"Fish" Training Part 3

Greetings!

Alas poor Fishy, you have no name. I have been racking my brain, but I still can't pick something that fits him quite right. It's harder than with other pets because I don't ever have to call him by his name. He needs something epic. Something really big. Hmm...

Anyway, here is a photo of the things I use with his training. Betta Bio-Gold Pellets from Hikari, freeze-dried bloodworms (and tweezers to handle the tiny things and break them up), hoop, and target.

He is progressing wonderfully with his targeting, and will follow it when I move it along the edge of the tank now and bump it with his nose. I still would like for him to touch the "loop" part of it, but for now I'm clicking for any touches on the wire.

I thought I would talk about food delivery this time. I have found that it is easiest for him to "find" the food reward when I drop it in as far away from him as possible. If I drop it too close to him it will often drift behind him quickly and he becomes frustrated and flaps his little pectoral fins at me rapidly and irregularly(they normally flap at a regular interval. It's amazing much I learn about this fish's behaviors as we go along with the training!!). When he "loses" the food, I take my finger and tap the water near the food and usually he will find it, albiet a little too late to be pertinent. When he can't find it, or is too upset to look for it, I drop another bit in to calm him down and we take a break until the next session. There's no sense in making the poor fellow upset.

I read in another article on clickertraining.com ( http://www.clickertraining.com/node/30 ) by Ogden Lindsay, about using a"floating glass food triangle" to place the food reward. Well, after spending a good deal of time googling this and checking out various fish supply websites, I could not find out what this triangle is, and where I can get one (or make one??). If anyone out there has an idea about what it is, please let me know.

For a while I was only feeding in the right corner closest to me, but after figuring out about dropping the food far away from Fishy, I decided to drop that, unless I decide to only do the actual training in the opposite corner of the tank.

For fun, here's a diagram of my tank's layout...fishy spends most of his time curled up around the heater or hanging out in his mini forest.

The yellow outlined area is really he only spot where I can do the actual training without taking off the whole hood of the tank (and then I wouldn't be able to see the little guy very well without the light!). I read that bettas do not generally care for a power filter, but Fish seems to enjoy riding the wave, and then resting in his cave.

Well, I will have more later hopefully. I stuck the hoop in the tank this morning so fish could get acclimated to it...when we training earlier he pretty much ignored it. I bet he went through it 20 times on his own when I was away :)