Teaching your Betta tricks

I have been teaching my Betta(Basil) to do a few tricks following my finger, jumping to eat food off the tip of a cable tie and now to swim through hoops for his food. Start simple place a flake on the end of a plastic cable tie and let them jump to get it so they know that cable tie = food. Today i made a hoop out of a cable tie and placed a flake on the end of another cable tie and put it behind the hoop so Basil swims through the hoop after doing this place a flake behind the cable tie hoop so they know there is food waiting for them. He now makes a bee line through the hoop with no prompting. Its the same concept as training a dog use tiny flakes as "treats". I have had him less than a week just shows how tame and how fast they learn.
Here are some pics to show how Basil swims through his hoop.
Pls move this to the Betta subforum once its opened.

 

COOL! I'll try that. At the moment all I can do is make my betta jump.

 

thats cool .you make starting a little betta tank very tempting.....but
how much time do have on your hands are you on holiday ?

 

Yip I'm on holiday I finished writing my university exams on thursday last week. Get a nano + betta and ur on ur way. Setting up a betta tank is very cheap u can do it all for under 200 rand. And it took abt 5 minutes to teach it its new trick so u don't need a lot of time

 

when you say nano, do you mean the tanks with the built in filtration and stuff?

 

Just one caution all,please do not overfeed your Betta trying to train him.

 

And remember a variety of foods too. Maybe one day bettas can help with water changes

 

Bettaboy nano tanks are std tanks less than 40l I have a std 1ft tank with filter heater and 11w cfl lights I do feed a variety of food betta pellets, sera flakes and blood worms(once a week). I use tiny flakes wen I teach tricks break one flake into many tiny pieces I do this to ensure he is not overfed.

 

what kind of filter do you have in there. cause I've got a 1ft with a sponge filter thats sitting right next to me with nothing in it lol

 

Betta boy that sounds great, sponge filters usually create little current. Just remember a heater.

 

got the heater ha ha ha ha ha. im not a totally lost cause lol

gonna give the trick thing a try

 

I use a sponge filter u can check out the diy lowtech filters its quick and easy to make less than 10min

 

wicked

 

Cool. I taught my female to jump and swim thru a hoop to. Now everytime I stick my hand close to the water she jumps, even if I didn't even see her there.

 

Know what you mean eel. My betta gets super excited now when I lift the tank lid. I put my hand in once and he "bit" my finger. Cheeky thing!
I've also "trained" Solly to know when it's food time. I shake the pellets in front of the tank and he goes CRAZY!