I adopted Crusty, a sucker-mouth catfish (or “pleco”), when he was about a year old and four inches long. He’s now seven years old and 20 inches long, has outgrown several caves and tunnels, and has moved from a 5- to a 20- to a 75-gallon tank. Crusty’s favorite food has always been zucchini (courgette). He comes to the front of the tank and “rasps” (scrapes) it with his flat teeth.
As Crusty grew, he began to make contact with my hand when I put his zucchini in the tank by “tapping” my hand quickly with his body. I thought at first he was being aggressive, but I soon realized he wanted to be petted. I began to rub his nose and back with my hand, which felt like rough leather. He liked this, and now it’s part of the routine to pet Crusty and for him to rasp my hand and arm in turn, which feels like a sandpaper scrub (but feels good if I have an itchy spot)!
I also discovered that Crusty loves music (not too loud). He’d come out of his tunnel to listen and sometimes positioned himself nose down, tail up and leaning against his tunnel, which I came to recognize as his favorite “listening to music” position.
Crusty likes a vegetable food mix that sinks to the bottom of the tank, where he can easily eat it. Sometimes it begins to slide underneath his body as he rasps it, and I used to watch him wiggle backward, dragging the food back even further. But finally one day I noticed he was lifting his body while moving backward until he found the food again. Now he’s got that movement down pat – he wiggles back, lifting his body and moving left and right until he finds the food again!
As I watch Crusty, he also watches most of my movements, often going to the side of the tank where he’s closest to where I am. One day Crusty watched from the left side of the tank as I was doing a routine cleaning of one of the filters. I took out the filter baskets and put them on a shelf to clean, leaving the canister part of the filter in place on the floor on the right side of the tank. After cleaning the baskets and putting new filter floss in, I was ready to put the baskets back into the canister. I glanced at Crusty and saw that he had moved to the right side of the tank and was looking at the canister! He had anticipated my next move.
I hadn’t realized until then that Crusty was taking in and processing what I was doing. Fish are certainly smarter than most of us know.

Author: Sara Pollock
Country: United States
True story: Yes
Rating: 38 paws up
Vote: Vote up Vote down

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