Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Imprinting is that thing where baby ducks follow the first thing they see and think it's their mum.

Some little critters develop a preference for the first feed they find. Same thing apparently.

I've been reading about insects and their feed preferences.

But I wonder if it applies to fish.

If it does, it might be worth getting our fish at the youngest stage we can, in order to get them eating whatever it is we want to feed them. I'm thinking things like duckweed, or black soldier fly grubs.

From what I'm reading, some people have difficulty getting their fish to eat foods that other people feed the same type of fish without any problems, and I thought imprinting might explain it.

Just a thought

How can you imprint anything on fish that have 3 second memories

Seriously, the above being absolute crap, as my fish know its me coming and come to greet me for a feed. I have just changed the jade perch (90-100mm) from crumbles that I got from John at Glenwaters to 2mm Lauke feed and after two days they are hitting it. They better as I have a freezer full of Lauke stuff

Yeah they definitely remember stuff.

But some just aren't fish enough to risk pushing the lever.

My smallest silver would spend all day just staring at the magic food stick that all the big kids could press

Perhaps fish are a bit like chooks... man some of ours are so dumb...

But interesting thoughts, I know that it can take a while to train fish onto floating pellets if they are used to sinking. And look at all those people that haven;t been able to get redfin caught in the wild onto pellets..

But I did get wild black bream onto pellets without too many troubles.

If they are anything like the bream I try to catch, you dont see them at all until you pack up and throw the scraps of berley and bait into the water. Then they all come flying out for a feast because you have the rods in the car already

Given that a decent sized bream is 20+ years old, yours probably remembered eating my chicken pellet berley from a 1991 WA fishing trip I had *


[color=#irritating]*some details have been changed in the interest of maintaining the flow of narrative [/color]

I agree BW but dont know how long it imprints for.
The barra i got from freo a week ago today, were obviusly raised on sinking pellets as they all ate of the floor of the aquarium. The smaller ones only took overnight to come to the surface, the biggest ones still dont. 7 days later they still scavenging of the bottom
Cheers

Fish have pretty good memories -

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3JFmrlgWAk[/youtube]

People have pretty deep wallets

[edit - but that is pretty cool ]

Pavlov's dog will help with that...

But how can you tell if your fish is salivating?

Yeah, they usually feed most of the fish with sinking pellets there.