Rescued baby- urgent!!!

[Gulfcoaster]

Hi there!

Well I joined today and I have many many many questions. My earlier thread was because I needed to get my adult veil tail tank cycled but I did itself pretty well! So I was at petco getting the ammonia and nitrate testing kit when I remembered I saw a big thread about Petco selling baby bettas.

So something compelled me to look and lo and behold, they had one baby. S/he is 1/3 the size of my pinky and still without color but s/he seems to just be swimming up a storm. I feel so optomistic I gave it a name. Hadley :)

Well he's the issue: I have set up a 1 g heated tank for him/her and just to see, I tested the water. I know they have much weaker immune systems and can respond much worse to complications. The Nitrate level is perfect at zero but the ammonia is at .25 ppm!

I don't want to start acclimating him/her until I get it down to 0 but is there a way I can do that fast? I'm afraid of leaving Hadley in the little cup s/he came in!

[Zappity]

That's weird..there shouldn't be any ammonia in the water if there isn't a source, like fish waste or food. Does your water conditioner remove the ammonia? Test your water straight out of the tap and see if it has ammonia. I don't know how to get rid of it immediately, but I'd do a 25%-50% water change and see if that doesn't get it down.
Good luck with your new baby! :) I was at petco yesterday but they didn't have any babies..Thank God or I'd of gotten one xD

[Gulfcoaster]

Originally Posted by Zappity

That's weird..there shouldn't be any ammonia in the water if there isn't a source, like fish waste or food. Does your water conditioner remove the ammonia? Test your water straight out of the tap and see if it has ammonia. I don't know how to get rid of it immediately, but I'd do a 25%-50% water change and see if that doesn't get it down.
Good luck with your new baby! :) I was at petco yesterday but they didn't have any babies..Thank God or I'd of gotten one xD

I use bottled water so should I test the tap and just use that instead? I have API Tap Water Conditioner but that just removes chlorine. And I know what you mean! I've had my other betta for about 6 months now and have never had an issue with this before. Well, what I'll do is test the tap water then and see if it's a better alternative. If it isn't, I'll try a partial water change! Thanks for the answer!

[Gen2387]

I know what you mean, I'm glad they don't sell baby bettas at my lps because I would def leave with one.

Just test the tap water and use that with the conditioner. Should be fine. Good luck with Hadley! Post pics if you can.

[Gulfcoaster]

Well she made it through the night like a trooper. I tested my tap water and the ammonia level was bad. After I did a partial water change, the bowl was perfect. So I was getting ready to acclimate her to the bowl and decided to run some water tests to see if her little cup was similar in pH, nitrate, ammonia, etc.

Her cup was at 8 ppm of ammonia. I was HORRIFIED. I use the AFI kits and the results were the darkest green possible. So I finally just decided to get her out of it and she is doing great. I know it stresses them out to be put in water almost immediately but I'd rather do that than let her sit in that awful water. Heater is at 80 degrees and I'm noticing a lot of color has shown up since I brought her home!

I checked and I'm 99% sure I saw an egg spot but she's less than an inch so I'd put her at about 7 weeks. Can an egg spot show up that soon?

[dramaqueen]

I would use Seachem Prime water conditioner. It detoxifys the ammonia in tap water.

[Bombalurina]

+1 to DramaQueen. Prime works absolute miracles. :)
So glad you rescued that girl! That ammount of ammonia is absolutely criminal. >:(