# 10 gallon NPT sorority journal



## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

Hi, everyone! It's been a while since I posted here, and I'm very bad at updating my journals, but I thought I'd post a bit about my new project, a 10 gallon sorority. I've been interested in sororities since I got my first betta, and I decided that I finally have enough experience to set up a sorority. 

So, here's the tank equipment:
-Standard 10 gallon tank
-20 watt daylight CFL in a clip-on desk lamp ($6!)
-AquaTech 5-15 filter
-25 watt Tetra heater
-Potting soil/play sand cap substrate
-Lace rock, driftwood decor

Plants: 
-Lagarosiphon madagascariensis
-Hygrophilia difformis
-Persicaria kawagoeanum
-Ludwigia aracuta x L. Repens
-Najas guadalupensis
-To be added: green rotala, red ludwigia, dwarf hairgrass, Christmas moss

Fish/inverts: 
-5-6 female bettas 
-2-3 male mutt platies (raised in my 20g community)
-1 nerite snail

I'll post pictures of the bettas in my next post.  I own two girl-bettas that I bought online, and I just brought home 3 Petco females tonight. The new ones are currently being quarantined. I'm hoping that the 2-3 week quarantine will be enough time for the plants to grow a bit for the girls.


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

Just a small update: I decided to stick the new females in QT together. I figured it would help me to get to know their personalities, and determine if any of them were extremely aggressive or anything. So far, they're doing well. I've only caught them chasing each other once - mostly, they just flare at each other a bit or ignore each other altogether. The yellow/blue marble girl - the largest of the three - seems to also be the toughest and most dominant girl of the three. The Cambodian girl, the smallest, is very skittish, and the white marble girl likes to hide in plants and ignore the yellow/blue girl. Hopefully, they'll get along well enough in the QT tank that I don't need to QT them in jars. 

Also, I caught the yellow/blue girl and the white marble girl trying to wrap last night. I'm 95% sure they're both females. Is this normal for females? :shock:


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## Bikeridinguckgirl14 (Oct 22, 2013)

Three females is a bit few for safety, I wouldn't have only three together regardless of tank size honestly.


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

It's a temporary setup with the three - I'll be putting them in with my two other females once they're out of quarantine.  I was going to get four from Petco, but these three were the only ones who didn't look sickly.


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

Ooh, I want to see this. Subbed.


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

Oh hey, Rebekah! Thanks for the sub!  How are all your fishes doing? Haven't seen you around for a few months. (Then again, I haven't posted much in a few months. lol)


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

Simon is doing great and still being a little fishy brat, Felix and the platies are now under the Rainbow Bridge, and I have a new guy (who you've seen on my journal) and a little school of tetras and a guppy in the 10g. A lot has changed! Also, my 10g looks quite different.

I actually thought a bit about a sorority, too, but I already had the tetras and guppy in the 10, and I'm still not sure I want to deal with aggression and fish girl drama.  But I'll gladly watch you try it! Haha.

I haven't posted much in the past few months either. College, you know?

I notice you've found yourself some more white opaques--a boy and a girl! Good for you  Any breeding plans in your future?


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

Aw, I'm sorry to hear about your fish. Felix was your first one, right? I haven't lost any in some time, besides a few new tetras, but I'm probably going to need to euthanize one soon, since he has a huge tumor. It sucks when they die. 

Haha...well, fingers crossed it works out! Seems OK so far...the three girls seem to have reached an unsteady understanding in QT. All three actually swam up like hungry platies to look at me today. Hopefully, the addition of the other girls won't mess it up too much. 

Similar reason for my absence, haha. Got through my first college semester with A's, so I'm feeling nice about that. Today's my last day of winter break.  

Yep, I bought them online to breed back in November.  I did breed them, but the babies had a bad velvet outbreak when they were 2 weeks old, and I lost almost all of them. The remaining ones are extremely stunted (about 1/6 the size they should be at this age) and have no fins, and I'm not sure what to do with them. I think it's from the combination of the severe velvet at such a young age and the "last-ditch" medicine combos I ended up using. I might just put them in Lucky's tank once she's in the sorority. I'll probably end up breeding the white pair again eventually, but probably not for another month or two, since I'm obviously fairly discouraged.


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## Bikeridinguckgirl14 (Oct 22, 2013)

No fins as in no fins at all? And they can still swim?


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

Well, they have very small tail fins, but that's about it. They may have pectoral fins, but it's hard to tell, considering their size and color. They can swim, but they don't swim like adult bettas (yet?).


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

Yeah, Felix was my first fish since I was like nine. The first one where I had any idea what I was doing, and cared about past the first month or so. I'm sorry about your tumor patient.  That's awful.

You're in college too? And all As! That's an accomplishment  I didn't manage that this semester, though I did reasonably well with two As, a B and a C. I hope they're treating you ok. Everyone looks at me oddly when I mention my mom is coming to pick me up and they find out I'm 17 and don't drive. In fact, I've had several people treat me with condescension because of my age :/ Being a girl in IT doesn't help either. I mean, 95% of people will treat you just fine, but you get that one idiot in 20 people... Like, for example.

I had one class last term where they had to swap out teachers in the middle of the semester because the first guy got a better job and was going for it straight away. He spent his remaining half semester telling us to do the work that was in the book, and if we had any questions he'd be at his desk playing video games. His replacement was a military veteran who started out promising until I found out he had *issues* with teaching a teenage girl. I don't know if he was just sexist or if he also didn't like me because of my age. Either way, he took every opportunity to dismiss, mock, alienate, belittle, or condescend. For example. The girliest behavior he ever saw me exhibit was knitting scarves, so he latched onto it like a magpie on a 7-year-old girl's art project. He was always asking, "Where's my scarf?" One time he asked if any of us had thought about starting a business, and I said I'd toyed with the idea. "What kind of business?" he asked, grinning. "A scarf knitting business?" And I thought, what? you think that because I own bras and nail polish, I can't make a living fixing PCs? Bullcrap. To those individuals in the class who instead owned boxer shorts and aftershave, he was perfectly friendly and reasonable.

Guess which class that C was in. Maybe I should have worn aftershave. 

I hope your girls get along well. Don't be too discouraged by your babies. I don't know of anyone who got a perfect spawn on the first try. It still sucks... but you should try again. I know the opaques are your favorites and I know you'd just love to have jars and jars full of them  Maybe your fry will develop later. You never know!

Wow. This... looking back on this, that was kind of a downer post. Here's a video of a kitten trying to make friends with a hedgehog that will make everything better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D36JUfE1oYk


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

Oh wow, that's horrible! :-( I absolutely understand why you got a C. That kind of behavior is terrible and sexist - don't let it get you down or discourage you, he's just an a**. You should let some higher-up at the school know about how he treated you. That's just unacceptable for a teacher. Ugh, that kind of thing makes me so mad. 

I don't drive yet either. Glad I'm not the only one. I don't really need to yet, since all my classes are online, and my parents have no issue taking me to work. I'm going to wait until my 18th birthday to get my license, I think. Don't pay attention to the people who treat you badly for having your parents pick you up, or for being a year younger. I know a bunch of people, including my siblings, who didn't drive until well into college. And it's a good thing to go to college early!

Having the first (or first-in-a-while) of any species of pet that you own die seems to be the worst. I think that you always have a special bond with the first, maybe because you learn the most from them. 

I think hrutan (shoutout to hrutan) got a great one on the first try. Other than that, yeah, I can think of a bunch of people who had very little luck the first time. I did learn that spots on tiny fry are nothing to take lightly. I think I'll just add copper to the water as a velvet preventative the next time I breed. People are not kidding when they say it wipes out spawns fast. Thanks for the encouragement. 

Also, that video was adorable. :-D


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

Hey, at least I only had to deal with him for 8 weeks. I've had worse teachers, and I have a TON of funny stories about them. Bad teachers are a pain to deal with while you have them, but in hindsight they're kind of hilarious. I still think my old Newspaper Lab teacher could have benefited from psychiatric help. At least she brought us Hardee's and donuts in between cramming her face with Tater Tots while telling us that food was forbidden in class. XD

Hrutan is the exception because hrutan is magical.  But isn't copper kind of bad for fish overall?

How are the girls?


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

I don't really have any funny teacher stories. Best one I had is an English teacher who made a lot more hilarious typos than you would expect. lol. Also, that reminds me of something that happened in our old church. I was holding a hot latte, and I asked an usher, "can I bring this inside?" And she answered, "well, food and drinks are strictly forbidden, but I bring mine in all the time." And she gestured for me to walk in in a hurry. :lol:

The girls are doing great! Their interactions are mostly peaceful now. Innocence's (the white marble's) colors are brightening, Garnet's (the Cambodian one's) ammonia burns are healing, and Chroma (the yellow/blue marble) has firmly secured the "top betta" title. I got a new girl at Petco today - a little royal blue VT girl. I decided to name her Tethys (TEH-this), which is the name of a Greek goddess. 

Here are some photos! I was going to get a photo of the 10g too, but it got really cloudy from some gravel I added, so those pics will have to wait. I added two platies a couple days ago, and they're doing OK, despite the slightly elevated nitrite levels. 

Here's the newest girl, Tethys. She's still a bit stressed and pale.











And here's Chroma. I think she's definitely going to color up a whole lot. She only had a few blue scales when I got her. Also, she HATES being in a cup. She was attacking the plastic the whole time. 










Here's Garnet, the smallest and most adorable of the girls.










This is Innocence. Hard to tell here, but her whole tail has turned red and light blue in the last two days. I think she'll color up quite a bit as well.










And here's my gorgeous little opaque girl, Virtue. Don't tell the others, but she's my favorite. She's huge and bulky compared to the other girls.










This is an old picture of Lucky. Her fins are a lot longer now, and her color is much richer. But she's very afraid of cameras.


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

They're gorgeous!


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

They all look so cute. I'm sure it will be fun to see them all together.


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

Well, some interesting things have happened in the sorority in the last few days.

First, I got new plants!  I got two huge bunches of red myrio (all of mine melted, for whatever reason) and some sort of red rotala. I also got a big pot of dwarf baby tears, which look gorgeous, so I'm hoping they don't melt. (Also, if anyone here lives in the Denver/Boulder CO area, Aqua Imports in Boulder is top notch. Healthy fish, gorgeous plants, very reasonable prices for a LFS. And the employees all really "know their stuff.")

Anyway, I had three heaters and a filter in my various tanks either crack or malfunction in the past 48 hours, for completely unrelated reasons, and I couldn't replace them all at once. I needed to combine at least two tanks. So, I decided to take the girls out of QT a few days early and put all the females together in the 10g.

Here's where the first issue popped up (well, unless you count the heaters). I looked closely at all of them to make sure they were healthy and active before I put them in. When I flared Lucky, I noticed his little beard. And his sudden lack of an "eggspot." Oh. He's just a male plakat.

Then I put the remaining five in the 10g. Everything seemed good at first. The four girls from Petco had already worked out the pecking order in QT, and considering Virtue's flighty personality, I thought she'd fit into it right under Chroma. Wrong. Turns out she's THE FISH FROM HECK with anything besides a male mate. She spent about 6 hours high-speed chasing everyone with her mouth open and tearing everyone's fins, including the three juvenile platies. By the end, the platies and other bettas were literally huddled in a corner. 

It could be the fact that I bred Virtue once, or it could be that she's lived alone most of her life, or she could just be abnormally aggressive. After I watched her bite off a good hunk of Innocence's tail, though, I put her in a floating cup. I'm going to give her a "time out" in the cup for a few days so that, hopefully, she can get used to her tankmates. I'll give her one more chance in a few days. If she doesn't change, she'll spend the rest of her days in solitary confinement in a 2.5g desktop tank. And I'll just have to get two more girls from Petco, I suppose.

Despite all that, the remaining girls and platies are doing great. No aggression between them, just a bit of light flaring. All the fishes are looking gorgeous and vibrant.


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

At some point during the night, Virtue broke out of her "cup of shame" (which involved breaking off a lid and flooding the cup somehow, FYI) and introduced herself back into the sorority. Kind of had a moment of panic when all I saw in the tank was Virtue and one platy. :shock:

Everyone's fine, though. I think the time out helped a bit. She's still chasing everyone, but there's no fin tearing, and she even just goes around and does betta things like the other girls. I guess my new plan is to keep a very close eye on them for a few days so that she doesn't act up again. Hopefully, they'll work out a solid pecking order, and Virtue will calm down. I'm also going to pick up one new betta from Petco. Hopefully Virtue is OK with my plans this time. :shock:

On a side note, Innocence and Tethys have become best friends. They always "school" together, sometimes accompanied by the smallest platy.


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

More odd happenings in the sorority. First, on a semi-related side note, I had to put down Mr Gold (my male with a tumor) today. I did a fish autopsy afterwards, and the tumor was everywhere...his swim bladder and intestines were completely crushed, which explains his swimming difficulties. :-( 

Virtue was just not working out in the sorority. She was chasing the platies and Innocence relentlessly. As pretty as she was in there, I didn't want anyone else to get hurt or sick because of all the chasing. So, she's back to solitary confinement. I think I'll put her in a divided tank.

Also, I accidentally siphoned Tethys. :shock: She's so little and slender that she fit in the tubing I use for water changes. I've never had a betta come close to fitting in there, so I wasn't expecting it. I got her out fast, but she got a bunch of scales scraped off her back. Besides the fact that she's very stressed, she seems OK. I have her floating in a cup with some Prime, Stress Coat, and 1/2 tsp/gal of salt. Hopefully, she'll be able to go back in within a couple days.

I also got a new, feisty little red and orange girl at Petco.  I think I'll name her Amaryllis.


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## KitDewStein (Jan 20, 2015)

Subscribing 

Beautiful females you have there. Sorry about Mr. Gold  and I hope Tethys does well.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

I don't mean to be a party pooper but are you sure Chroma and Lucky are girls? They look suspiciously like males to me :-/


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## Bettabubble3 (Aug 17, 2009)

I'm sorry but when you said you siphoned one of your girls I actually started to laugh. Not about her discomfort but because of how little she is. Hope everything works out!


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

Yeah, Lucky is definitely male. I realized it when I was flaring him before putting him in.  I'm 90% sure that Chroma is female. She has an eggspot, a lack of a beard, and that rounded shape the older females get. She does have long VT finnage for a girl, but I don't think it looks like a male's. I can get a better photo if you'd like. (Probably will anyway, since I'm a bit worried now. ) 

Thanks for the subscriptions. Don't worry, I thought the whole thing with Tethys was hilarious too...after I got her out of the tube, at least! It doesn't help that, as soon as she broke free from the tube, she landed in an empty bucket. So, I had to catch a tiny, flopping betta with my bare hands. :shock:


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

MameJenny said:


> More odd happenings in the sorority. First, on a semi-related side note, I had to put down Mr Gold (my male with a tumor) today. I did a fish autopsy afterwards, and the tumor was everywhere...his swim bladder and intestines were completely crushed, which explains his swimming difficulties. :-(
> 
> Virtue was just not working out in the sorority. She was chasing the platies and Innocence relentlessly. As pretty as she was in there, I didn't want anyone else to get hurt or sick because of all the chasing. So, she's back to solitary confinement. I think I'll put her in a divided tank.
> 
> ...


Awwwh, that's too bad about Mr. Gold. At least you know your decision to euthanize was definitely right.

Yeah... in my very limited experience, it's not the flashiest or most attention-seeking bettas that are the most aggressive, but the... uh... horniest. Like, you get a guy who's a master bubble-nester, and you try to put him in with the most innocuous of tankmates, and he goes bananas like he thinks they're gonna take away his nonexistent females. (Hide yo fish, hide yo wife?) My current community boy is easily most aggressive when he's "defending" a bubble nest.

Whoops! Poor Tethys. XD

Amaryllis sounds really pretty! And that's an awesome name. Pictures?


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