| Bettas are not called Siamese fighting fish for the heck of it. Two males will often fight to the death. Although females are not as aggressive they will still nip fins or sometimes even kill other females. A male and female may also fight and kill each other if put in a tank together. Keeping your males separate is important if you want healthy happy fish. |
| Depending on the size of your bettas container you should change the water every third day to a week. You should keep a clean jug or two full of water with additives already mixed. This way you will have aged water at room temperature to refill your containers with. Every day do a 25% water change. Use a turkey baster to suck out the crud from the bottom of the bettas container until a fourth of the water it gone. Then refill the container with the aged water, slowly so you don't stress the betta too much. Every third day do a 100% water change. You can directly place the betta in it's new water without acclimatizing it first, as long as the new water is the same temp. etc. as the old. |
| Water conditions are very important if you want you betta to live a long and healthy life. Your bettas containers should be filled with declorinated water. Use water conditioners. Very acidic or basic water is uncomfortable for bettas and possibly deadly. Always check that the PH is about 7.0. Adding Aquarium salt will prevent most diseases and will add electrolytes to the water further ensuring the health of your betta. About 1/2 a tablespoon per gallon is good. The temeprature should be between 75-82 degrees. |
| Bettas are nice pets but community tanks are not the best idea. Your betta may harm or kill your other fish or your other fish may harm or kill your betta. I have kept bettas with gourmies and salamanders and newts successfully. I have not tried anything else. It's probably best you keep your betta separated from other fish. A tank with only females is also fine as long as there isn't a couple of super aggressive ones. They will still chase each other around a bit but usually don't hurt one another. Males can not be kept in the same container as females. The only time you will want them together is if you are trying to breed them. |
| Here is a list of what you need to keep a betta. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. A clean container at least one gallon or more is best. 2. Food made for bettas like Bettamin or Betta Biogold. Live foods are best for your betta especially if you plan on breeding them later. They are necessary as conditioning food. 3. Water conditioners such as AquaSafe. 4. Aquarium salt (Never use table salt. Must use Aquarium salt.) 5. PH tester kit with PH up and down (Not reccomemded unless PH is off the charts. Chemicals like PH up and PH down can actually be more harmful than good. 6. Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate tester kits. |
| When ever adding fish to new water that is not the same as the old, or when ever having received new bettas in the mail always acclimate them before dumping them into their containers. Float them in a cup filled with a little of the old water in the freshly cleaned container for 10-15 minutes to get him used to any temeprature change. Later introduce a little of the new water into the cup and let him sit for another ten minutes before releasing him. |
| Every couple of weeks you should sterilize your bettas container/s. I fill up one side of my kitchen sink with boiling water that I heated on the stove, and then add about half a cup of liquid bleach. I put my containers in the boiling hot bleach water and let them soak for several hours or all day long depending on whether or not I need them right away. Once they are through soaking I use a sponge (used only for this and nothing else) to scrub the containers under running hot water to rinse the bleach completely off. Rinse each container for about a full 20 seconds or more. You must be sure that all the bleach is rinsed off. Smelling the container to see if it is 'bleachy' will help you to know if it is safe or not. A very very slight odor is ok. VERY slight. You should also do this for any containers that housed sick fish. If your betta is sick, do a 50% water change every day. Every three days, sterilize the container and fill it with new water and medications until the betta recovers. |
| Feed your betta twice a day. About four or five pellets each time. Make sure you do not feed more than that. Uneaten food rots in the container polluting the water and making your betta sick. |
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