What are some fun quirks of your fish?

The April FOTM Contest Poll is open!
FishForums.net Fish of the Month
🏆 Click to vote! 🏆

biofish

Fish Addict
Pet of the Month 🎖️
Joined
Jul 23, 2021
Messages
723
Reaction score
768
Location
California
Does your fish have any cute behavior that makes them very appealing and stick out from the rest? Please share! Just whatever behavior you find appealing in your specific fish, regardless if it’s “typical” behavior for that species. If it makes you smile or catches your eye, please share!

I’ll go first: my male Betta, Ive had him for 5 or so months, and he is hands down the most snuggly I’ve fish ever had. That’s right. Snuggly. You stick your finger in his tank and he will come and drape himself over it like “draw me like one of your French girls”. Stick your entire hand in the tank? He sees it as a perfectly comfy hammock!
BD717882-B9B3-4DAC-AE53-5729D1362633.jpeg

He sit :0

My female betta by comparison? She will relentlessly attack your fingers and chase after it with an absolute angry face D:<. No fingers in her territory nuh uh. She will HOUND your fingers if you trail them along the face of the glass and if your fingertip is close enough to the water, she WILL jump up to try and nip it.

I have an albino Cory cat that is very darling… as he dives headfirst the sand substrate and wiggles around happily until his head semi buried. The sand is a newer addition to the tank from pebble substrate and my albino Cory is smitten, even more so than my other Cory’s. I have a young peppered Cory that always follows around two of my adult agassizii corys (not sure though if they're that exactly but they look similar) and they look like a sort of happy little family with the adults chilling side by side and the youngster happily playing in the sand around them.

Your turn!!
 
Watching the weird and wonderful things fish do is what got me hooked.
I have some Congo rapids Cichlids right now that can barely swim. They are very grouchy, but they can't catch the kids that get on their lawn. If they were swimmers, they'd be swept into the torrent, so they've evolved to have skinny bodies and reduced swim bladders.

I had some Rivulus group killies that used to spend much of the day out of the water, chilling. If I tapped the cover, sometimes the tank would magically fill with fish.

The ultimate to me has been the common krib. Watching them guide their babies around is magnificent. If you notice the angles the male takes on as he protects the fry, being led by the female, then go to a park and watch a human mother pushing a baby carriage and notice where the father positions himself, well, it's something to think about. I caught myself setting up as a krib man many times when my children were infants.
 
The parenting skills of those Krib’s sounds absolutely fantastic! It must be so peaceful to watch…. Unlike swearing like a sailor at your guppies as you swish around a net with wild abandon trying to catch their itty bitty booty nuggets before they do.
 
I've had some funny ones through the years. One of my Betta imbellis jumps up in the air every time I put food in the tank. I'd think he was wild caught and going after bugs, except he was born in my tank and has never seen a live insect as far as I know. Instincts die hard, I guess!

In my big tank, I have two angelfish (out of the five) that are intensely curious. They follow my hand around in the tank and intensely observe everything I do. I half expect them to pull out little field books and start taking notes.

My panda garra used to nibble on my arms whenever I had my hands in the tank, and they would often attempt to climb up the water stream coming down the glass when I would refill after a water change.

I used to have a little longnose dace in my native tank that would lay on the bottom (they live in rapids and don't have swim bladders, so they rest on the bottom when they aren't moving) shifting his eyes all over the place, looking for predators and food. Really cute.
 
I used to have a little longnose dace in my native tank that would lay on the bottom (they live in rapids and don't have swim bladders, so they rest on the bottom when they aren't moving) shifting his eyes all over the place, looking for predators and food. Really cute.
A lot of marine blennies do that too. They have really good eye sight and watch everything.

We had mudskippers in the shop and they tame down really quickly, like within a couple of weeks of being caught. We used to put food on a flat rock that was just above the waterline and they would come over and eat it. A couple of them learned that I had the food in my hand and they would swim across and jump onto my hand and get stuck into the food. Sometimes they missed the food and got my hand or fingers. This wasn't a problem for the small species of mudskipper, but we had king mudskippers too and they grow to a foot long and have huge teeth. If you got bitten by one of them it was off the to the doctor for some surgery.

We had moray eels that we hand fed. Some of them could be patted/ stroked and didn't try to eat your fingers but a few of them would go after anything in the tank.

We had Wobby the Wobbegong shark at one shop. We would feed him by tapping the coverglass and then using a pr of tongs to hold a fish or prawn at the surface. He would come up and press his stomach to the glass and we could check the skin colour. If it was pink, then the water quality was deteriorating and we did a huge water change. Sharks and rays are sensitive to poor water and the skin on their belly goes pink or red if they are in bad conditions. Pale pink means the water is starting to get ammonia, nitrite or nitrate. Dark pink means those levels are high enough to be an issue, and red is bad.

One day a kid was running around the shop tapping all the tanks and opening the covers. He was told to stop it by staff and his mum. He didn't stop. After about 15 minutes the kid comes running back and stands next to his mum. He is dead quiet and just stands there. I look down and there is a pool of blood around his feet. I mention it and the mum grabs his hands and says what have you done. We get the first aid kit and clean his fingers and bandage them up. Turns out he went and tapped on every tank in the shop and opened the covers, then stuck his fingers in. He got to Wobby's tank at the far end of the shop, tapped the cover, opened it and stuck his fingers in. Wobby bit him. The mother was fine with it and said "serves you right, next time do as your told". She finished the sale and they left. It wasn't a major injury but he had 4 or 5 teeth marks in his fingers and they bled.
 

Most reactions

trending

Staff online

Back
Top