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Male Betta is acting strange

993 views 2 replies 3 participants last post by  Rachel02 
#1 ·
So I've had my male betta fish for a little over a year now. He has always been healthy, swam around a lot, and always swam right to the food when I fed him. About a week ago I switched him into a bigger sized tank. This tank has a filter and the other one I didn't use the filter just cleaned it a lot. I have the heater going at a good temperature for him and everything.

After I put him in he started acting strange. At first I thought that he was just getting use to the new tank, but a week later he's still not his normal self. He's barely eating anything and he spits his food back out a lot. He just sits on the bottom of the tank a lot and just gets short busts of energy every once in awhile. Sometimes when he's laying on the bottom, he'll lay on his side, which he's never done before. Yesterday was when I started getting really nervous for him, because he went inside this hideaway rock I have for him and laid in there pretty much the entire day. Even when I shook the rock and tried to get him out he wouldn't budge till after awhile. I took the net I use to get him out and brought it right up to him and he just sat there. Before he would swim away, but he was letting me poke him with it even.

As for how he looks, he looks fine. Isn't any paler, can't really see him getting skinnier yet from not eating. He's not bloated, doesn't look like he was a parasites, bacteria or anything like that. He's also blind in his left eye, but that's never bothered him before so I don't see how it would bother him now.
 
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#2 ·
How long has he been acting that way? Are you using water from the same source? And if it's tap water, do you have a softener/have it treated?
Also, whats the temperature at? I ask because if it's on the cool side, they tend to be sluggish.


Its possible that it may be as simple as stress. I find that some bettas don't seem to handle stress very well. Especially if the new tank is significantly larger than the previous one. One of my fish did that- when I moved him to his new tank, he didn't want to eat and lost nearly all his color immediately due to stress, but it came back later that day. He ate again in due time.


OR it could even be a vitamin deficiency. I've never had that happen, so I can't say much about it. :/


I wouldn't worry TOO much. I think he'll come around soon.
 
#3 ·
That happened to my female too, back when she had grown too big for her 1 gallon and I put her in the three gallon. She swam everywhere in the 1 gallon and just hid all day in the three gallon one except when she came up to eat.

Bettas seem to get stressed pretty easily from what I've seen. I hope yours gets over the change soon and enjoys his new tank.
 
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