Fish tank with gravel Blue fish tank with blue gravel. Approx 8" X 8". No splits or cracks. Very good clean condition. From a pet & smoke free home. Modern myth would have you believe that goldfish can't remember anything that happened more than three seconds ago and, hence, their lives are filled with the constant excitement of never-before-seen sights and sounds.* Like the notion that crabs and lobsters don't feel pain, this myth is one I hear a lot at my fish-centric day job and one that has been debunked time and time again. Goldfish and other fish are 1) capable of learning, 2) retaining that information, and 3) recalling and acting on it after an extended period of time. "¢ Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters trained his goldfish to recognize color patterns and run an underwater obstacle course. More than a month after initially learning the course, the fish remembered it and completed it easily without Hyneman's prompting or aid. "¢ Rory Stokes, a 15-year-old student at the Australian Science and Mathematics School, recently conducted an experiment with his pet fish to test their memory.

He took a red Lego block and put it in his fish tank whenever he fed the fish, sprinkling the food around the block. Three weeks into the experiment, the fish were approaching the block and waiting for the food before it even hit the water. buy fish aquarium in chennaiDuring those weeks, the time it took the fish to reach the block went from over a minute to just under five seconds. 55 gal fish tank stand plansThen, for six days, Stokes fed the fish without using the block. 3 foot fish tank filterWhen he placed the Lego in the tank again, the fish rushed to it in just 4.4 seconds. custom fish tank seattle

"They remembered perfectly well," Stokes told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "They actually had a time faster than the average of the three feeds before I left."fish tank filter z "¢ A researcher at the Rowland Institute for Science in Massachusetts taught carp to distinguish a John Lee Hooker song from a Bach Oboe concerto. cheap custom made fish tanksThe carp could later categorize pieces they hadn't heard before as classical or blues. The fish also learned to distinguished between simple melodies played backwards and forwards. "¢ Researchers from the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel played a particular sound when feeding their fish, conditioning them to associate that sound with feeding time (this is called classical conditioning, by the way, and an excellent example of it can be found here).

After a month of training, the fish were released into the wild. Five months later, when the fish were fully grown adults, the sound was broadcast over a loudspeaker in the sea and the fish returned. "¢ In a 2003 study at the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, fish were trained to push a lever to earn a food reward. When the lever was fixed to work only for one hour a day, the fish learned to activate it at the correct time and didn't bother with it the rest of the day. "¢ Fish can learn outside of a laboratory setting and remember more complex routes through a natural environment, too. In a recent study from the University of Minnesota, carp were able to learn the location of a food reward within a few days and would consistently leave their home range at night and in turbid conditions to visit the food reward. The researchers suggest that the carp's memories were aided by olfactory cues and that their initial learning of the route to the food was helped by following the lead of other fish.

* * * * * * So tell us, fish owners, have your fish ever surprised you with their cognitive abilities? Have you taught your goldfish any tricks? * I haven't been able to find any info on where or when this fake factoid originated. I believe I first saw it on the bottom of a Snapple cap in the mid-90s. Anyone have any ideas?Andy Fromm years ago put some fish tanks in his basement office simply to brighten a windowless space. After two corporate moves, those tanks have grown, literally and figuratively, into the theme around which a Kansas City company’s culture is built. James Stuckmeyer, an orthopedic surgeon, read years ago in a medical journal that watching fish swim can lower blood pressure by several points. His new Lee’s Summit office now has one of the biggest, soothing tanks one might encounter in a doctor’s office. Michael Ketchmark led the planning for a saltwater tank to serve as dividing wall when the Ketchmark and McCreight law offices moved into new space in Leawood’s Hallbrook office park, up-sizing from the tank in a previous office.

You might expect fish tanks in restaurants. But you’re increasingly likely to find them offices that have nothing to do with seafood. They’re placed for art and ambience, for conversation and corporate culture. A wave of marine life retailers and tank-care service companies can testify that fish are big business. Turns out there are a lot of afishionados in the landlocked Kansas City area. “It’s a passion, and it’s a wow factor,” said Vinton Ebling, with Paradise Aquatics in Overland Park, who services many office and residential tanks. Fromm’s little basement fish tanks have morphed into three 500-gallon saltwater aquariums on three floors of the Service Management Group building at 18th and McGee streets in the Crossroads Arts District. SMG’s three-sided glass tanks, each with a different marine ecosystem, were built into the company’s 2009 renovation of a 1920s-era building that originally was a car dealership. The system includes a filtration system in the basement, designed to control salinity and water temperature.

One of the office tanks features the “meat eaters,” beefy blowfish and other large varieties. The other two tanks hold the “vegetarians,” smaller and multi-colored sea life. “Fish have become a really big part of our culture,” said Kim Klosak, SMG’s vice president of human resources, pointing out the hand-blown glass fish that are given as gifts to decorate the work areas of employees on their five-year anniversaries with the company. At 10 years, they get stipends to spend on their vacations, with the requirement that they return with a fish picture — with plenty of latitude about where or what is presented. Jason Gray, an SMG worker who serves as principal fish feeder, said he sees correlations between camaraderie in the workplace and how fish co-exist in the tanks. “Each tank is a community — as long as the right fish are introduced,” Gray observed, adding that the right tank management is needed. He credited SMG’s provider, Custom Aquariums by Design, with keeping the tanks operating, um, swimmingly.

Across the metro area, in Stuckmeyer’s office, a 650-gallon saltwater tank greets visitors for two primary reasons: “I’ve been into aquariums since I was a little boy,” Stuckmeyer said. “And I decided to create an environment that was relaxing.” Ever since he read about the blood pressure effects of watching fish swim, Stuckmeyer said, he’s had a tank in his offices. “I do independent medical evaluations,” the orthopedic expert said, “and the people involved in work injury and work compensation cases have generally had their lives turned upside down. They may be in bad shape financially or physically, and I didn’t want them to see a sterile doctor’s office.” Stuckmeyer estimates that he spent about $20,000 on the tank, system and fish to set up his office tank, and allocates another $250 or so a month in ongoing care. Blue angel fish, sea anemones and colorful coral populate the tank. His only request to Ebling, his long-time service provider: “Build a stunning aquarium.”

Research published last year in the Environment & Behavior journal found that spending time viewing aquariums can lower heart rates as well as blood pressure and even improve people’s mood. The research team from the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Environment and Human Health, Plymouth University and the National Marine Aquarium monitored people’s physical responses after they spent time watching fish swim in very large aquarium tanks. The controlled environment, they said, allowed them to monitor people, who started relaxing after just five minutes of exposure. “People relaxed, even watching an empty tank, and the benefits increased as we introduced more fish over the course of about a four-week period,” said Exeter’s co-researcher Matthew White. At the Ketchmark law office, paralegal Dana Hotchkiss, who said she had no prior affinity for fish, now is the prime caregiver, starting each morning to count them — making sure none expired overnight — and feeding them.