Pet stores getting younger and younger bettas?

[purplemuffin]

I...keep seeing basically fry in pet stores. It's sort of confusing, and kind of upsetting. A lot of these are smaller than dionysus was when he arrived--he was three months old. There was a tiny girl...So small.. That honestly it could be a boy that hasn't yet developed enough. Dionysus could eat this little fish. I almost couldn't see some of them in the cups! The biggest ones I saw couldn't be a day over four months old. The reason it's upsetting is these little babies just can't handle the amount of drama they are going through. Each of these batches of babies arrives nearly dead--if not already dead, and the bad lack of water changes and cold stores don't help. Stores where bettas seemed to be healthy even despite bad care are now having weaker little babies who are just falling apart.

I've seen this in three petsmarts, a local fish store, and a couple walmarts. Before, it seemed like each betta was nearly a year old. I mean I'm happy to see younger fish--I love getting to spend as much time with a fish as possible, so getting a baby means I have it for most of it's life. But... What the heck? Are some breeders like just tossing babies who would have been culled anyway to pet stores to make some extra money?

Is this just something weird about my area? So many tiny, tiny bettas. I would swear they were breeding them themselves if it wasn't that every pet store around me is having these babies for sale. Crazy!

[Pataflafla]

The only small bettas I see are the shipments of girls they get, and then they live in the sorority tank on the wall. Overall I think that's a better way to do it for how they're keeping the girls. I haven't seen any horrible nips despite the sorority tank there being sparsely planted, and I think the young age helps a bit with that.

I've only seen a few small males (Bought 1 after my sister accidentally dropped his cup, but everything was ok and he's happily guarding his bubble nests now).

[purplemuffin]

I guess it must just be my area. Maybe whoever ships to where I am just threw in all the babies--also. There were a TON of them. Usually I see 20 or so males, there were at least 50 out front, and a bunch more cups stacked on top of the rest of the fish tanks in the petsmarts. It is bizarre, I had never even seen bettas this small before! If there are any still alive I'll try to get a picture next time I'm there. They really looked pretty far gone to be honest.

[Pataflafla]

That's sad. their provider might have gotten impatient or made a mistake and shipped out the wrong batch. Anything's possible really.

I hope they make it to nice homes though. My first boy, Ratchet, was a small boy from Walmart (He wasn't doing well, but that's obvious when it's Walmart). If I have room, I usually buy the little ones because they don't look so pretty, so they won't get bought as quick.

[purplemuffin]

They're all pretty adorable--and REALLY nice too. I saw a very metallic one, looked like a copper, but had beautiful teal splotches, looked painted and was super shiny. Some solid yellows, a lot of dragons. You could see their colors were browned out and pale from the water, but even as they were they looked great. I hope they get good homes too! That's a lot of stress to put on little babies!

[vilmarisv]

Not just in your area... saw that at my local petsmart and I was surprised at the size of the fish. Only seen the HMPK and HMs, VT are older and so are females.

[CrowntailTwitchy57]

OMG, i was in petsmart the other day, they had at least 2 bettas LITERALLY this long: ------------
they shouldn't be even SHIPPING them that small! it's just awful, this kind of thing really makes me mad...

[Bambi]

My petsmart usually has young females.
three and a half to four months is the age of alot of bettas for sale on aquabid aswell.
They're old enough to live through the shipping process(for the most part) and it makes room for the next batch of young that need those jars. I do feel sorry for some of the ones in there that, though they may be old enough, their growth was stunted so much that they haven't grown to match their age at all.

[Pewmew]

the petsmart near where I live had been getting really really small bettas too (both boys and girls). -------------- this long

[Indyfishy]

My petsmart has some tinyyyyy fish too. When I got my Sully, he honestly looked more like a guppy than a betta. It seems like it's mostly the HM's and Crowntails at my store that are coming in super tiny. I'm not sure why it keeps happening, but it's really sad, you can tell that some of them are really weak, and when they get there the pellets that the employees have to feed them are often too big for their little mouths.