Unpredictable captive environments can induce stress, which can negatively impact animal welfare. Our objective was to determine zebrafish preference between a food and object reward. These preliminary results would be utilized in future experimentation to determine if fish can associate a preferred stimulus with a specific caregiver, to re-introduce predictability within their environment. We found that fish became more cohesive, coordinated and displayed less aggression when interacting with food, than a novel object.