Caring for an imported betta?

[Lucile]

So, I recently bought a thai ohmpk on aquabid (See avatar!) Whom has yet to come in the mail.
I have a little temporary heated 2 gal. I have the water treated with stress coat+, and a tsp of AQ salt. I kinda blew my budget for the month, so hopefully next month Im going to set up a planted 5gal for him.

Is there anything special I should do to help ease his stress and aclimate him? I know I have hard water, so maybe I should get some bottled water?

[LebronTheBetta]

OMG he's GORGEOUS! If only I had the extra space and money to buy off AB... :\ Well, makes sure to acclimate him with the light as they've been used to the darkness and he needs acclimation. Remember not to use the Aquarium Salt above 10 days as it can hurt his labyrinth organ. You don't need to change your hardness. It's going to mess it up and you might get the wrong dosage the next water change. It won't affect him in any way. :)

[LittleBettaFish]

I don't really do anything special with my imports. However, our tap water is very soft here and of good quality so I think this has something to do with it. Even my wild-caught bettas have no issue acclimatising to it.

Peat moss and IALs are great at softening water, but if your KH is really high they are probably not going to be able to bring down your pH by that much. You could cut your tap water with something softer, which is what a lot of people in hard water areas do, or just see how your betta goes.

I would definitely drip-acclimatise if your water is very hard, as I believe you can cause 'TDS shock' when moving fish from one type of water (alkaline to acidic for example) to another. However, make sure you add something that binds ammonia to the bag of water your fish is shipped in, as once the bag is opened and the temperature increases, you can sometimes see an ammonia spike.

Good luck with your import. 90% of my fish are Thailand imports, and they do very well. He looks beautiful, and fingers crossed for you everything goes smoothly.