Hello everybody and welcome! Have you ever wondered if or wanted your plecos to do more than rasp glass, eat food, sleep, and poop? Well, maybe not, but its certainly not out of reach for them to do so! I'm Zach, and I've always loved catfish and believed that their is a definite degree of intelligence in them that they do not seem to get credit for. I am by no means an experienced veteran at either fish keeping or training, but I'm here to share the things I've learned and to help anyone else who might want to start along the path of training as well 
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PAST EXPERIENCE: Before starting with plecos I did train 3 Mollies to finger-feed in just 4 days... but given how easy that was I doubt that I had little to do with their actual training, not much is learned from "Too Easy".
So without further-ado lets meet our Trainee, Pete the Orinoco Sailfin Pleco, a male Pterygoplichthys multiradiatus! He's approximately 6 months old and was rescued from a ridiculous 5 Gallon tank, his full story is described here in an older post of mine (Pete's Story).
He's a lazy, sleep loving, food obsessed fish who will do practically anything for some fresh Zuchini. He's friendly and even sometimes a bit cuddly, yet he's also very stubborn and tends to see himself as the boss. This thread is going to cover as much of his training as I can over the course of time, so updates are definitely going to take place. Real quick before we get into any of the training this is what Pete's current tank setup includes: 55 Gallon Tank, 2 Large Airstones, a 75 Gallon Back-Mounted Filter, Weekly 30% Water Changes, and a Number of Plastic Aquarium Plants.
Okay, now that that's out of the way lets talk about some training! So far Pete knows his own name, knows to surface when called, does hand feeding (both from my fingers and while sitting on my hand), and is alright with being petted. Don't worry, we'll cover how all this was done, I just had to make sure I wasn't full of sh*t before posting !
.PAST EXPERIENCE: Before starting with plecos I did train 3 Mollies to finger-feed in just 4 days... but given how easy that was I doubt that I had little to do with their actual training, not much is learned from "Too Easy".
So without further-ado lets meet our Trainee, Pete the Orinoco Sailfin Pleco, a male Pterygoplichthys multiradiatus! He's approximately 6 months old and was rescued from a ridiculous 5 Gallon tank, his full story is described here in an older post of mine (Pete's Story).
He's a lazy, sleep loving, food obsessed fish who will do practically anything for some fresh Zuchini. He's friendly and even sometimes a bit cuddly, yet he's also very stubborn and tends to see himself as the boss. This thread is going to cover as much of his training as I can over the course of time, so updates are definitely going to take place
. Real quick before we get into any of the training this is what Pete's current tank setup includes: 55 Gallon Tank, 2 Large Airstones, a 75 Gallon Back-Mounted Filter, Weekly 30% Water Changes, and a Number of Plastic Aquarium Plants.Okay, now that that's out of the way lets talk about some training
! So far Pete knows his own name, knows to surface when called, does hand feeding (both from my fingers and while sitting on my hand), and is alright with being petted. Don't worry, we'll cover how all this was done, I just had to make sure I wasn't full of sh*t before posting !
