Snakehead feeding from a milk bottle sounds common yet strange because this type of feeding has been applied to carp or koi only. Taming and training snakehead to be a kind of “pets”, however, are not easy at all. Catfish is even more difficult. However, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tam, owner of Thanh Tam Garden, in Son Islet has done that difficult thing.

In fact, he has carefully chosen snakehead and catfish from the fish which previously performed "flying" for visitors. Over time, when some fish are old and heavy, so they "cannot fly", he moves them to the next ditch to train to feed from milk bottles. The ditch is similar to their natural habitat, so the fish is quite shy, and it takes him a lot of time to practice bottle feeding. “At first seeing human shadow approaching, they went away. To be successful in training these fish, I was very patient for a long time,” says Mr. Tam.

He puts fish food balls in the bottle, brings it to the floor, then he makes a noise for the fish to come and “suck”. Initially, just about a dozen fish come for food from the bottles, but now nearly the whole school are present, crowded for sucking food from the milk bottles. There are about 1,000 fish, the most which are snakehead, followed by catfish and some kinds of fish available in the ditch. Catfish are the greediest among the fish, and they are quite aggressive while feeding from milk bottles.  Sometimes they bite the bottle and drag it away.

After successfully training the fish, Mr. Tam has now offered it as a tourism product. Visitors to Thanh Tam Garden will have a chance to feed fish by themselves. It is exciting to watch schools of fish compete for food. In particular, visitors can touch and cuddle each fish one by one like pets. Mr. Nguyen Minh Duc, a visitor from Ninh Kieu District, says, “This is my first experience. It is very interesting. For the fish to be brave like this, Mr. Lam has to put so much effort into fish training.”

Currently, in addition to the flying snakehead, snakehead fish and catfish feeding from milk bottles are also the destinations chosen by many people when coming to Son Islet. According to Mr. Tam, he himself wants to create a lot of new products to serve tourists, especially children.