Okay so my other posts make it clear that I'm in no way an expert in betta care. However there is one aspect of it I'm pretty good at, and that's training them to do tricks.
There are tutorials out there for the basic tricks, but you can't really find any for different tricks than following your finger or jumping (which I personally don't recommend) or swimming through a hoop. So I figured I'd explain how I go about training my fish to push beads into a "goal" and how to count.
The fish's personality has a lot to do with the success of this. For example, of the 6 I currently have, I only really train Enki, my youngest. He has the highest energy level and the highest degree of interest in me. My oldest is a grumpy old woman who hates everyone and can be quite manipulative, my other female is very beautiful but very dim, my dragonscale is completely indifferent to my existence, one belongs to my daughter, and my rescue has the personality for it but isn't healthy enough yet to get into it.
So what I do is get a pen light, and that works about the same as a clicker when you train dogs. DO NOT FLASH IT DIRECTLY IN THE BETTA'S EYES.
I have no idea if this is harmful to them, but it can't be pleasant, and there's no reason to do it. I'll flash it in their general direction, about 45 degrees to the side. They can see the flash clearly but it doesn't hurt their eyes.
For about a week, all I do is help the fish associate the flash with a reward. I feed them one pellet or one piece of
bloodworm at a time, and I will flash just before they eat it or right as they eat it.
I normally feed 5 pellets once a day, but when training I'll break this up into 2 or 3 feedings of 1-2 pellets per feeding. And I always flash and feed in the same area of the tank, so they know that's the place where training happens. This way when I'm ready to teach them tricks, they're already in a part of the tank where they have room to move around, and they're near the top.
So once they associate the flash with food, I'll flash, but wait about a second, until I see the fish looking along the surface of the water. Then I'll drop the food in. That way, no matter where they are in the tank, they'll know that the flash means they should look along the surface of the water, and even if they're not rewarded yet, they're about to be. It teaches them that the flash means food is coming.
The first trick I do isn't very useful by itself, but it's easy and makes the later, more impressive tricks easier. I teach them to count. It's easy enough, I flash twice, and when they're looking up at the surface of the water, I drop two pellets at once. I'll do that for a week, and then I'll move up to 3.
Because I don't want to overfeed, I've never gone higher than 3, but I'm sure they can count higher than that.
Once he has the concept of 2, I'll have him do that once every other day, to keep his memory fresh, and I'll get plastic floating beads and a little plastic half circle, and teach the betta to move a bead into the half circle for a treat. Then, by changing the hand signal, I can teach him to move 2 beads, rather than just one, for a treat. Since he already knows the difference between one and two, he picks up on it quickly.
I also train him to follow my finger, which there are tutorials for everywhere.
I start by dropping the beads and the hoop in his tank and giving him a few days to get comfortable with them. But while I'm watching, I will flash and reward him every time I see him nosing the beads around, so he understands that he's supposed to push them.
Once he's comfortable, I will move the hoop into the training area. Then, when I have his attention, I will use my finger to push a bead into the hoop. He follows my finger, and when the bead is in the hoop, I flash and reward him.
To command him, I will hover my finger over a bead (I do not train them to jump out of the water, so he watches my finger, rather than jumps toward it) and quickly but smoothly move my finger about an inch above the surface of the water in the direction of the hoop.
I will flash and reward every time he pushes the bead in the right direction for the first couple days (unless they figure it out right away, my favorite girl, Morrigan, SIP, took all of 8 seconds to figure it out). Then I'll make him push the bead farther and farther before flash/rewarding. Until finally he has to move to all the way into the hoop to get his reward.
To do two beads, I will simply use two fingers for the command and then model what I want him to do by moving one bead, then another, until both are in the hoop. Once they're both in the hoop, I'll flash and reward.
Now, I always have about 5 beads he can play with, but he knows when I want him to move 1, 2, or 3.
It takes a long time, probably took me about 3-4 months of daily training, but it's awesome when people claim that fish are dumb, and I do that trick with Enki, and then I'll look at them and ask, "can your dog count to 3?"
Morrigan took the best to training. She could count, she could swim in circles, do loop-d-loops, and match
prime colors. I was working on training her to fetch, and she was getting pretty good at it, when her age caused her to start slowing down. EnkI takes pretty well to it, but he requires a bit more patience than she did, and he occasionally backslides, where she really didn't.
She would also sometimes run up and move beads into the hoop or do other tricks on her own when she saw me approaching the tank, hoping I'd feed her. She was by far the easiest to train.
But even fish that aren't as intelligent or social are still motivated by food, and can still be taught tricks. And they seem to enjoy it.
