Imagine What It Would Be Like To Be A Pet Fish

[KipperSarnie]

I have many fish that are 20 years plus or getting on for 20 now. In truth most of these I no longer really want as I'd love to shut the tank down but in a weird way I don't trust anyone enough to pass them onto or want to cause the stress to them of moving. They were originally inherited from my father's tank which I took over when I was seven and so I've had them most of my live. I don't feel guilty about keeping them and believe they are far older than they would be in the average hobbyists tank.
As I've grown I've always had a fascination with nature and therefore pass this onto whatever I plan to keep. So my clown loaches live in a good sized group, I have a group of silver dollars, my synodontis and other catfish have plenty of hiding spots to suit them and not me etc. So I go by the phylosophy of environment enrichment for stimulation. This is anthropomorphism but I'd rather treat something with more respect than mistreating it.

 

[sciencefiction]

Probably would come up with the idea to slap a lot of us in the face hoping for them to wake up one day.

That reminds me of one of my clown loaches. Once they see my head staring they normally start literally looking at me begging for food, not just swimming but turning their faces towards mine. This time I wasn't feeding them....I was just looking.... At some stage one of the bigger loaches just stood there staring at me straight in the face. Then he rapidly started swimming towards the surface( my head over it) and splashed me in the face....

Have caught same crappie and or Bass more than once in a single day of fishing.(one eyed,or part of fin missing).

I have to doubt that, specifically based on experience with fish in a fish tank. Catch a fish the wrong way...for example stuck in the net for a few more seconds, or chased prior to that for a longer than accepted time, that fish won't approach you for weeks and months on hand afterwards. They loose their trust. Somehow they remember the stress and associate you with it for a long long time.....but they get over it eventually. My point is, their memory isn't that short at all.

 

[zozo]

One experience one day left me completely baffled.. I was fishing for Carp at the local lake which has very clear water, easily see over a meter deep.. No action for hours and a few fellows walked by and stopped for a chat.. We were chatting and joking and using arm and hand gestures as we aal do during speach. Not realy paying attention to the water, my rods had a beeper anyway. But after an hour chatting or so i looked at my rods and saw a 60cm mirrorcarp laying in the shallow 20cm from the side, just laying there with its head turned our way. I said nothing and i curiously watched it for 15 minutes from the corner of my eye.

I realy thought WTF is this animal doing, the moment i notified the other 2 and pointed at it a minute later it gently swam away.

Didn't have a beep and no action at all, all day long.. I'm not looking for something behind it, likely pure chance.. But sometimes you can't help thinking strange thoughts.. Was it observing us? No sign of life for a day and then it just sits there staring me in the face for who knows how long. And than swims away when its aware it is noticed..

 

[PARAGUAY]

Must have been some conversation

 

[zozo]

Usualy if a carp comes close to the surface and the side, which they oftenly do. You need to be very silent and very still.. And i know, because the majority of my angler days i was a floating bait fisher, hunting and sneaking to the lake sides and hiding in the reets at warm sunny days. Make one sudden move and it shoots away.

This animal didn't do that.. And we were talking pretty loud and lauching and waving arms and legs and having fun.. But when it was obviously noticed it slowly took off.. So it obviously kinda knew what it was doing and that it wasn't yet noticed, did it at own choice and not feeling threatened by our sounds and movements with only 2 or 3 meters apart.

No actualy we didn't talk about it. And this is actualy the first time i feel like telling this experience in 25 years..

 

[Smells Fishy]

Maybe you caught that carp before and it was giving you the evil eye.

 

[roadmaster]

That reminds me of one of my clown loaches. Once they see my head staring they normally start literally looking at me begging for food, not just swimming but turning their faces towards mine. This time I wasn't feeding them....I was just looking.... At some stage one of the bigger loaches just stood there staring at me straight in the face. Then he rapidly started swimming towards the surface( my head over it) and splashed me in the face....



I have to doubt that, specifically based on experience with fish in a fish tank. Catch a fish the wrong way...for example stuck in the net for a few more seconds, or chased prior to that for a longer than accepted time, that fish won't approach you for weeks and months on hand afterwards. They loose their trust. Somehow they remember the stress and associate you with it for a long long time.....but they get over it eventually. My point is, their memory isn't that short at all.

I'm not in the habit of lying about fighting,fishing,or fornicating.
Shortcoming's are quickly realized.
Clearly, you have fished for neither Crappie or largemouth bass in pre spawn or spawning.
As mentioned previously,one you begin to study the habit's of the fishes you might be angling for,they are fairly predictable.
Best time to fish for the afore mentioned species is during the spawn, when they will attack anything that ventures close to the nesting area's they have selected.(Catfish too)
Can easily turn a caught fish loose, and she will return to the nest and attack the lure/bait over and over.(with catfish, it is the male that guards the nest)
I shall not attempt to compare what might happen in glass box of water compared to nature but try to set up my tanks with nature in mind.
I can however,, catch same fishes repeatedly from my tanks for sale or trade with simple bottle trap over the weekend when I take them to the store for sale or credit.
They just ain't that smart.

 

[sciencefiction]

I'm not in the habit of lying about fighting,fishing,or fornicating.
Shortcoming's are quickly realized.
Clearly, you have fished for neither Crappie or largemouth bass in pre spawn or spawning.
As mentioned previously,one you begin to study the habit's of the fishes you might be angling for,they are fairly predictable.
Best time to fish for the afore mentioned species is during the spawn, when they will attack anything that ventures close to the nesting area's they have selected.(Catfish too)
Can easily turn a caught fish loose, and she will return to the nest and attack the lure/bait over and over.(with catfish, it is the male that guards the nest)
I shall not attempt to compare what might happen in glass box of water compared to nature but try to set up my tanks with nature in mind.
I can however,, catch same fishes repeatedly from my tanks for sale or trade with simple bottle trap over the weekend when I take them to the store for sale or credit.
They just ain't that smart.

So you call a fish stupid for being vulnerable when protecting their young? I wonder what a human being in a similar scenario might do? And how do you call a person that goes fishing in the breeding season?

Stupid is a human trait but if I am to transcend the meaning of it to animals, all the animals in the world can't reach the level of stupidity one human can.

I can however,, catch same fishes repeatedly from my tanks for sale or trade with simple bottle trap over the weekend when I take them to the store for sale or credit.

That sentence is difficult for me to understand. You catch a fish "repeatedly" to sell it? Let me rephrase. So you catch the fish with a trap, then sell it. Then you buy it back, put the same fish you your tank, catch it again with the same trap and then sell the same fish again, and so on...

A fish that has only seen good deeds from you so far, i.e. no abuse, good food and good water, won't necessarily expect you to put a trap in its tank...Only humans can be that mean to something they previously lived in harmony with.

 

[zozo]

They just ain't that smart.

I'm not so sure about that, i rather believe it is an individual thing.. And that we should look more relatively to it's need and abilities to the degree of smartness they maybe could develop. As there are also people which not so smart. A test with food on what all live depends is a rather unfair test. I know fish are caught severla times with the same bait, i did.. Once caught a 90cm grasscarp twice in the same week with a floating piece of bread.

But that doesn't telll me they are not so smart.. All have to eat, eating is for all that lives an instinctive bahaivor.. If a very smart person is hungry enough it could be easily be outsmarted and lured in with a nice shiny apple into a trap. That doesn't make this person stuppid, instincts can overrule intelligents as easy as it can trigger it to devellop.

Not beeing so smart also aint an evidence that it can't have emotions. We can measure brainwaves, neurological pathways, we know about synapses and neurons and the hormones triggering them. We know about certain hormones which can trigger basic feelings..What we yet can not measure is what this basic feeling does and how it manifests into a subjects mind. But even than, if the subject is hungry enough it will be rather predictable.. The smartest person on the world will be. If you would camouflage the bait in such away that it's intelligents can't recognize it it will fall for the trap.

Example you are very very hungry, so hungry it hurts and makes you desperate in need of food. The feeling over rules all your senses. I send you into a field with apples laying around and a few unrecognizable poisoned. If you eat a poisoned one you get rather the cramps and sick for an our. Then i send you in everyday, watching you. And you are starving and have to eat. Now you can't deside which apple gives you the cramps, so the changes that you eat one every day is 90%. I play like that with your abilities to recognize the trap, you only see delicious apples.. If you do eat a posoined apple 4 days in a row.. Does that make you not so smart.? Would you starve yourself to dead, because you know some of the food in front of you is not safe to eat? I guess not..

Another example of instincs over ruling intelligents so it can even be used as a weapon. venereal disease..

 

[zozo]

What is realy remarkable and quite a bit funny too..

Giving animals emotinal properties and thoughts is merely a fantasy put in realm of myth and fairytales.

Depriving them from it, because certain logical tests make it plausible to believe they might have not is rather considered a fact.

But both are equaly close to a fantasy as long as we do not know for sure and only believe..

 

[roadmaster]

So you call a fish stupid for being vulnerable when protecting their young? I wonder what a human being in a similar scenario might do? And how do you call a person that goes fishing in the breeding season?

Stupid is a human trait but if I am to transcend the meaning of it to animals, all the animals in the world can't reach the level of stupidity one human can.



That sentence is difficult for me to understand. You catch a fish "repeatedly" to sell it? Let me rephrase. So you catch the fish with a trap, then sell it. Then you buy it back, put the same fish you your tank, catch it again with the same trap and then sell the same fish again, and so on...

A fish that has only seen good deeds from you so far, i.e. no abuse, good food and good water, won't necessarily expect you to put a trap in its tank...Only humans can be that mean to something they previously lived in harmony with.

I sometimes get paid for putting people on fish to catch for sport.(sport fishing)
You don't get paid for long, if you don't know where and when to go fishing so that the people can catch fish.
I also catch fishes to eat, and do not feel any remorse for doing so.
Yes I catch same fishes repeatedly with trap in tanks .(all species)
I may catch species with the trap that I am not going to sell, and they go back in the tank.
It may take me two evening's to catch all the fishes I am going to trade that weekend, and I easily catch the same unwanted species for sale/trade the next night or day.
What do I call a person or angler that goes fishing when/where success is most likely? (Wise old fisherman).
P.S. there are length limit's,possession limit's for fishes taken by pole and line as per Conservation department rules and regulation's.
They determine limit's so as not to have negative affect on future population's.

 

[Smells Fishy]

What is realy remarkable and quite a bit funny too..

Giving animals emotinal properties and thoughts is merely a fantasy put in realm of myth and fairytales.

Depriving them from it, because certain logical tests make it plausible to believe they might have not is rather considered a fact.

But both are equaly close to a fantasy as long as we do not know for sure and only believe..

This thread has sort of turned into trying to decide whether fish are smart or not, and I'm totally fine with that, it's good reading. I just want to make this point because I should have said something similar in another thread I made regarding feeder shrimp but i didn't for some reason and the thread died. So basicly an analogy should sum it up. There is VERY few things in life that we actually know and can't change. For example the sun, nobody is ever going to disagree that it is in the sky or its round and bright. There is no opinion when it comes to the sun but in contrast physics, psychology, nutrition, whatever really, there is just so much theory to it, there will all ways be someone who thinks they know better, coming up with new ideas that somehow get turned into facts. For me seeing is believing. There's so much sh1t in the world like anti depressants, how did they stumble across its bad mood killing properties? Did they actually see the depression disappear from peoples minds first hand somehow? What about ginger root, one day someone decided to eat it or brew it up and felt that it helped there stiffness, spread the word and people took note and they felt it helps them in some other way. Whooooo. If only science could make us into some kind of fly on the wall for any thing we wanted clarfied so we could actually believe it 100%. Imagine being inside your body while all these magical things are happening to you, being able to see cod liver oil do its claimed benefits, or what about pain I wonder what that would look like, a bonfire of nerves, little fires? Anyway its all just dark inside your body unless all the rays leak through you and that's how your white blood cells can locate all the free radicals and oust them.....steady, hold on big chief your getting carried away.

 

[roadmaster]

Yes,is easy to wax philosophical.
If I were a fish,I would be quite happy to live in my aquarium's I think.
I would not be so happy to be a fish in the bait tank's,or store tank's where I might be purchased for bait,or by the masses of fish collector's in the hobby as opposed to those who care for fishes.

 

[sciencefiction]

Not all people understand animals well and automatically ignore the signs. A few years back I brought my cat to the vet with the complaint theres something wrong with him because he started biting me and he had never done that before. The Vet simply laughed at me and said that cats are mean. 6 months later my cat was diagnosed with cancer and died days from being diagnosed...

There are plenty of life examples of fish helping each other and humans in need. Just because most aquarium fish have small brains does not automatically imply stupidity. The same was thought for birds but we now know that is not true

And even dogs were thought to be lacking qualities such as emotions,sense of fairness, etc..., and that has been disproven too in plenty of studies. They can be sad, depressed, happy, etc.

Its easier to kill an animal if you think its existence is only there to please humans one way or another. The more you kill, the less you feel and there's no one to judge...especially when it comes to fish.

 

[roadmaster]

Killed untold number's of fishes when I began in the hobby some four decades ago .
Largely out of ignorance.
Now I can say happily,,that the majority of the fishes I care for die of old age.
Except the bait fish.
I see many examples of planted tank's where fishes are but for aesthetic values.
Pretty sure,, the majority of the fishes we might keep do not much care for uber lighting,near toxic levels' of CO2,and or sharp increase's in TDS from the mineral salt's we use as fertilzer's daily/weekly.

 

[mort]

I see many examples of planted tank's where fishes are but for aesthetic values.
Pretty sure,, the majority of the fishes we might keep do not much care for uber lighting,near toxic levels' of CO2,and or sharp increase's in TDS from the mineral salt's we use as fertilzer's daily/weekly.

This is something I have noticed as well. Fishes are thought of more as decoration than pets in some tanks, with constant rescapes, moving them out or selling them on, keeping in unnatural open scapes etc just to suit the owner not the fish.

 

[zozo]

Pretty sure,, the majority of the fishes we might keep do not much care for uber lighting,near toxic levels' of CO2,and or sharp increase's in TDS from the mineral salt's we use as fertilzer's daily/weekly.

This is just where i wonder, what makes you so pretty sure?

In this is case is what you see is what you get.. Fish have no hands, no facial expressions nor body gestures we recognize, no speach, non of the communicating qualities we posses. At least that's what we like to think. If we do otherwise, it's more likely considered fantasy than fact.. Only thing they can do is flap their fins, swim around and filter oxygen from the water with their gils, look and sense around for something to eat and or play with their mates.

Ofcourse they have an abbilty to addapt to not optimal living qualities, if they weren's we wouldn't have fish at all. They are addapted to survive, some even can survive very severe bad invironmental qualities, but that still doesn't say they feel well in it. They have no other choice than try to hold on to survive and wait for beter days. Numerous examples in nature to find that fish which propagated in severe poluted waters have anatomical deformities making survival even more dificult. We have discovered that long term high concentrations of certain chemical elements cause anatomical deformities and probably severe discomfort in previous healty fish. If we didn't measure for it whit special tools non of it is to be seen, till you see a fish in bad shape. This doesn't happen over night, there propably as a long agenizing road of discomfort before the they even show it. And without measuring tools there is no way for for a fish to show us it isn't doing well.

But since we have no means to measure any of the emotions or sense of well beeing they might have developed, for us it is merely like watching a silent movie. And since we do not realy know we have the freedom to interpret the movie according to our own believe..

It is like watching a silent movie about the poverties in the third world countries. Where you see malnourished children still play and lauch.. Seeing that with no comment at all. Not knowing what you are looking at, but a dry and empty invironment with skiny lauching and playing children.. You also could say, "Hey look they are still playing and laughing, pretty sure they most not care for the condition they are in."

And they as human can survive such conditions for a rather very long time before they finaly collaps from weakness. Final conclusion, so do we have abbilities to survive rather shitty conditions for a long time. But because it conserns humans we all can reflect to that and know it aint fun if you have to. But if so than stil you need to laugh and be playfull now and then just to find little comfort.

To animals we cannot relate? Why not?

Now you believe they do not care much for it.. Which is a good right. I believe i can't know that. Rather, i think they might be more simmular to us then we might believe..

Emotions are something very natural, it is given to us by nature, so why not to them. It is proven that animals sense human emotoins. That by itslef is proof enough, if you can sense it you must know something about it. But other way around?

Ignorance is bliss?

 

[roadmaster]

Well As I said,I killed untold number's of fishes while learning about how to lessen stress, and provide for them per species.(research their need's)
Quality food's, stable water chemistry that suites individual species considered (many ignore this),clean/fresh water,suitable temp's/tankmates.
With these in mind,fishes we keep can easily outlive their cousin's in the wild.(no predation,foods are plentiful)
No, ignorance is not bliss, but often used as excuse in this hobby.
Only time me thinks ignorance would be bliss is ..Not knowing exactly when and under what circumstances one may leave this earth to meet their god.

 

[sciencefiction]

With these in mind,fishes we keep can easily outlive their cousin's in the wild.(no predation,foods are plentiful)

On a grander scale that's false. Take for example clown loaches. There are millions of them exported for the aquarium trade every year. How many of them to you think live longer than their cousin in the wild?...in reality very few of them survive the first year. If I were a fish, I'd take my chances in the wild if I had a choice....

 

[roadmaster]

No In my view, your just kickin a dead horse or not reading.
With research,comes knowledge so that one does not have become a fish collector buying,replacing,medicating fishes as opposed to one who cares for the fishes in their charge.
Research ain't trolling forums searching for other's who are as desperate to fix largely self induced issues with fishes or I dare say plant's and their basic need's.