My CT's transformation

[AyalaCookiejar]

I've had Bahari for about a month now and he has been slowly changing colors on me... He's also slowly gone (completely?) blind on me. I love this little guy to bits and pieces, although I am sad that he's lost the pretty blue coloring on his fins and also his ability to see. We are both in the process of adapting to each other.

[SQUIRT1216]

He is beautiful! Too bad he lost the bicolor tail that he had in the 1st and 2nd photo

[aemaki09]

Aww poor boy. How's he adapting to being blind? What are you doing to help him eat and everything? Just curious in case I ever end up with a blind betta.

Is he purple now?
He's gorgeous either way. Such a shame he cant see.

[AyalaCookiejar]

Yeah, now he is more purple. Before he was pink.
I use a wooden skewer to feed him. I wriggle it around in the water to get him to come to me and also use the skewer to nudge the pellet in front of him. He's getting better at finding his food and I don't have to help him QUITE as much. This morning when I fed him he snapped at one of the pellets so aggressively that it FLEW across the tank, lol.

He used to follow my finger above the water, but now I blow on the water surface and he will follow it around. He's less active than before but I believe he is starting to memorize where his decorations are. The past two days I found him hanging out in his coral cave that you can sort of see in the last picture. I suspect that he can still sense light.

[aemaki09]

How long has he been blind? Sounds like an interesting way to feed him. I've heard of people teaching them to come to taps and wait, then when the owner taps again they know there is food in front of their face. But yours sounds much easier to get them used to.
I have a boy that'll do that too! He acts like he's been starved for weeks when its time to eat in the morning lol

If he can find his cave he must have memorized his tank pretty well. Now the hard part is not moving anything around too much so he doesnt have to re-learn the whole thing.

[AyalaCookiejar]

He knows the food is there but he misses often when he snaps for it. I was able to use the skewer at first to get the food literally right on his mouth so he wouldn't miss it... But now he knows that the food must be near if he can sense that skewer in the water. I don't have to move the food as much now... I just use the skewer to get him to go in the right direction. Once he gets close enough that his head taps in, he can usually get it by himself. Yesterday I noticed that he kind of sucked it into his mouth when it wasn't right there instead of trying to snap at it.

I only noticed that he was blind on Thursday... It was the same day I first started using the skewer. I got him to eat three pellets after not eating for like two weeks. I realized that he actually was still hungry, but he just couldn't find the food. I mistook his attempts to snap at the food for him just taking a breath. It wasn't that long ago that he was still following my finger... So he must of had trouble seeing the small pellets but could still make out my (much larger) finger. It seems to have developed slowly over the month that I've had him.

[Syriiven]

He's changed so much so soon!!

[mushumouse]

wow, that's fascinating! i had no idea bettas could change shades that drastically. i don't know if it's the way the camera adjusts colors or the lighting, but it almost looks like he's changing to blend into his cave, lol. what pretty colors.

[AyalaCookiejar]

Well the first two pictures were taken with my Nikon and the last three were taken with my phone.. This little guy looks differently colored in all lighting. But the blue in his caudal fin faded within a week or so, and the first day I got him (picture number one) he had a light blue dorsal fin and the very next day after being in his new tank it turned pink/red. I've seen those two colors as well as different shades of blue, green, yellow, orange and purple in him. Now I think he is more purple than blue/pink like when I got him. :)

[AyalaCookiejar]

Here's a picture from today. He "twirls" a lot like a ballerina :p its extremely hard to capture his coloring. His tail is a pink/purple an the ends are white but I think he also injured it after going blind. A few of his rays are shorter than the rest.