Do your fish recognize you?

[saltwaterfish.com Verified Sponsor]

Keeping fish for a long time, especially ones with a lot of personality always gets me thinking about if they would recognize me over another person. I do feel as though they would since I am the one that feeds them mainly. But I definitely have a few that would beg for food from anyone who passes by.

 

[tzabor10]

Absolutely. The hungry ones especially. We have a new Chalk Bass (named Lance Bass) that loves to see anyone bringing food.

 

[saltwaterfish.com Verified Sponsor]

Absolutely. The hungry ones especially. We have a new Chalk Bass (named Lance Bass) that loves to see anyone bringing food.

Love the name, I feel as though any fish with lots of personality is either very hungry, or very aggressive lol.

 

[commod0re]

Yes our fish recognize my wife and I, the ones who don’t see me regularly tend to hide from me and not her lol

Our new pink streaked wrasse for example is already very used to her but hides from me

 

[exnisstech]

Pretty much all mine recognize people but there's only two of us here and we don't entertain so I'm not sure about strangers. I run all new fish through observation and ussually won't bring them out to the DT until they're swimming to the glass begging for food when they see me.

 

[mike.belham]

In 2017 during a house move my fish had to have temporary accommodation in my LFS, I walked in to check on them, convict tang, clown fish, copperband butterfly and a few others.

The shop owner was talking to a couple admiring them and within feet of the tank they all swam towards me

It was so obvious that the shop owner said “well they recognised you “

Yes they probably associate my image with food but it is cool

My 18 year old tang would recognise feeding time when I walked into the room with the spoon of food, an positively wait watching for me if I was late

 

[saltwaterfish.com Verified Sponsor]

In 2017 during a house move my fish had to have temporary accommodation in my LFS, I walked in to check on them, convict tang, clown fish, copperband butterfly and a few others.

The shop owner was talking to a couple admiring them and within feet of the tank they all swam towards me

It was so obvious that the shop owner said “well they recognised you “

Yes they probably associate my image with food but it is cool

My 18 year old tang would recognise feeding time when I walked into the room with the spoon of food, an positively wait watching for me if I was late

That is so cute

 

[christinna77]

100%. Both my tilefish will come out and skim the water surface to say hi. My new purple one is very excitable to the point he'd jump out the tank if the lid wasn't on.

 

[mfinn]

Yep, especially my female clown fish. She hates me.

 

[Reeferbadness]

I have 2 tanks (180g and 200g). I my 200g - all fish are super shy - and when a new person comes into the room they all hide. When i go away for a while, as i just did for 1 month, they also hide when i return. This is problematic when i feed them for about a week. Fish include: fox face, purple tang, swallowtail angel, australian stripey and 2 clown fish. The other tank they would eat anything from anyone !

 

[DSC reef]

I truly think a fish has the ability to recognize a specific person. I grew a beautiful sohal tang from a baby to a large foot and a half adult and that fish was pure swimming personality. I was the one that always fed the tank because for some reason he would not like others too close and would splash water out of the tank profusely. After a while I would play jokes on people and have them get the "shamoo" treatment. Lol.
For some reason he would never splash me and wouod almost seem excited to see me. Im sure its because food was involved but keep in mind, my wife (at the time) and others would feed the tank and always get wet at some point. Interesting behavior to say the least. Definitely miss that fish, he resides in a 1200 gallon show tank now.