godlfish hand training?

Question
how do i train them like that and also i saw a movie on youtube of a person and his fish called "punch". punch was lieing in his hand and he was stroking it. 1) how do you train your goldfish to do that and 2) doesn't that hurt the fishes slime coating? also, my fish are perfectly healthy though they are 1yrs old and is that too old to rain? i wanted to make sure i could take care of them before trying to do any tricks

Answer
Hi Karen,
Goldfish usually aren't too hard to train but it takes plenty of patience and time. If you are just planning to handtame them then starting by handfeeding your fish at every meal will work. Even handfeeding may take some time and training if your fish are not use to it.

Then work on leaving your hand in tank at feeding times and basically work on getting your goldfish use to your hand and comfortable with it. Don't rush anything. Goldfish have been trained plenty of times before and if they associate your hand with a very good positive like their favorite foods, then you shouldn't have any trouble taming them.Rewarding them and directing them with food is the way to go. Plenty of patience and time of course is always important. It probably doesn't hurt their slime coating. Unless you are being really rough. Just make sure your hands are well rinsed and you don't have any soaps or lotions residue.

Every fish is different and yours may not be as tame as punch was. But you never know, you might get lucky! You might want to visit this link for more on training fish just for fun! ;-)

http://fish-school.com/

Keep working with your goldfish and you may be surprised at what you can do!

Best wishes and I hope this helps!
Karen~