Lady Nests

My ladies put all of my boys combined to shame when it comes to bubble nests apparently.  I do believe Rutela is the primary culprit, though Lulu may well have a hand in making them.

Betta Fanatics of dA - A DeviantArt Community

I've been brought in to try and bring a new group on deviantArt to life:
Betta Fanatics of dA!


It's brand new and we're looking for new members.  If you're on dA and enjoy betta fish, come join us and help build a new community!

Rutela's Gender: Solved!

With much relief, I can now safely assume Rutela is definitely a she.  I decided to put her in with Japas, one of my male halfmoons, to see if I could get her sporting some breeding bars.  Mission accomplished!


I decided to exploit this experiment for a little youtube video.  Enjoy if you please. :)

Edit: I'd like to mention that Japas is a relatively new fish for me.  He came about a week ago and had a snack on his fins during shipping.  He is a completely healthy halfmoon and his fins are growing back. :)

June Feature Fish: Mikau

I totally feel like a heel writing so much in just two days.
Oh well, if even one person manages to find something interesting or informative, it was worth the while!  So here goes.  Every month I'll feature a different fishy until I run out of fish.  Then I'll come up with a new idea.

Mikau was my first male fish from Aquabid.com and he is quite possibly my most beautiful fish.  His listing described him as a green dragon halfmoon though I've come to learn that in Thailand they consider teal or light blue green.  He is named after a character in Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, a zora who dies and is reincarnated into a mask that Link (the main character) can wear to turn into a Zora.  I chose this name because Mikau is in love with Lulu, a female zora who I named my green dragon girl after who I wanted to one day spawn with Mikau. He gets to be my first feature fish for June because he's gorgeous and he's so photogenic! :P 


When he arrived, he wasn't in tip top shape.  His fin colors were faded and he had a circular scar on his left side.  Once he got acclimated to his new home, though, his colors perked right up and I'm just hoping his scales will grow back.

Thank you for the log, mommy!

He swims a bit differently from the rest of my fish.  He has so much fin that he has to shake and wobble, kind of like a goldfish does.  Rosetails like Mikau often have this trouble.  That's why I chose to go for a floating log for him instead of a normal cave or sunken log like Ralis and Jabu-Jabu have.  It definitely wasn't a bad choice in the least - he spends more time flitting around in that log than anywhere else in his tank!  


Some people had warned of these logs causing fin tears but Mikau hasn't had a single problem with his log.  It's where I feed him more often than not since it has an opening in the top.  It also harbors his unintentional snail tank mates.


And now for some pictures and a video of Mikau and how he swims. :)

  

My Aquariums

Two things I readily admit to: I started out a totally clueless n00b and I've spent a butt-load of money fixing the n00b mistakes I made.  

I had no idea what cycling a tank meant or how to do it.  I had no idea what ammonia, nitrites and nitrates were or what threat they posed to my newly acquired fish friends.  I thought fish could be put into conditioned water and off they went as long as I kept the tank clean.  I was making things much harder on myself and potentially harder on my poor fish.

I started off with a 1.5 gallon tank from Wal-Mart.  It's how Jabu-Jabu began his life with me after he came home from the pet store.  It was a perfectly fine tank in my opinion and obviously in Jabu-Jabu's as well.  He got busy with the bubble nests within 24 hours and never let up.  After a week, I decided to add a little java fern plant in and he loved it, along with his little cave.

The problem came with how often cleaning had to be done, which was pretty much daily.  It got cumbersome and eventually I decided finding a bigger tank was a priority.

At our local pawn shop, I found my first 10 gallon tank with a wooden stand for $40.  It came with a filter, nets, etc.  It was clearly formerly used by someone to try and house goldfish since it came with goldfish flakes.  It was a bit messy but it cleaned up with hot water easily.  I set it up and plopped Jabu-Jabu in.  This was my first big mistake as I had not cycled my tank.  After a few google searches and reading a paper that petsmart made available, I decided to try a product that many people had said worked: Seachem Stability.  

Stability was touted as being able to cycle a tank in 7 days.  I can say two months later... it worked REALLY well.  All of my tanks cycled in 7 days with Stability with fish in them.  It's been great and I really recommend it, as well as it's competitor's brand: Tetra SafeStart.  Both have worked wonders at 'cycling' my tanks and making it so my fish live safe, healthy lives with a bio-filter established in their tanks.  It's worked with both 5 and 10 gallon tanks... but more about them in a bit!

I also HIGHLY recommend Seachem Prime.  It's been great as both a water conditioner and emergency fixer-upper.  It neutralized ammonia and has over all been fantastic.  Seachem is definitely my brand of choice.

If you do go the same route I did instead of cycling with an alternative before hand method, you would do yourself many favors to get a good liquid water testing kit.  They're far more reliable and easy to read than test strips.  If you can't afford the whole shabang at first, you should definitely at least get yourself ammonia, nitrite and nitrate testing kits.  You'll also want a good, quality siphon.  The one I got from my local pet shop starts with a few gentle shakes and then pumps the water itself; no sucking on the tube!  I also highly recommend a container that you can separate a fish in.  The Dip 'N Pour has been GREAT for this and many other uses, including acclimating new fish.

This is when I seriously started planting my tanks with live plants.  Jabu-Jabu was initially in his 10 gallon with several zebra danios and 3 ghost shrimp.  The ghost shrimp have since become snacks and the zebras were returned as I decided I wanted bettas only.  Then came Ruto, my first female and second fish.  I started by dividing the one 10 gallon in half with a divider I found at petsmart.  They work great and were only minorly difficult to set up.  They require a bit of cutting plastic but otherwise were easy to install and serve their purpose.  Then came Ralis... another divider tossed in and I had 3 fish.

I started reading about how people had 'sororities': tanks with female bettas that lived in a colony of sorts.  I decided I wanted to try this.  On craigslist, I found someone local who pretty much gave me a 5 and a 10 gallon tank for free, almost entirely set up.  With some stability, I had another 10 gallon set up and then came Lulu, Rutela and Laruto.  

My glorious girl tank was complete and my fishies were swimming happily.  It has my favorite decoration I've found so far... a rock cave that my girls adore with tons of room inside.  If you get one, make sure you submerge it entirely and on it's side before you set it in there permanently.  It has a lot of room at the top of it inside that is hollow and will keep it floating if you don't fill it up with water.

Suddenly I had a open spot in my 10 gallon with Jabu-Jabu and Ralis.  I'd been trolling Aquabid and trying to get a halfmoon from Thailand.  I finally gnabbed Mikau from Blimp33 and soon he came and took up the third spot.  

My 5 gallon was empty and I wanted to keep it that way... but then Japas came along and now I've got all three tanks set up and full of fishies.  Jabu-Jabu gets the 5 gallon to himself because... well... he's special. <3  It's definitely my favorite 'aquascape' I've done so far and I do believe Jabu-Jabu agrees.

Decorating my tanks has been amazing fun and I probably have messed with them far more than I should.  If you're like me, you'll find once your tanks become low maintenance you'll almost wish they weren't.

Live Plants I - My luck (or in some cases lack there of) with them..

When I began keeping bettas, especially in the very beginning with Jabu-Jabu, I didn't really intend on keeping him or any of my fish with live plants.  But when I decided to get my second fish and a 10 gallon tank, I decided if I was going this big I may as well go total balls out and plant live plants.  Some have flourished.  Others haven't.  In any case, here's what I've tried to grow and what I've learned about live plants.

¤ Lighting and Food ¤

First of all, all of my aquariums are lit by fluorescent lights.  This wasn't cheap to do, as far as cheap goes in my opinion.  The two hoods for my two 10 gallon tanks cost me $47 all in all, one was $29.99 and the other I got on sale at petsmart for $17.  It's pretty much necessary to have lights if you don't have your tanks in direct sunlight.  

Even when you do get lights, it's a good idea to get plant food.  I chose to get the Aqueon brand of plant food for aquariums and it's thus far worked out pretty well for me.  I've had very brief, minor algae issues that were completely harmless to my fish and have since become not a problem at all.  It's kept the majority of my plants healthy and green.  Seachem products have also all worked really well for me, so I don't doubt their plant food would also work very well.   I may end up switching to their plant food in the future because of how good their other products have been.  I'll definitely mention them in another article.

I'll also mention in this section that all of my tanks have gravel (mostly naturally colored, some black) as a substrate.  It's been very easy to clean with a Siphon and because of how small it is, acts as both a good substrate for me and keeps my fish from doing stupid stuff like getting their heads mashed under marbles. :P

¤ Plant Types I've had Luck With ¤

Java Ferns

My first plant that I gave a go was a Java Fern.  It has been my most successfully kept plant to date and is easy to propagate new plants from it.  It does it all for you!  I've split off many new plants and moved them around.  It tolerates fairly low light conditions as long as you give it some plant chow here and there and will likely out grow your aquarium's height if you have long instead of tall tanks like I do.

They're a great beginner plant, like their counter part in names Java Moss.  They've grown great in my gravel and tolerate being moved around.  They don't shed like other plants I've tried have and deal with a range of temperatures for tropical fresh water aquariums.

Cabomba w/ Algae Growth

Another plant I've had a fair amount of luck with has been Cabomba, with a few things I should mention about them.  Cabomba prefer slightly lower temperatures than bettas do, or so I've been told.  I've had the best luck growing them at 78 degrees or below.  They've also been the chief culprit for harboring green and a wee bit of brown algae when it happened.  The picture to the right shows my cabomba in what used to be Jabu-Jabu's 3rd of a 10 gallon tank growing with green algae film covering it.  I have to assume it happened because conditions were right and I was feeding it plant food.

Cabomba, visually, is definitely my favorite plant I've had luck with so far.  It fills a great amount of space that otherwise is left empty and provides great hiding spots for bettas.  It's the softest plant I've grown so they definitely prefer exploring it to, say, the slightly more rigid Java Fern.  It's easier on delicate halfmoon fins than most of the other plants, too.

The only downside I've found to cabomba is that it's a smidgen delicate and can easily break if you move it around.  It does NOT like being replanted so plant it with thought.  It also grows like crazy when given the room so keep an eye on it or you may find too much of it for your fishes to swim in!

Mikau swimming in Anarchis

I've also had some luck with Anarchis in more than one way.  I decided to pick some up after reading about it on the plant post written by PewPewPew on bettafish.com.  It's my second favorite plant thus far and Mikau, my green dragon halfmoon, adores it for hiding and floating in.  

It has grown with relative ease compared to almost every other plant I've tried, fills a lot of negative space visually and just looks good all around.  I hope to propagate some of the plant I've managed to grow well and put some in my other tanks.

¤ Plant Types I've Not Had Luck With ¤

Hornwort

The only plant I've really not liked at all has been Hornwort.  I'd read about how it had shedding problems but figured I'd give it a try anyway and see if I had any luck with growing it.  It has definitely been a pain to keep up with the shedding of needles it does. It makes a mess and seems to grow even when you don't want it to.  It won't die but it'll keep your aquarium bottom a mess. 

As far as appearance goes, in my opinion it has a very rugged, very messy woods kind of look.  If you keep natural aquariums like I do, it can be a great looking addition if you're willing to provide the upkeep necessary to keep your tank's bottom clean and free of shed needles.

Wisteria

I also haven't much cared for Wisteria.  I've had some wisteria successfully grow in my tanks, but the majority seemed to 'melt away' and die.  Perhaps I don't have enough lighting for them or perhaps my fish kept them from staying routed well enough.  I've thrown out approx. half of the wisteria I've tried to plant, some in my male and female tanks.  Some still successfully grows in Mikau's part of the male tank and one stalk is still growing and healthy in the girl's tank.  


It's a very pretty plant, very zen in appearance.  I've seen tanks with buddha themes where it looks fantastic along with bamboo plants.  I just won't be trying to grow it again.




There are many kinds of plants I simply haven't tried but wish to in the future.  For more information about aquarium plants, I really truly recommend reading PewPewPew's guide to aquarium plants found on bettafish.com.  She's a fountain of information and I thank her greatly for all that I've so far learned from her and everyone else on that website. :)

Stow aways!

I also want to mention that when you bring your new plants home, you may be bringing home a few new 'friends' too!  It's a good idea to quarantine your new plants in a separation tank for a day with open air just to make sure you aren't bringing any diseases or other goodies with it.  
My anarchis that came from petsmart had several hitchhikers as well.  A few days after planting it, I noticed I also had several small snails now crawling around Mikau's part of the tank.  Be prepared and alert for just about anything to happen. :)