Smarter than you might think....

[CD]

We've got one - sounds exactly like what Abe is describing, and it is awesome for spot feeding. Only the smaller food items though. Larger mysis won't fit through the tubing, but it is great for feeding my zoas and blastos the frozen cyclop-eeze and rotifers. I have to use the old turkey baster for my sun coral, as they like the bigger sized mysis. ;)

Wendy

[Viet-Tin]

Well heres my story. When i lived in Hawaii i had a yellow tang that loved ogo. I was kind of tired of always buying it from the market so i tried to grow my own. I set the ogo tank next to my dt tank and my yellow tang would always be on that side. For a while i stopped feeding the tang ogo and i started feeding flakes and forzen foods. I was watching my tang and it kept swimming towards the top of the tank and i was wondering why. Well he swam to the bottom and darted straight up and out of the water right into the ogo tank and started to eat my ogo. I went and tried to find my container to extract him from the tank and put him back but had trouble so by the time i found it he had eatin all the ogo and sat there and let me scoop him out the tank and put him back. It was pretty amazing, i never knew tangs loved ogo that much.

[SuperXdude]

wtf is ogo?

[falcondob]

What you are seeing is "operant conditioning". You are the "conditioned re-enforcer". Or big ugly moving thing (haven't met you, but I would bet we look ugly to fish) comes and then food appears, ipso facto, ugly thing means food. Pretty thing (haven't met her, but momma didn't raise no fool!) comes and no food appears. Therefore, pretty thing is to be ignored. This process has been proven to work on the simplest of life forms. It appears that is one of the building block behaviors that has allowed life to continue and evolve.

I am a falconer and we use the fact that living things respond to reward to train our birds to hunt with us. Pick up a book on operant conditioning or "clicker" training. With a little practice and creativity you could have your fish dancing on cue. And I am not kidding, it really works.