BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Fish Fish Journal - BETTAS ONLY

Well, I bought another betta...lol...

He's a beautiful bronze, metalic sheen and all ! oO(wish my dang camera was working!!) I'm not really sure if he's a copper or bronze fella..but he has either a delta or super delta tail ! I have to do some searching online to find out which it is..I can't remember what the difference is...but he's definitely NOT a veiltail. There were two of them at the store..PetCo..one had more black on him and some red on his fins. The one I picked has no red that I can see...but his fins have a pinkish/fleshy sort of color when the light hits him right. His body is greenish bronze with black outlining the scales and a black mask on his face that goes up the back of his head. I have named him Zoro! :love:

His color is very similar to this, but his fins are much larger...
http://www.miraclebetta.com/stocks/hm/h470918_1.JPG

Also, I talked to the manager at the local fish store nearby..the one which tends to have the nicest betta. He is willing to take all the little girl bettas I have. I told him I would just give them to him but he said he would give me 25 cents store credit for each..which is fine with me. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> He sells his girl bettas for about 2$ each so he stands to make a healthy profit...I don't mind..if I keep supplying him I can work up a good relationship there and maybe get some deals..who knows..since I may just give a marine tank a try some day, could come in handy! They sell thier cultured live rock there for about 8$ a pound. I have to do some more checking around..but I'm thinking that's a pretty good price.

I definitly need to rearrange my dinning room and make room for more tanks.. <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> ..I also have a nice corner spot in the den that would fit a nice tank too...lol...

Hi guys. So Fred finally made a bubble nest (no more bubble chains) however, since he's had it, he hasn't been himself. He flares at anyone that comes near him and when I did a partial water change, he damn near attacked the turkey baster (although I left his bubble nest as intact as possible). I understand that he'd get aggressive and try to protect it, but I'd like my nice sweet fish back. Has anyone else had this problem? And what should I do about it? Thanks.

Mandm,

I haven't had my fish attack when I'm siphoning out water. Sounds like he's really resistant to change. He may calm down after a bit, or not. I hope for your sake that he does.

Hello again all,

Well, Fang is such an active and curious little dude, I thought there might be some great potential for him to get bored and lonely. So, in order to avoid that, I got.....another betta! A neighbour for him. A little buddy, if you will.

He is just GORGEOUS! He is bright, flaming red, with absolutely no grey in his body at all. He is a BIG veil tail, with really long and flowy fins. I named him Chairman Mao (&#8216;cause he&#8217;s a &#8220;red&#8221; <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> ).

I set him up in an identically-sized bowl as Fang&#8217;s - what I have now determined to be just under 3 gallons. It&#8217;s the biggest bowl you can buy, so however large those are, that&#8217;s what I have my two boys in. They&#8217;re set up right next to each other, but slightly off set at angles. (Both for ease of human viewing, and so they&#8217;re not so &#8220;on&#8221; each other.) I&#8217;m pretty proud of my set up in Mao&#8217;s bowl, if I do say so myself. I put a combination of cobalt blue, very pale blue, clear and very pale green glass &#8220;pebbles&#8221; on the bottom of his bowl. I got a real plant for him (not sure what kind - nice spear-shaped leaves that end kind of filigreed - it&#8217;s a low-light plant at any rate). I found a clear glass votive candle holder, round-ish in shape, and filled it full of turquoise gravel. I then planted the plant in this holder (I figure it&#8217;ll anchor way better to gravel than glass pebbles). The &#8220;planter&#8221; was then dug into the glass pebbles, but so the top-half is showing. This makes a neat little hiding spot for Mao - he seems to really like it! He also likes going into the planter and hanging out in the stems of the plant.

Anyway, the set up looks really neat - all that blue and shiny glass really shows off his bright red colour.

Mao seems to have maybe a touch of fungus on his face - just on his chin. So I put some Aquarisol and Betta Fix in his water, which of course already has aquarium salt in it. This should do the trick, but I&#8217;ll have to watch him closely. He&#8217;s eating and is quite active.

And Fang is going NUTS over his new neighbour! He&#8217;s flaring away, non-stop. Mao doesn&#8217;t seem to care as much, but maybe that&#8217;s because he&#8217;s still checking out his new digs.

He sounds real neat JK....lol...sounds like you're on your way to betta fever..better watch it,lol !! <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I like your idea of putting the plant in the votive holder..I may just check into that as I have been trying to figure out how to give good dirt to the plants so that they grow well, but not fill the whole bottom of the tank with it which makes it hard to clean without stirring all that up....hhmmm.....

good luck with your new boy! <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Thanks EMG! Yeah, I think I am definately well on my way to a serious betta addiction.

I figure the plant in a votive holder will definately make tank cleaning much easier. Also will make it easier to wash off the plant too, without dislodging its roots from the gravel.

Yeah, I know about betta addiction...lol...I suffer a serious case myself. I started with one fish, which led to two....now I have...oh, about somewhere between 60 and a hundred..no lie!! and...I just went out this past weekend and bought another one!

I mentioned in the earlier post in this thread that I have found an LFS which will take my baby girls..I have about 50 of those left from my first spawn. As soon as I get those out of the way I plan on trying two more spawns..at the same time. I figure that it won't be much more trouble to take care of two tanks full of fry as well as one. If I had room I would even like to do 3 at a time..but I don't think I have the room...lol. I don't plan on allowing the females to have so many eggs this time around..and I may just let the male stay in long enough to eat a few of the fry before I take him out. I think that will help him to recover from the stress of taking care of all those eggs...fish fry are very nourushing.. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Anyway...like I said, be careful !! Lol !!

Oh, JK..

If you have a digital camera, I'd love to see some pics of your setups and your fish! You can go to the thread about the "rate a fish" page. There is a link on the first post which will bring you to that page and it will explain how to put your pictures on. You will have to register first though, but that's easy.

Hope to see some pics JK..I love seeing the fish other folks are talking about here. My camera is out of commition at this time so I can't take pics of my new boys, especially that beautiful copper fella I picked up on Saturday....the best I could do was to link to a pic from another site of a fish that is similar...oh well... <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Sadly, I have no digital cameras. I'll try and shanghai one from a sympathetic friend maybe.... The boys deserve their "15 minutes" on the Internet <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I've been thinking about spawning..... I keep looking at Chairman Mao and wondering if I picked up an opaque female, would they have Cambodian fry?? Hm...... The budding geneticist in me wants to know....

JK..

Make sure you do lots of research and checking into what you'd be getting yourself in for before you decide to breed them. I ended up with over 200 fry the very first try...That was back in March when they spawned..I still have over 50 females left and a few males. That's alot of cups to clean over a long period of time, and it takes about 3 to 4 months before you even know what you have as far as colors and gender. Make sure you REALLY like doing this sort of thing or you will get pretty tired of it fairly fast.