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I got me a beta fish
Fandyien
But Otto, what about us? Registered User regular
But Otto, what about us? Registered User regular
So I haven't kept any fish in a long time, and my girlfriend bought me an awesome adorable beta for christmas. I purified some water with beta formula and whatnot, but I was planning on keeping him in my room, which doesn't get any heat and can get sorta cold in the winter - will keeping my beta in a cold room kill him? Should I move him downstairs if it's particularly chilly?
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Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
A fun thing to do is get a second male, and get 2 tanks that sit right by each other, and watch them flare their gills to each other.
Oh, and NEVER put 2 males or 1 male/1 female in the same bowl. It ends in 1 of the fish dying. You can, however, put females together, they tend to not fight.
Rule one: Starve them. Fish are cold blooded, they need very little food to survive. Most owners overfeed - I've got twelve tanks and six years experience and it's hard not to. One feeding a day is sustainable - even one every other day for up to several months. With one feeding a day, they can usually go up to a week (sometimes two or three) without food in a pinch, so if you go on vacation, it's usually safer to leave them unfed than trust somebody else to feed for you. Some people suggest 2-3 feedings a day with betas, IME that's only really necessary if you're trying to condition them for breeding.
They do need at least 2 gallons - mine have lived upwards of 5-7 years each in 5 gallon tanks, how long have yours, Lurker? To add to my credentials, I have bred bettas, but hovering over the breeding tank with a net in each hand to rescue one of the happy couple from certain death at a moment's notice isn't my thing. Cold water won't kill them, but they slow down greatly, and generally don't show good behavior below about 75F.
7 years is pretty impressive, but put one in a well maintained a 2 gallon alone, or a 5 gallon tank with some shrimp or small corydoras, and you can reasonably expect 2-4 years out of them. Filter the tank, but don't overfilter the way is often done with community tanks - a weak hanging filter or sponge filter will suffice (aim for 3-5x turnover, a 20 gph filter with a 5 gallon is great). Overfiltration usually goes hand-in-hand with overstocking, which isn't a great idea with bettas, as they like sedated sparsely stocked tanks and only mix safely with a short list of other fish. Bettas also like light flow, and a strong filter can blow them around the tank.
Test your water, too - ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are the important stats (unless you have very soft water, pH can be safely ignored for most fish). Ammonia and nitrite will tend to spike in an uncycled tank, prolonged exposure to anything above 0.25 ppm or short term exposure over 0.5 ppm ammonia will cause permanent gill damage - daily water changes of 30-50% in a 2 gallon is sufficient to keep ammonia down if the betta is alone. Bettas are hardy fish, but particularly vulnerable to ammonia, as are all anabantoids, since the labyrinth organ is more sensitive to it, and if damaged the fish may have breathing difficulty even with functioning gills. Nitrite is less of an issue than ammonia, but it binds with hemoglobin. When it hits 1 ppm, there's a very short list of fish that can still breathe. Anything over .25 ppm is worrysome, anything over .50 is dangerous. Once established, 20% water change weekly to keep nitrate low and pH stable.
Don't trust strip tests, at least not for ammonia. If you can't get a liquid based test kit, just do daily water changes for 2 weeks and every other day for another 2 - the tank will eventually smell like rich black soil, if there's ammonia in the water it'll smell like a dirty toilet, and nitrite is a bit hard to explain, but it's not a pleasant smell. The earthy smell is your goal.
Don't be afraid of water changes: just keep the media inside the filter wet. Partial water changes with the filter running are best for this (Get a small gravel siphon, you can suck up fish poop while you're at it - run $3-5 at any pet store). The bacteria you want in your tank grow in high-flow oxygen rich areas, not free swimming, even 100% water changes have no effect on the biofilter, but are logistically difficult with fish.
Join fishforums.net, and post in the betta section there. There's some professional betta breeders and showers there, as well as a large community of plain-clothes owners. The site overall is one of the best sources for fish information, though you'll get better help in the betta specific section than the newbie related sections, which are full of community and cichlid discussion.
If you keep them unfiltered, keep the tank warm and change all of the water every day. I've heard of people keeping them going on two years this way, but 6 months is more typical, and at any rate, you'll have a lazy, sedetary fish with dullish colors, hanging fins, and skittish behavior. A healthy beta has spectacular colors. Even cheap petstore blue and red veiltails really shine when they're rehabilitated from their shipping cups. They tend to hold their fins erect most of the time, and are highly active, inquisitive, and interactive fish that easily learn to hand feed and may even learn to beg - I had a black halfmoon crowntail that would stick his head out of the water when I walked by.
Frankly, any fish in an unfiltered tank is cruel because of the nature of ammonia poisoning - I could make a post as long as this wall of text just on the effects of ammonia. Despite the fact that they're commonly kept that way, betas and goldfish are definitely not on the list of fish you want to try this way. Note the exception are self-filtered tanks like the Walsted method, but for a beta, you're looking at a 15-20 gallon Walsted tank and a hefty investment in plants and fertilizers. I've tried a few times, but so far haven't been able to stabilize a tank using the Walsted method, and haven't met anybody who's managed the level of stability Walsted claims is possible in her book.
Edit: The mark of a healthy betta is a nest. They'll build a mat of bubbles and guard it against any intruder - be it other fish or even your finger. It's pretty fascinating behavior, and they show their best color and fin display while they have one built. If they abandon the nest for more than a couple weeks, it's a good bet something's wrong, often water quality.
Edit again: For food, don't use the cheap goldfish flake. Betas require a more carnivorous diet than goldfish or general community fish. Get a small jar of beta specific pellets or flake (some of my betas refuse to swallow pellets, others ignore flake. They're bastard fish, really). You can supplement with frozen or live microworms (blood worm, tubifex, glass worms, blackworm, etc) or daphnia once or twice a week. They tend show better color and behavior with a varied diet, and it's cheaper than color enhancing foods (some of which are harmful if fed too often anyway). I personally use Hikari and Wardley foods exclusively and Omega-1 frozen foods, but Tetra are slightly cheaper and more widely sold. The small packages are enough - they're cheap, and a beta won't eat more than 2-3 pellets at a time or a very small pinch of flake/crisps. The food will likely go stale before you run out.
What sort of amenities do they like in their tank? Can Betas chill around crustaceans like snails and crabs? I'm also going to pick up a PH testing kit and stuff to make sure he has a healthy tank, because I love him already.
I'd like to sort of reiterate my original question, though. Does keeping them in a ~40 degree room pose a threat to their health?
As long as the heater is doing it's job I think you'll be fine.
Hevach's advice is all spot-on. I've owned a betta for a year and a half now, and as I've learned more about keeping them healthy, his tank has changed from a little plastic "betta kit!" tub to a basic 1 gallon starter set to his current home, a comfortable 3 gallon cube. I use a 25w heater, which was the smallest I could find, and it keeps his tank temperature remarkably even.
Bettas are neat pets, and far too many people fall into the trap of thinking of them as disposable, temporary companions. My Aleister has been good company to me, and while he doesn't get quite as much attention now that I have a cat, I still very much enjoy having his brightly-coloured self around.
I KISS YOU!
For amenities, avoid plastic plants. Many have sharp points (higher quality ones are smoother, but cost). Bettas like to swim through plants, and will occasionally tear their fins on these points. It's not that harmful, and the fins will heal in a few days if water quality is good, but it doesn't look good, and it is stressful to the fish if it keeps happening.
If you don't want to invest in much lighting and anything fancy, silk plants are the way to go - some of them are good enough to pass for live, and I do sometimes cheat and use silk plants to fill in visual gaps in my planted aquariums. They like having something over their head, but also like to hang out near the surface, so floating plants are good - you can get some on suction cups that will anchor to the walls of the tank, or just cut some leafy silk plants off their weights and attach them with a piece of fishing line to a suction cup. They're more likely to build a bubble nest this way, as they like to anchor it to an object (if it's floating loose in the tank, it tends to break up and they'll abandon them a lot).
If you want to go with live plants, anubias, water wisteria, java fern, and java moss are easy and hardy plants, and won't require CO2 or fertilization to thrive. Water sprite, ricia, watermeal or duckweed can be used as a floating plant. API root tabs monthly and Flourish Excel daily (save your money on the rest of the Flourish line, it's for more advanced plants) are a good combo for plant growth in the absence of advanced systems like CO2 injection. Rule of thumb: Fish always degrade water quality, healthy plants always improve it. For a 5 gallon tank or smaller, a standard aquarium CFL will suffice for lighting - the standard incandescents most small tanks come with generally don't provide good plant growth, but you can replace it for about $5. Get a cheap lamp timer from Home Depot or the like and have the lights on for 8 hours a day - you can adjust it so it's on while you're in the room the most, rather than whether it's actually day or night. My living room tank is lit from 3 to 11 PM, for example.
If you don't go with live plants, less light is more, to control algae growth. With live plants, higher plants will usually outcompete algae. If you get algae growth, increase flourish excel dosing slightly, as the higher carbon level helps higher plants take in nutrients faster (several common nuisance algaes use very little carbon).
40F will eventually kill them, but in the short term, will slow their metabolism and can actually help keep fish alive in declining water quality, though in such situations I usually aim for around 68F. 75F is a good temperature. Betas like it warm, and can easily go up to 84F, but the upper range of a fish's comfort range accelerates their metabolism and ages them faster.
Got my betta a couple days ago. The little guy is already building a bubble nest, so I figure I must be doing something right. However, I'm thinking I want to put something else into the tank sometime in the future. What would do well with a betta in a three gallon tank?