who here spanks their fish?

My PB discus knows that when I raise the net in his general direction that he should stop chasing the others and go hide under his driftwood... but, besides that, he does not know that chasing the other fish is wrong.

The truth is, fish make no correlation between right and wrong; therefore it is impossible to discipline him.
 
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fish make no correlation between right and wrong
That is true, but they can still be taught. If a fish is shocked or poked each time it does something, it will stop doing it (in theory). My guess is that it would take way too much effort to get it into their little pea brains.

Although I haven't tried to spank her, I have put my female clownfish in "fish jail," (a breeding net) when she was harrassing the male too much. She behaved better afterwards, but I attribute that to her being generally rattled, and not to actual learning.

I did whack a snapper several times while night diving. It would follow my light to sleeping fish and eat them, so I tried gently bopping it with my light when it got close. Didn't work, it just kept more of a distance.
 
Actually my silver dollars used to try and eat all the new plants i put in and every time they did i used to stand up and head towards the tank really fast. They would of course swim away. Now ive done this a lot they do seem less likely to go after my plants. I like to think this has worked. My sd's are not generally easily spooked either.
 
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The truth is, fish make no correlation between right and wrong; therefore it is impossible to discipline him.

no animal knows the difference between right and wrong, Discipline creates learned behavior, in the case of animals it is learned behavior without understandng Thats why it is difficult to train animals. It's still discipline, any way you look at it.
 
A customer that used to buy fish from the lfs I worked in did.

She kept a severum and discus together, we told her it wasnt advisable but she was one of those "I think I know more than you" customers:rolleyes: .Anyhoo she was in one day and casually told us she had to take the sev out and give it a spank for bullying the discus....I nearly choked on my burger I was having for lunch:D .Whenever she came in she would tell us that it was getting more frequent, one day I came in and there was a beat up sev in one of the empty tanks, I know it was hers as I had sold her it.Apparently she got so pissed of she took it out the tank and thew it down some stairs:mad: , some people shouldnt be allowed to have pets...anyway the sev made a full recovery and we refused to sell her any more fish(well I left not long after that so she might have been allowed more).

Crazy eh??
 
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