Who feeds their fish by hand and how did you do it?

vasilithegreek

vasilithegreek

Member
So with my new tank about to start up, I have a magnificent foxface and a desjardini sailfin in my holding tank and I've seen videos and other members on here especially with these fish and other tangs that feed out of people's hands.
How did you go about training them or did they just naturally themselves become interested. I've never seen any real info on this and I think it would be interesting to see people's tactics on how you did it?
 
I always pinch the food between thumb and index finger and place fingers in tank and then release the food. Before long they associate the fingers with the food and will start trying to get it before released. I have had several fish that have just taught themselves that way.
 
I could just placing my hand in and opening my palm with pellets. But the piccaso trigger bites.

So none of that but the fox and the tang also did eat off palm
 
When I had a copperband it used to eat out of my hand. My porcupine puffer eats out of my hand too. I mostly do that for the puffer so the other fish don't get his big pieces.
 
First time I used Nori to feed my tang, he immediately ate out of my hand and in a few days all my other fish caught on and now they all came up and nibble. I do have a blind 3 striped damsel that I got from Petsmart for a penny and had to train him. I lowered my hand in the tank with the food and waited for him to find it. It took a few weeks but now he comes to the same corner of the tank around the same time daily for his meal.
 
To keep flake food from floating on the surface of the water and going into my filter, I would take a pinch of flakes between my thumb and index finger and stick them underwater in the tank and rub those fingers together to slowly let the food get wet, which kept the food from floating. It didn't take long for the fish to understand that my fingers in the tank meant it was time to eat.
Until my pink tail trigger figured out if he bit my finger I would release all the food.
No more hand feeding.
 
[MENTION=585]nailbender[/MENTION] yea I wouldn't want to stick my hands in there with the trigger. I got bit while diving one time by a trigger that was about 8-10 inch on my hand, no good!
I'll try and leave my hand in there and see what happens, hopefully they do associate my hand with food.
 
I can feed from hand and use to all the time until i didnt pay attention and my purcupine puffer got me good i no longer feed by hand lol
 
I feed nori by hand every day. Every fish in my tank eats from my hand except the clown, because he doesn't really eat nori. No training needed. They are hungry, they will take food however they can get it. My Niger trigger's teeth scare me a little and he comes after the nori really aggressively.
 
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