General Discussion

Just bought a female betta from PetSmart yesterday. Yes, I know, I should have bought her from a real fish store. But I have anxiety and I’ve never been in a real fish store. *cough* Anyway, she’s in a 5.5 gal (~20.8 L) tank. It has a slow-moving filter, a black sand bottom, with two silk plants and a rock hidey-hole. I thoroughly rinsed everything. It also has a heater, but even though it said it was for up to 5 gallon betta tanks, it doesn’t seem to be doing all that much. The thermometer reads as 72-73° F (~22-23° C), which I know is below what it should be. The pH strip says it’s at 7.0, and the ammonia reader is of course at 0 since it’s a new tank. The water has been aptly conditioned and I put in a pH stabiliser yesterday (which brought it from 7.4 to 7.0). I also have some aquarium salt for freshwater on hand, but I forgot to put it in during setup so it’s not in the tank. Also not in the tank is a bacteria starter. I’m feeding her a mix of dry daphnia and mysis, which I soak in water for a few minutes before feeding her. She’s not eating all of it, but she is eating. She also doesn’t seem to be sick other than mild stress stripes, which she of course gained while sitting in that dumb cup in the store. I haven’t owned a fish in a long while, and so I did all the research I could and took the advice of a good friend who has a lot of fish experience. Pictures (I know they’re not great but I don’t own anything with a good camera): [img]https://i.imgur.com/83inVPR.jpg[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/5YmY5ah.jpg[/img] EDIT: I have not named her yet, as I wanted to wait a day or two to make sure she survived the move. If you’d like to suggest a name idea, feel free! I also plan on adding more decorations in the future.

Welcome back to the highly addictive world of fishkeeping! You might want to join up at the hub for it over here.

I personally have 3 betta fish, and a female who looks a lot like yours! They're wonderful fish to have- friendly and intelligent.

Did you cycle your tank beforehand?

@Aralia No, I did not. Will that screw something up? Also, thanks for the link!

Aw she looks adorable! I remember having a few betta fish when I was little, I think one of them was male and it tried to attract a female once by expanding it's gills or something and it terrified me as a kid. (wait I just read they do that when they're scared or something but it was alone in the corner of the tank and it sat there and then it just did that)

[quote name="RabidWhovian" date="2019-02-24 08[url]http://[/url]:08:58" ] @ Aralia No, I did not. Will that screw something up? Also, thanks for the link! [/quote] Cycling the tank establishes a bacterial colony which helps detox fish poo- it's one of the essential's in aquarium keeping- it helps keep ammonia down a lot. You're probably going to have to do a fish-in cycle (it'll happen anyways eventually without interference, but that can be kinda risky). Here's a couple of links I found on how to do that: [url=https://fishlab.com/fish-in-cycle/]fishlab[/url] [url=http://www.kevinbush.com/cycling/the-fish-in-cycle/]random aquarium blog[/url] [url=http://petfishclub.com/cycle-with-fish-in-cycle/]petfishclub[/url] You can totally do it, and it should be totally fine if you're diligent enough about doing water changes and monitoring ammonia levels, but it's definitely a good thing to read up on! If you have any questions, I'd ask on the aquarium hub- they've got a lot of experts (I'm insanely jealous of a lot of their tanks, anyways) Have fun with your new fish!