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I have posted several times in the past about fish enrichment and how I am a huge proponent. The journal Applied Animal Behavior Science recently published a study focusing on the use of artificial aquarium plants as a source of enrichment. Full reference at the bottom of the post.
Not all families of fish that are popular in aquariums, such as cichlidae, characidae, loricariidae, and poeciliidae, exhibit the same behaviors. However, as bony fishes, all of these have many characteristics in common. One is that they are sentient creatures.
On the evening of June 27th, I purposely arranged some marbles on top of a piece of travertine tile in one of my Julidochromis dickfeldi species only tanks (see photo above). I use these flat, glass marbles for stacking travertine tile to create additional refuges for fry and juveniles.
If you follow the blog, then you know I probably think about fish a bit differently than most fish keepers. In fact, I often post about issues, concepts, and ideas that I suspect most cichlid keepers probably scoff at. That’s fine.
Sigh. Because I like to keep up with what is going on in various fish keeping communities, I subscribe to several Facebook (FB) cichlid groups. That’s the good news. The bad news is following these communities exposes me to fish keepers that, frankly, probably shouldn’t be keeping fish.
Permit me to anthropomorphize with this post. So, I don’t necessarily believe in animal “happiness” and other emotions, as we (humans) define them. However, I do believe that animals can reach a state of contentedness, just as they can a state of excitement.