BACK? or will they see him as a newbie?

yes they remember each other, but some are better than others.

I have moved a few of my fish between tanks. The bigger fish ie Gold severum, tilapia buttokiferi (SP) parrot fish, plecos, dolphin chiclid all remember things like who each other are, who i am, open lid means food coming. When I moved my guppies I moved a boat orniment from their old tank to the new one & put in another orniment, the remembered they could swim in & out of the boat, but had to explote & learn about new stuff.

Fish do NOT have a 3/7 second memory.

I agree with the above

Also, both in the tank and wild, fish who have a "home" in a cave etc., will go out looking for food and always find their way back

As well as knowing the hand that feeds them - often they follow you along the tank in a shoal

Regards

Dave the rave

IMO yes, fish has some memory. Just like us, some are better than others.


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I know my fish got better memory than me...

memory or more some sort of instinct? i'm not sure...maybe they do recognise each other but with something else than memory?? who really knows...i know that they know who feeds them though

it is not an instinct, because it is uniquely connected to the context.
fish seem to have certain kinds of memory, like behavioral memory, but they don't seem to have abstract memory just as we do.
they can learn quite complecated cause-and-effect connections.

can they recognise each other? i think yes. switching a member of a shoal will innitiate a strugle for a new heirarchy in certain fish (seen it with danios and with some tetras).

fish can also learn from others of their species. a scientific experiment showed that fish can learn to immitate feeding behavior.
here's the ref:http://www.geocities.com/culumbrown/BrownLalandJFB2002.pdf





Last edited by Fry at 14-Jun-2005 18:09

you might find those articles interesting too:
Learning in fishes: from 3-second memory to culture

Social Learning in fishes: a review

On the topic of behavioral issues - I used to have a lone swardie in my 29g that was lonely. He tried to shoal with the danios...he'd imitate exactly how they ate and swam to the best of his ability. Then he tried the cories....he'd poke 'round at the gravel with them. I eventually got him some friends, but they all died and he did too

I used to have a JD that I trained to jump for food...I stopped that as soon as he started going for my fingers

I used to have my female bettas trained to know that it was only time to eat until I tapped the tank 3 times...if I tapped it more or less than that, they'd go and do their thing, and they wouldn't even bother swimming to the front of the tank to get fed unless I did

They kinda need to have a memory if they're trained...so I guess they have a memory

PoissonWaffle, ever thought about a fish-trainer career?

you do seem interested with it, so some kind of animal psychology might interest you