# Suggestions for a 10 gal



## Zoni (Sep 23, 2010)

I have a 10 gallon tank with 3 live plants, gravel, a log, and a column.
My betta for some reason he doesn't attack his own reflection and he never really attacks anything... :question:


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## The Fighter (Sep 19, 2010)

just asking does he lie down on his side i dont mean his body being vertical
cause if he does he might have a swim bladder problem 
thats what my old betta had R.I.P Saphy


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## The Fighter (Sep 19, 2010)

My old betta wouldnt fight any thing when i put a mirror he would open his gills but wouldnt move also when i got my tetras he wouldnt do any thing 
But my current one every morning after his breakfast chases my tetras


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## carpenter547 (Sep 18, 2010)

by attacks his reflection do you mean with a mirror or just that he doesn't flare at his ghostly image inside the aquarium?


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## Zoni (Sep 23, 2010)

No and I introduced two platties and he didn't do anything.


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## carpenter547 (Sep 18, 2010)

no what?

they will get used to thier reflection and stop flaring at it unless it is a mirror. 

if your betta is just sitting there then he is not happy check the water quality.
sounds like there is something wrong with your tank and if you don't fix it your fish will suffer and die. 

njoy.


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## Zoni (Sep 23, 2010)

thanks


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## JKfish (Apr 8, 2010)

Some bettas don't flare. It's not like every single one is going to go from calm happy fish to raving mad rabid thing at the sight of his reflection. You might have a chill fish, which is pretty common. so long has he is healthy, moving, not lethargic, eating well, pooping well, in a heated tank (76-80* F), and ammonia isn't building up too quickly, and the tank filter (if it has one) isn't too strong, he should be fine. If you think he is sick, then you might want to look around the betta disease& emergency part of this forum for people who have sick fish similar in symptoms to your fish, and see what people have to say, or you could make your own thread.

The Fighter: I don't mean to offend, but I see you referring to your fish as fighters, do you just mean Siamese fighting fish, or that you actually fight them?


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## carpenter547 (Sep 18, 2010)

sorry if i sounded harsh of if i sounded like "that" guy but the truth is.

90% of these fish are breed shipped sold and maintained improperly.

if your fish is cold he is lethargic
if your fish is in amonia he is lethargic
if your fish is in nitrIte he is lethargic
if your fish is in acidic water heis lethargic.

all of those come from improper keeping of the fish. lethargy ingeneral is a symptom of poor keeping. 

"so this guy walks in to the doctor and says it hurts here and here and here every time i push on those spots.
the doctor looks at the idiot and says ..... of couse it hurts every where you touch your finger is broken."

this illistrates the simplest anser is prolly correct.

we have a message here no water parameters given. no indication of even testing for proper water conditions with only one very general symptom given.

so the simplest anser is ...
your not testing prolly over feeding most likely small unheated bowel and are killing your fish.

true every so often you get a chillaxed betta that won't attack anything *in my opinion they should all be breed en mass when occuring* but that is the exception rather than the rule and if you think you are special enough that you have that one then you prolly think you are special enough to be able to keep your betta at 72 degrees and feed him as much as YOU want and not even need a filter.


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## carpenter547 (Sep 18, 2010)

ps this is why you don't see me posting in the betta emergency sickness section.


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## JKfish (Apr 8, 2010)

Zoni: I'd like the following info please of your tank

temperature
amount of water changes:
and if possible, water parameters (ammonia, nitrItes, nitrAtes):

Also, if you're looking for tank mates, I'd advise against it. Typically how well your betta gets along with your other tank mates depends on his temperament. If you want other fish tankmates, have another tank for either your betta or the fish ready in storage, just in case. If you decide snails or shrimps, note your betta could eat the shrimps and bully the snail. Snails need hard water, so if you decide to keep one, in the long run, you'll want hard water for a healthy long lived snail. Of all the possible tank mates, I'd advise one or two ghost shrimps, another betta (IF YOUR TANK IS DIVIDED), or if you really want to take a risk, gentle community fish. But, wait until you figure out what is possibly wrong with your betta and or tank before putting any in.

Carpenter: Really now? Acidic water makes your fish lethargic?! Oh MY Gosh!! <-(*sarcasm*) Bettas naturally need slightly acidic water, and they adapt to the PH of the water. While they have needs, they are pretty hardy when it comes to adapting to ph. Don't make assumptions, Zoni just said he was in a ten gallon by himself. Even if it isn't filtered or cycled, she could get away with maybe one 50% change every week and a half or so (which would be slightly overkill), plus she has live plants in there too. The only thing we don't know would the if it is heated, if the tank is cycled and filtered, and such, so saying "


> your not testing prolly over feeding most likely small unheated bowel and are killing your fish.


" Please, learn to read the info the poster posts, and even then, try to post politely, and try not to double post when possible, seeing as your posts allow you to edit what you say up to 30 minutes after you post it


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## codenamezebra (Sep 26, 2010)

i currently have a 2.5 g tank with a bubble thing in it and one betta - i am moving him into a 10 gal tank and want to know what type of plants, substrate(gravel?), and tank mates would be reccomended. i had ghost shrimp but they climb out? any info would be great - i am also new to this site... so hi!


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## JKfish (Apr 8, 2010)

CodenameZebra: Hey. Gravel is great, any gravel at all. Ghost shrimps are awesome. They don't climb out, but if they go missing, there is a very good chance your betta ate them as a midnight snack. Snails are alright if you have hard water, but they are messy. Other fish tank mates are alright, but sometimes they can stress your betta, or he can kill them (I've had both happen to me ). Personally, I don't advise fishey friends with your betta, seeing as bettas are solitary and prefer to live alone. Plants: Anubias, java fern, java moss. All of those are slow and easy growing and don't need to be planted, and don't require much light. Make sure your tank has a heater, and you will want to look into cycling if you don't know about it already ( http://www.fishlore.com/NitrogenCycle.htm)


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## carpenter547 (Sep 18, 2010)

JKfish said:


> Carpenter: Really now? Acidic water makes your fish lethargic?! Oh MY Gosh!! <-(*sarcasm*) Bettas naturally need slightly acidic water, and they adapt to the PH of the water. While they have needs, they are pretty hardy when it comes to adapting to ph. Don't make assumptions, Zoni just said he was in a ten gallon by himself. Even if it isn't filtered or cycled, she could get away with maybe one 50% change every week and a half or so (which would be slightly overkill), plus she has live plants in there too. The only thing we don't know would the if it is heated, if the tank is cycled and filtered, and such, so saying "" Please, learn to read the info the poster posts, and even then, try to post politely, and try not to double post when possible, seeing as your posts allow you to edit what you say up to 30 minutes after you post it


look i said prolly as in probably and don't quote me unless you quote the whole thing as a matter of courtesy.
i post relevant information per post. double posting is repeating your self with the same message.
yes acidic water is normal for bettas and a very easy condition to control however too acidic or too alkiline are both bad and lead to stressed fish.
as far as scale what is large and what is small; that is a relative measurement.
for example walk in to apond and you will consider it deep some where between a depth of your knees to your hips however to most fish this is the shallows. 
any thing less than 30 gallons is a "small tank" to the fish as most of them are used to open wild water ways.
bettas are a bit of a skew on this since thier opinion of deep is more inline with our opinion of deep however they roam and claim rather large area's as thier terrirory definetly more than 20 x 12 inches.

so when i say he/she is prolly keeping the betta in a small tank with out doing water tests with no heater and killing the fish.

i am basing this on the following facts:
10 gallons is a small tank *not too small for a betta but still small*
there is no mention of any checking of the water conditions *may be being done but no mention of it*
no mention of any heater *may be there but not supplied*
only mentioning planted tank *no info on how they are doing dying and dead plants foul water*
no mention on what kind or how much food is being fed.
no mention on water temperature.

so adding all of those up we can logically assume there is a failure in fish keeping practices.

I have a 10 gallon tank with 3 live plants, gravel, a log, and a column.
My betta for some reason he doesn't attack his own reflection and he never really attacks anything... :question:

really 2 lines no info just a question is not a proper way to ask for help not being a male genital here or a rear oriface just stating facts.

if i or you walked into a doctor and said "i have a spot what's wrong" the doctor would need more information.

so before getting pissy with me about my responce and insulting my intellegents by stating that i am too lazy or stupid to read 2 lines of nothing and trying to make me look bad you should stop and look at the situation.

and there is a differnce between tact and politeness.
poor tact "your killing your fish"
better tact "it appears that your fish is unhealthy based on the information you have provided and mabey you should fix your fishes enviroment for it's health and your enjoyment of it"
poor maners would be "your an idiot who is killing your fish and are too dumb to fix it"
polite would be "my fish is acting abnormal from when i brought him home his tank is properly cycled my plants are healthy my amonia is blah my nitrItes are blah my nitrAtes are blah his temperature is 78- 82 degrees i have been changing the water as soon as the nitAtes reach 20 - 40 ppm but my betta is just loafing around not swimming etc."

but that wasn't the case all we got was
I have a 10 gallon tank with 3 live plants, gravel, a log, and a column.
My betta for some reason he doesn't attack his own reflection and he never really attacks anything... :question:

and then no follow up info when requested.

the truth is yet to be determined however as stated before by me 90% of these fish are kept improper and then the owners dump pointless requests into forums on how to fix a fish that they are killing and as stated by me that is why i don't post in the sick fish forum which is where this post should have been posted in the first place.
which you should know since your advising me on nettiquet.


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## codenamezebra (Sep 26, 2010)

thanks jk fish !! any more suggestions on starting my 10 gal tank from anyone?


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## Zoni (Sep 23, 2010)

I have a ten gallon 78 degree tank 
about a fourth of a water change ever 2-3 weeks with 3 live plants


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## carpenter547 (Sep 18, 2010)

ahh see now we get more information  thanks

is this chillness a new attitude or has he always been a chilled out type of betta.

and please note i do apologize for assuming the normal of you.

with a 2 and 1 half gallon water change every 2-3 weeks most of your water quality concerns are prolly met unless you feed your fish like old mac donnalds pigs 

if your heater is adjustable try raising the temperature up to 82 for a while and see if a speed up metabolisim will goad him into more action. if not and if his colors are good fins are good and he is eating well then don't worry he is just calm.
go find some one with a lady betta and breed him we need more like it.


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## JKfish (Apr 8, 2010)

Carpenter: Wow, see, don't expect everyone to be newbie owners. If they're on this site, you can pretty much assume they know heaters are necessary, and so on and so forth. If they give enough of a damn to join this site to learn how to care for their bettas, then heck, if they haven't already, there's a good chance they are getting the stuff together to keep their fish happy and healthy for all 5-7 years of his or her life. Also, I was quoting what was relevant. Quoting everything is tiring for people to read, and if they did want to, it's all of a post or two before mine. I like to think the best of people, and assume they are bright enough to realize that the rest of the info is literally at their fingertips.

Zoni: Please don't raise your temperature above 80* F, seeing as too hot will stress your fish.

Carpenter: Alright, I don't see how you could suggest that she


> go find some one with a lady betta and breed him we need more like it.


 that is irresponsible, and crazy. The world doesn't need 50-100 more bettas rotting in cups waiting to be bought at some LFS because the owner of their parents decided to make them, but couldn't find them desireable homes because they are "mutts". Breeding is a huge responsibility, seeing as one is bringing LIFE into this world, and with betta fish, it is hard to do and shouldn't be attempted without a lot of research and caution. Fish DIE in the process of mating frequently when people just decide to throw two fish together. It is expensive, and tedious, and if you manage to keep the fry enough, finding homes would be horrible.

Zoni: Don't attempt to breed. It's not smart. Look around the breeding section and you'll get a taste of how much work and cost it would take. Petstore bettas are well past their prime, and often have unknown genetics that could possibly result in sickly and unhealthy fry.


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## carpenter547 (Sep 18, 2010)

i can tell people with calm bettas to breed them with a clear consience. sorry but the trait for calmness if it can be passed on is more important to me and i would assume some other owners than exact shape or lenght of fins or depth of color.

i have posted on other forums the gravity of the issue of breeding however i still believe and maintain that inborn temperment is more important than what was valued so far.

now as far as what to do with the fry that is up to the breeder. assuming some one is interested in breeding and reads how to do it successfully they should already have a plan as to what to do with the fry. kinda like assuming some one on here is smart enough to understand the need for a heater. assuming the best on this one instead of the norm.

and 82 degrees is a perfectly fine temperature for short to medium lenghts of time. 

further more people need to get on the same page about the conditions of the bettas in the stores. either they are passable or they are trash. if they are passable and present a feature that is of benifit to the speices they should be bred if they are trash then they should not be bought and people like you should breed a superior stock to sell to people in place of the trash from the store.


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## JKfish (Apr 8, 2010)

The reason why they are "trash" is because the people who breed them in asia are only breeding those fish for as many different colors as possible. Don't tell me when you were little and you looked at bettas, you weren't awed by how colorful they were. Petstore betta's aren't really trash, they just aren't high quality. They make nice pets, but are definately not breeding stock.

Plus, if you bred for calm temperment, eventually bettas would lose their colorful fins. The colors are used as a way to display, so if they were calm, they wouldn't be so colorful. They wouldn't flare, or be feisty and charming. They'd be no differnt than guppies. Look at wild bettas. They've got some color, but are pretty drab. They are calm, and can live together. Do you really want to revert our adorable siamese FIGHTER fish to their wild calm selves agian? Granted, it'd probably take just as long to get them to there as it did to get them to be fighters (aka hundreds of years) but you are pretty much saying you'd like them similar to their wild cousins. Sure, calm bettas are nice (Simba was the calmest, gentlest betta in the world), but when they don't flare, and rarely show you the full span of their glorious finnage, what's the point of the halfmoons, crowntails, deltas, etc?

Zoni: I apologize for Carpenter's and my hijacking of this thread. I will no longer be posting irrevelant info.

Carpenter: If you want to continue this nice debate, we can do so on a new thread or via PMs as to try and keep this thread on topic.


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## codenamezebra (Sep 26, 2010)

so i guess no one else has any other tips or suggestions for my new 10 gal tank- thanks again jkfish


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## The Fighter (Sep 19, 2010)

by fighters i mean siamese fighting fish 
dont worry im not offended


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