# Silly Things You've Heard About Bettas



## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

What are some silly things you've heard about bettas. So this counts as a community rant thread. For me it's these things
1 on the petsmart website they said male bettas only need one gallon and... get this: female bettas need 1 liter. Really? I'd like them to be in bigger containers.
2. The mispronunciation of betta where they say beta.

Share your experience here!


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

I think the silliest thing I have heard was that bettas are special because they can be kept without a filter. Uhhhhh, any fish can live without a filter if you do 2-3 water changes a week....


I knowingly mispronounce betta.


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

jaysee said:


> I think the silliest thing I have heard was that bettas are special because they can be kept without a filter. Uhhhhh, any fish can live without a filter if you do 2-3 water changes a week....
> 
> 
> I knowingly mispronounce betta.


Maybe they meant that bettas don't need any water aeration/movement? They are sort of "special" in that regard. (I'd never keep one that way, though.)

I mispronounce betta as beta too. Everyone I know pronounces it that way. Bet-uh just sounds wrong. 

I've heard that they'll eat their own waste, that you can keep them in milk jugs, that a 6 inch container is fine for 2 males, and that a female will kill everything she touches. :roll:


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## VivianKJean (Aug 20, 2013)

I've been told that bettas can live in cleaned out alcohol bottles for years without water changes.

My first question always is how did they get the fish in there?


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## charliegill110 (May 19, 2014)

i knowingly mispronounce betta as beta. 

but i was recently told bettas will die if kept in anything larger than a small container.


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

I have one in a 125 gallon tank


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## ZeesTyphoon (Jan 3, 2014)

That because they live in mud puddles and even sometimes sewers and drainage systems in the wild, it's okay to keep them in small containers and never change the water. ...Wut?

Or people say you have to keep them in small containers because they "don't like big areas." I always say, "No, they don't like OPEN areas" And the reply is most often "Whats the difference?"


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Just the other day I was scolded by a silly pet shop employee because I was keeping my betta in a 5 gallon, apparently it was 'too big' and he would 'die from stress' lol you should of seen her face when I told her I was upgrading to a 7 gallon! Because apparently they should be kept in no bigger than a gallon as they live in puddles in the wild... What rubbish lol!!! I tried to tell her that they live in rice paddies, you should have seen her face! She was obviously embarrassed about being 'educated' by a customer half her age! :-D


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

I know. Some one said they were going to fight bettas and I wanted to go: Ok get a maleand a female, Feed the male bloodworms, Heat the water to 80 degrees, Let the female plump up and show vertical bars, make sure the water is half full and there is a small silk plant, let the male see a female and let the water foam up, release the female fora few hours then take her out, give the full tank to me. Make sure the water is in it and half full. LOL, you didn't fight bettas you bred them, Ha Ha Ha!


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## Pippin (Apr 11, 2014)

I thought the silliest thing was when someone was keeping a betta I a vase in a kitchen and was saying that he was spoiled. Actually she did change the water a lot, and the water was at 80 degrees, so it wasn't so bad. And betta can be pronounced. Bay-tah or Bet- tuh. Both are correct.


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

Both may be accepted (accepted doesn't necessarily mean correct) but betta and beta are are like latter and later, supper and super, galla and gala, dinner and diner, and countless other examples. The double consonant makes the preceding vowel soft, while the single consonant makes the vowel hard.


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## MistersMom (Aug 9, 2011)

I say Bay-tuh but im from Oklahoma, you know where dem red-necks be commin from uh-huh. haha, im aloud to mispronounce things. and i remember someone once told me that a betta only needs fed once a week to be happy, any more and it'll pop.  And i hate petshop workers they always lie! they are beyond ignorant. one lady was talking about how she put neon fish and mollies etc.with all her bettas, and another 2 people were talking about how she had a betta (these are worker) and named it bubbles, and the 'god fish' died the night before when she took it home so she got another one that day, i went and saw it and it was so pretty, bless the poor thing..


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## givemethatfish (Feb 10, 2014)

I don't know how many people I've heard in pet shops saying they were buying bettas as a gift for a child because they can be kept in dirtier water than other fish can. Basically, knowing the kid isn't going to keep up with the maintenance and seemed ok with that. My 3 year old has 2 bettas of her own, and she helps very much with all the maintenance for them but at the end of the day they are MY responsibility.


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## Pippin (Apr 11, 2014)

I know that accepted doesn't always been correct, (but I'm not quite sure why I needed a spelling lesson. ) I just read in one of my many betta books that it was correct either way, just that Betta is more commonly used because beta is also used with computers. 

New silly/ ridiculous thing. I was looked at old threads, and I found this.


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

It's pronunciation, not spelling that we were discussing, though the crux of my position is that spelling impacts pronunciation. And it's a discussion so don't take it personally. I was merely providing examples supporting why I don't believe both are correct. Thank you for explaining why you believe both are correct.


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## MistersMom (Aug 9, 2011)

so how should it be pronounced? Bay-tuh or beh-tuh


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## VivianKJean (Aug 20, 2013)

givemethatfish said:


> I don't know how many people I've heard in pet shops saying they were buying bettas as a gift for a child because they can be kept in dirtier water than other fish can. Basically, knowing the kid isn't going to keep up with the maintenance and seemed ok with that. My 3 year old has 2 bettas of her own, and she helps very much with all the maintenance for them but at the end of the day they are MY responsibility.


I'v heard this as well. My parents bought me bettas when I was around 5 or 6. My parents did a similar thing you are going with your 3 year old. My fish were their responsibility (besides feeding, I had to feed them) but they also made me help out with water changes and such so I learned that fish are fun pets but they do require some work.


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

MistersMom said:


> so how should it be pronounced? Bay-tuh or beh-tuh


Betta - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Betta | Define Betta at Dictionary.com

betta - definition of betta by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

Betta dictionary definition | betta defined

betta: Definition from Answers.com

Betta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seems pretty unanimous. In my opinion there is no higher authority on the spelling and pronunciation of words than dictionaries. It's their business


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## MistersMom (Aug 9, 2011)

I prefer Bay-tuh than beh-tuh


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

MistersMom said:


> I prefer Bay-tuh than beh-tuh



Me too, and I'll continue to say it that way.


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## LittleBettaFish (Oct 2, 2010)

Lol Bay-tuh sounds so American to me for some reason. They get called Siamese Fighting Fish here by most people, otherwise everyone I've spoken to refers to them as 'Bet-tuh'. 

Usually the silliest thing I hear is that bettas are not really tropical fish and don't require warm water. Generally the people telling me this have the sickest looking fish in dirty bowls where I'm sure during the colder months the temperature must plummet. I left a heater unplugged overnight the other day and because our house was 11 degrees celsius, the temperature dropped below 20 and the fish were so lethargic.


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

LittleBettaFish said:


> Lol Bay-tuh sounds so American to me for some reason.



Hahaha that's why I will still say it that way


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

You know, this brings up an interesting linguistic point.

(Warning: I'm about to go off on a nerd infodump.)

Language wasn't nearly so rigid before writing became a widespread thing. When most people didn't know how to write, there wasn't really "proper" and "improper," although there might be high- and low-class dialects, and language would change depending on the habits of the speakers.

So, by extension, if everyone starts saying "Bay-tuh," it'll become "proper," and that'll be just part of the natural change of language. And, at some point, the dictionaries will come to reflect that. Dictionaries don't dictate language; they report it. They're merely a reflection of the creation of a society.

Of course, there's something to be said for conforming to syntactical standards of speech and writing. It makes you sound polished, professional, and well-educated. But sometimes, if a way of speaking is easier or sounds more pleasant or less stilted, yet is still understandable, there's no reason not to use it.

That's why I use "they" as a singular, neutral-sex pronoun (instead of long constructs like "he/she") if I'm not writing, say, a research paper, and I sometimes end sentences in prepositions or start them with conjunctions. I know how to write around these "mistakes," but that sounds stilted and unnecessary, and in my opinion, the practice doesn't need to be preserved. Any grammar book I could find would say I'm wrong, but that doesn't matter. Language serves one purpose only: communication. As long as a sentence does that efficiently, it's proper enough.

Yes, this means chatspeak is effectively a language--or at least a dialect of English. Except it isn't a very good one, because communication in chatspeak is... spotty at best.

Anyway, I'm not really trying to make a point either way--and I'm certainly not trying to say that anyone who's posted is wrong--but considering the nature of the discussion, I thought you might find this interesting.

And considering the nature of this thing I just wrote, it's time for me to go to bed. I've noticed that when I'm on the Internet late at night, I tend to start sounding like a professor or something, and these past... like, six paragraphs... have been spewed straight from my Latin class last year.

(I may also be wrong on any of these points. Like I said, it's 11:00 at night, and I'm a very tired sixteen-year-old on the Internet, so feel free to ignore me completely. I'm going to bed.)


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

That was well thought out and written, tired or not.


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

Yup! Very very well thought out. I pronounce it bet-ah because it is the way the people in the original country that had bettas said it. Also saying it bay-tah is saying the second letter of the greek alphabet. New silly thing: 
I saw this ad for a fish tank that you just pour water in and the dirty water comes out.
Here's the thing:
1: It is really small so they can't really keep anything in it
2: You can't heat it
3: They said nothing about conditioning water
4: These people can just get a siphon and clean their tanks for less than that. 
It's still a good concept but too small for any thing. If they make it 2.5 gallons maybe it would be better. Also goldfish need to be kept in 20 gallons for one fish and 10 gallons for each next gold fish so you can't keep two as it said in the ad. Really, they only care about making money, not about the fish because, (The silliest thing of all times) all fish don't have feelings. Bettas are different, because they are fish with personalities.


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## BlueLacee (Dec 8, 2013)

Pippin said:


> I know that accepted doesn't always been correct, (but I'm not quite sure why I needed a spelling lesson. ) I just read in one of my many betta books that it was correct either way, just that Betta is more commonly used because beta is also used with computers.
> 
> New silly/ ridiculous thing. I was looked at old threads, and I found this.


OMG, this is terrible and awsome at the same time. Slap down


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## aselvarial (Feb 21, 2014)

My husband is from NY, I am from Georgia. We have discussions on the "proper pronunciation" of things ALL the freaking time. I say Bay-tuh, simply because it makes me think of wolves and the "pecking order" of the house. Which I will say, the bettas are now directly under my 4 year old, but above the cat and dog. 

I had a pet store employee tell me that bettas were happiest in little tanks. I told him I'd be sure to tell my 4 that have 10 gallons each that they weren't happy fish and I needed to downgrade them right now! He gave me a look like "stepping slowly away from the crazy lady". 

That said, I've had a couple of extremely helpful pet store employees that helped me get 2 of the tanks I have for my boys, as well as some fake plants before I planted it. Ironically at the SAME STORE as the bad advice I got about bettas only liking tiny tanks.


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## TheAnimaLover (Jun 8, 2014)

that bettas can be left in a bowl with goldfish


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