MeghanR wrote:
i'd like to hear more about your betta and how you trained him. i just brought one home today (and he is blue too!) - I went to the fish store and the little guy just "called" to me to take him home:)
I could PM you a little more if this doesn't help, but..
When you get him, make sure he is able to like the presence of your hand in his territory, aka the tank he is in. To do this, put your hand in the tank up to about your wrist, and see what he does. If he doesn't mind the presence of it, then you are ready for the next step. If he bites at it more than once, or goes to the opposite side of the tank, then you might stick with not training him...
The next step would be to pick up maybe some bloodworms, or some type of worm your betta might enjoy. Once you have it, either pinch it and put it in front of your betta, or put it between your fingers and open your hand up so it can see it. It may not come at first, but after repetition of putting your hand in there with a worm, it will eat from it. Once you have it doing that, just keep it up until it sees it as natural. I usually pinch because it seems less threatening to my betta.
As to how I got it to go through my hands if I made a tunnel, that took longer...
Naturally overtime, a betta will become curios, and explore things... My hands just happened to be one that my betta explored!
Before you would train it to do this, you would need to have it trust you. Trust is key! I would recommend starting to try and train it to do this after about two weeks of hand-feeding. By then, it may trust you...
Again, grab a bloodworm, or some worm that your betta would enjoy...
Stick it between your pointer finger and your thumb. Now out of two hands, form a tunnel, and try to coax it in...
Overtime, it will do it naturally, then, it will do it even without the bloodworm!
Also one thing you may be able to do is hand feed pellets or flakes... just try the same method!
Something of an oscar-like attitude may happen as well. Every once and a while, it may nip at your fingers... but it causes no harm to you. lol
But for all of the tricks you can teach, repetition is all you need basicly.
By the way, my betta is a crowntail. But I don't think it makes a difference.
Hope this helped!
