Two questions

[bluebettafish]

I hope it's OK to post two questions in one thread...

1. My blue betta at work seems to be changing colors (which I guess is normal). I first noticed some purple showing up on his fin but now his tail seems a little lighter (somewhat transparent? I might be paranoid) and his whole body is looking a little lighter. I read somewhere that turning pale is not a good sign. I know for a fact that he is lighter in color because I compared it to a picture I took a few weeks ago. Should I be concerned? what can I do? He's in a 3 gallon tank with filter and biowheel, and I change 1/4 - 1/3 of the water every week or so. He's active and eating normally.

2. I wrote on another thread that I have a 6 gallon tank at home but my attempt to keep 2 bettas in a split tank failed. Perhaps it was too small..and the orange guy at home could not stop flaring at the other guy. Do I have no choice but to take the divider out and let him have the whole tank to himself, or could I bring a female home? I don't want to bring another one home and not be able to take good care of it because i ended up giving away the other one to my coworker. what would you do?

[dramaqueen]

As far as turning pale goes, does he have any other symptoms? Is he eating and swimming around normally? Does he have any spots or lumps on him? If he's acting normal and not having any other symptoms, he's probably just changing colors. Bettas do that sometimes. As for the divided tank, if the only problem is a lot of flaring then I'd put plants along the sides of the divider so they can't see each other very well. Hope this helps.

[bluebettafish]

Thanks for the reply. Yes he's acting the same. He eats and swims normally and nothing is different about his behavior. I don't see anything on his body that might indicate being sick. I hope he changes into a nicer color because he looks kind of dull right now...but I accept it as part of what they do normally :)

As for the split tank, my two males were doing was that they'll squeeze behind the plants and see each other. I made my own divider and things were a little better when I doubled the mesh sheet. I will look into getting more plants.