Retrieve-Anyone Else Done It?

[Emily C]

So Russ and I have been working on the ring retrieve on and off for about 1.5 year now. Our biggest issue is likely related to his shape (he's a Parrot Cichlid, so he's a little balloon-shaped). He tends to bump/head-butt the ring quite a bit. I restarted teaching this with a big ring and slowly cutting it down little by little until it would get stuck on his head. Once we finally hit that one special millimeter, he got stuck in it (put his spines up while partly through), and, of course, was traumatized. So, I reverted to the little ring again, since there is no chance of that happening at that size, but he has more trouble the smaller the ring gets. He seems to have this issue no matter the size ring, and I have been bridging him once he is through enough, so I'm not sure exactly where I'm going wrong here. Anyone else with this issue?

[Dean Pomerleau]

Sorry Emily, my goldfish Comet learned to retrieve the ring in
exactly the way you describe (shrinking the ring until it got stuck on
his head). He didn't have any dorsal spines to get hooked on the ring.
Could you make the ring a little smaller than the size that got stuck
on his fin, but not as small as the "little ring"?

--Dean

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[Emily C]

Thanks for getting back with me, Dr. Dean! I wanted to try that, but I'm currently trying to create other hoops so I am not cutting all of the ones that came with the kit! We frequently need to bounce back and forth with the sizes when he gets frustrated and keeps "bumping" the hoop. The bumping is currently our most obnoxious issue, so I am trying to come up with a weight similar to the one in the kit that I can stick in airline tubing to create multiple hoops of different sizes. I think thicker tubing might work better for him. I'll try to get a video clip up of this soon. :)