Mythbuster: Do bettas really live in "tiny" puddles?

[sassybritt2000]

hi

[sundstrom]

wow this is great ive always kept my betta fish in 10 gallon aquariums or more. But this is awesome good to know that ive been doing a good job on taking care of my babys.

[Thunderloon]

The reason we go with ten gallon tanks if we can is that it lets the fish have multiple environments. Places to hide, different flow rates, room to leisurely wander around and enough room to show us just how happy they are that we love them. By far the last takes the most room.

They can be perfectly happy in a gallon if you take pristine care of them and give them attention and their water is great but they're an animal capable of reaching great speeds in the water and the one gallon just isn't safe in any way.

[trono]

1 gallon bowls are way too much of a hassle. Ugh. Spend some money on a bigger tank if you've got a little cash. 100% water changes kill me.

[sassybritt2000]

my fish is blue too blue i want to enter the contest

[bettamaniac]

Originally Posted by sassybritt2000

my fish is blue too blue i want to enter the contest

dude go post that somewhere else. this is the wrong thread to post that in.

[ollief9]

Originally Posted by trono

1 gallon bowls are way too much of a hassle. Ugh. Spend some money on a bigger tank if you've got a little cash. 100% water changes kill me.

Hear hear.

[DaveC]

Living in small puddles is kind of like humans living in small rooms. Yes, we spend a lot of our time in small rooms (and even smaller cars and busses) but, we don't spend all our lives in the same small room. How long would you want to stay in your car, eating only drive thru food?

A betta living in a two foot square territory is *not* living in a two foot square pond. Even a small pond is huge when you're a 2 inch fish. That two foot square territory is constantly exchanging water with the rest of the pond or stream, even if the betta never leaves it.

I wonder how many of the bettas in buffalo tracks etc, got stuck there rather than being there by choice.

[Amethyst123]

Someone mentioned, in a previous post, that most of the fish they "collected" from the wild were in streams that were only a foot wide and not more than a foot deep. I'd like to point out that a body of water that is a foot deep and a foot wide will have a cubic foot of water in each linear foot of the stream. A cubic foot of water is 7.48 gallons of water. A cubic foot of moving water, even if it is moving slowly, is a LOT different than a gallon, or even worse a 1/2 gallon of still water. If the stream stayed a foot wide, a linear foot of the stream would have to be no more than 1.6" deep to have as little as 1 gallon of water in it. Even if it got that shallow on occasion, a stream is still moving. A pond or other closed body of water still gets refreshed by rain, and the natural plants, mud, etc., would effectively filter and convert wastes. None of that happens in a gallon of still water, unless we do it.

In other words, the personal experience of someone "collecting" wild fish in Asia does not, in any way, mean that bettas can thrive in "tiny mud puddles."

[Nexangelus]

What a great article! I get the "they live in puddles... 1 gallon bowls must be like paradise!" quotes thrown at me almost every day, which never cease to sicken me. While some puddles definitely aren't your typical small collection of rain drops, some genuinely are... During the dry season. No betta would ever choose to live in a tiny mud puddle with little maneuvering room, it's not in their nature.

I got pretty frustrated trying to explain that to several customers, so I decided to think up an analogy for them, just to dumb it down a bit: It's like cramming a human into a tool shed. Can you live there? Sure can. Would you be cheerful and able to thrive in one?

Generally, that gets my point across.