vertical stripes?

[aokashi]

Yesterday its pinholes, today this....?

So this betta is around 2.5 months old. maybe three months.

And I was flaring it like usual today. Suddenly all its juvenile horizontal stripes disappeared and a few colorless vertical stripes showed up across his/her body.... what is going on? fish puberty? it's body is so dark now, that my camera can no longer pick up the details :(

[MrVampire181]

Bettas communicate with body motions and bars or stripes.

When two bettas spawn the male shows the female who's boss. When the female is ready to breed she approaches the nest head down, fins clamped, and wiggling in an S motion to show she has accepted him as dominant and is ready to spawn.

The barring is generally a submission.

[EvilVOG]

Probably a girl, vertical stripes, or Submission bars, are a mating display from female to male to indicate submission and readiness to breed. She probably thought her reflection was a male trying to court her.

[TheCheese909]

Some boys get vertical stripes when they are very stressed out or when showing submission. But sometimes they seem to get them just to get them lol. I've seen some girls in cups at Walmart and such who have those stripes as well and I think it's just from stress- though I know the girls get them when they are ready to breed as well.

I'm not saying your baby is stressed out, sometimes they go through phases where I think they are just pressing internal buttons seeing what parts of their body does.


Maybe someone else can elaborate on the subject for you and tell you more. But like I said, I wouldn't be too worried.

[MrVampire181]

Stress and barring are two totally different things. Bars = up and down. Stress stripes = horizontal.

[TheCheese909]

MrV, I know this. I'm just saying if I put one of my boys in a cup while moving his tank he doesn't always get the vertical stress stripes. Sometimes they lose colour and get horizontal stripes. I've always considered that as a sign of being upset, especially if there are no other fish around for him to be submitting to.

[aokashi]

Thanks for all the responses, I know that the bars ( as Mr V calls them) are breeding stripes oO just though she would be too young. :P atleast now I know it's a "she"