What's wrong with Fishsticks? HELP

[SynthetikZy]

MY crowntail betta Fishsticks (AKA Scaredy) is not acting like himself... I changed his water 50% a few days ago (last time I did a 100% change he seemed really stressed and sat on the bottom), and now he's sitting at the bottom again. At first I just thought he got streese3d again, but I am worried now. He looks fine to me, and when he does get out from under the plant at the bottom he's his perky self, but he seems to be spending a lot of time there, and he gets underneath the plant and stays real still. Sometimes he will sit sorta inside his little cave thing and be pretty still, so maybe he's just comfortable there on the bottom?
HELP!
He seems to look OK to me, so I thought I'd look up stuff on weight or gills, and I thought I'd ask you guys.
He's in a 1 gallon tank (which I was considering getting a bigger one, but if water changes are too stressful to him, then I don't know...) with a temp of about 77-78 degrees, and I keep the light on all the time to help keep the tank warm.

[reaperss06]

Originally Posted by SynthetikZy

MY crowntail betta Fishsticks (AKA Scaredy) is not acting like himself... I changed his water 50% a few days ago (last time I did a 100% change he seemed really stressed and sat on the bottom), and now he's sitting at the bottom again. At first I just thought he got streese3d again, but I am worried now. He looks fine to me, and when he does get out from under the plant at the bottom he's his perky self, but he seems to be spending a lot of time there, and he gets underneath the plant and stays real still. Sometimes he will sit sorta inside his little cave thing and be pretty still, so maybe he's just comfortable there on the bottom?
HELP!
He seems to look OK to me, so I thought I'd look up stuff on weight or gills, and I thought I'd ask you guys.
He's in a 1 gallon tank (which I was considering getting a bigger one, but if water changes are too stressful to him, then I don't know...) with a temp of about 77-78 degrees, and I keep the light on all the time to help keep the tank warm.

hmm maybe it's the light. It might have finally affected him? Mine got odd with the light as well, so I'm gunna turn the light off and see what happens.

[Sella]

Upgrading to a bigger tank means less water changes, so if he's stressed when you do them, it's better to get a five gallon or bigger. With a one gallon tank twice a week water changes are required, with 100% water change each time. Maybe he's stressed from the actual change, or maybe he's got rotten water parameters from the small amount of water!

Oh and having the light on all the time can stress him out. Get him a nice heater to do the job and put him on a normal daytime/night time schedule.

[JamieTron]

Did you make sure the new water added was the same temperature as the previous water in the tank?? If you did not do this he could have had temperature shock which takes some time to get over. I had an incident where my power went out in the winter...well my tank changed temperature and they were stressed for sometime afterwards. Also you treated the newly added water right? no chlorine?

Sella is right you will have to make less water changes in a bigger tank, a nice little box filter can help keep the water clear as well in a nice little 5 gallon. Sometimes they come with a larger filter which is better, but my betta found it hard to swim and got stressed with larger filters in a 5 gallon. It all depends on the betta but if yours gets stressed easily you might have that prob too. But you don't need a filter in a 5 gallon if you do water changes frequently.

[PinkDiamond]

I totally agree with getting him a bigger tank. The smallest I like to see bettas in is 5 gallons, and you only need to do small and less frequent water changes. You can either cycle the tank or add ammonia absorbing media into your filter and then there would be much less water change stress on the little guy.

In the meantime, I also agree with making sure the temp of the water you're adding at water changes matches that of his tank. More frequent water changes might be needed as well.

Hope he's better soon!