Anyone know of common causes for Betta fish to die???

Hi Candice,

From my experience, keeping Beta's is either very interesting, or very easy. And I think this comes down to the personality of the fish. I have a very docile male, with 7 females, and the way he acts, I don't think he even knows he's got females with him. In the past, I had 1 male with 5 females. He was picked on by the females. He eventually passed on due to the stress. These are the same females that are with the current male. So personally, I am of the opinion that beta's have a personality of their own, and as with humans, cannot tolerate certain members of the same species.

You also need to bear in mind that you are more than likely finding it challenging keeping the beta's for 2 reasons. The first is obviously as I stated above, and secondly, the tank size. Granted you have given the beta's more than sufficient space, you will find that maintaining a small tank to be more cumbersome and challenging than a larger tank. Tis is purely because if something foreign get's into a small tank, it is obviously present in much higher concentration than if the same foreign chemical/object etc was in the big tank. This is why you will find people keeping Nano Tanks have such a hard time maintaining them. I know I spend much more time on maintenance on my Nano that I do with my big tank.

 

Hi Ashley,

Thanks for that info, I will pass it on to Daniel, it explains a lot about their behaviour. We unfortunately don't have the space for a bigger tank until we move, so will have to work with the 47lt we have for now with regular water changes and testing the water quality often. I can also get stability to sort out the cycling issue, or continue with the micro lite product which is supposed to be the same anyway.

There is one female that is like the 'queen' lol, she is totally unscathed and no one bothers her, only Rt2 sometimes flares at her, maybe he likes her lol.

Sounds like its trial and error then as far as compatible Betta's go... will have to keep trying till we get the perfect matches then.

Regards,
Candice

---------- Post added at 11:10 ---------- Previous post was at 11:10 ----------

Sorry to hear that, its always heartbreaking losing a fish...

 

I just don't know anymore.... these ladies are not faring well... the one that was unscathed has lost her left fin.... it seems that the females are attacking each other...I fear we are going to lose all our females...they are not getting along at all.... only the male is still 100% in tact now... perhaps its better to just have one male? I am not enjoying this experience at all, imagine how my 10 year old is feeling

 

I keep 5 females together in a 2 foot tank with no fighting what so ever. They flare at each other when swimming past but that's it. The tank however is heavily planted so each one can go to a corner if he is tired of the others.

The tank gives them the idee that each of them have enough space even thoug it is not actually the case. When they are in a open tank they see each other all the time and then feel that the other one is in their space. They want to get others out of their space becasue if a male should come along she would like him for herself.

Usually in a female only tank you will have fighting untill they have a pecking order. Which mean the chief female in charge get first choice of everything. These fights might end up badly if the other female is just as hardekwas. Most females would realize she is beaten and give way to the dominant female.

What also helped mine was to put a few small guppies in the tank. They tried their best to catch these to no aveil and forgot about fighting each other. They did get bored being outswimmed alter

 

Thanks for the info Vis, well initially had more plants, but they were sort of decaying, I thought it may be due to the lack of movement of the water... we have a 350lt p/h internal sponge filter, maybe that is not adequate, however I would imagine a better one would cause too much movement in the tank and I believe they dont like a lot of movement? ... would plastic plants work?? i have some of those lying around... because at this rate, I don't think we will have any females left if we don't do something... another Question I have, is, can their fins recover after being attacked? do they grow back normal again?

Thanks,
Candice

 

PLastic plants will be fine as long as they do not have those sharp edges,pointy leaves. Just to break the space up.
The fins recover completely. A little movement is not bad but you need to also make sure there is some dead spots in the flow for them to rest.

Exploring gives them something to do other then go at each other. They like looking around for food or something to catch.

350L/H sounds enough for a 47L tank.

Gerhard

 

here are some pics of one of the females with little fins left, and of Rex the second and the plants... are there enough? I added a few plastic ones with the real plants...please excuse quality,took them with my phone... I checked the plants on the inside of my arm to feel for sharpness, and they are soft.

 

Maybe get som hornwort and add that too. You can plant some and let other float.

 

Betta's have also died for some unknown reason in my tanks. Last Saturday, I acquired 6 very nice females from a very wellknown, large lps here in CT, and placed them in diffrent tanks. 3 has died during this week, for no apparent reason. They were very nice blue and red, and looked very healthy.
Sometimes this just happen...

 

Sorry to hear it Gert, we have decided to set up a community tank for Dan now with smaller fish like cardinals and I will pass my glass cat fish on to him as he loves them! its heartbreaking to see him sad almost daily because another betta has been killed... this last lot (one male and 5 females) we bought last weekend left us with only one female that was doing all the damage killing all the others, even the male! so we took her back to where we bought her and are now cleaning out the tank to start all over again.

Candice