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7 Posts
Hello! I'm new. I often Google specific info for helping care for my recent life partner, Peter the Fish, and wound up here so often I decided to register. I had been wanting to ask someone else with experience about my betta's exceptional rage.
I have had many bettas, and had several for many years, though I admittedly did not know what I was doing. I barely survived my undergrad - God bless the fishes who did. I did not keep bettas for a long time after my last one died when I just wasn't able to save it. I finally got Peter the Fish from a breeder (the first time I did that as well), and he is a righteous, mighty ball of man-fury.
Peter is a pink and cream dragon crowntail, and he is super attentive to his environment. Peter will follow, and murder any moving object mercilessly including: food, the thermometer, my finger, a moss ball, some dust I accidentally knocked in there once. I have had to utter the phrase "No Peter, don't eat your poo!" This is my fish. He is extremely vibrant in personality and will actually leap out of the bowl to bite my finger and he will HANG ON. (I do not do this excessively, as I do not want him to explode in a tiny fishy anneurism).
So I had a few questions for other lovers of violent fish babies.
- Peter does his standard male-beta fight-dance - shimmying his body, fanning his fins, etc - but has NEVER flared his gills. Not once. I know he wants to kill me, and he is FAR from mellow, but this one common thing he has never done. Anyone else have a rage-fish who doesn't flare his gills?
- Peter seems very healthy (minus a bit of fin-curl... our water leans basic, maybe 7.6-7.8 out of the tap, and I hear chemical pH treatments can be very touchy to make such subtle changes so I have yet to think of a safe solution) but he has only made his bubble nest once. I worry that he does not ever feel secure enough to do so again. The oddest bit (to me) is that I have had many bettas bubble, including Peter, in very small bowls. Peter is the first fish I have gotten a better tank for - still only 3 gallons and I do manual water changes and test the water often, so I was thinking of getting him in a 5 gal cycling tank, but that's all new to me. That aside, Peter did bubble in a sub-gallon, low, wide bowl with just a mossball and a few rocks when I first got him. Nowadays he rolls in a big bowl with gravel, driftwood, living plants, river stones (and still the mossball) and has plenty of places to hide and rest in and poke at and he just never bubbles.
I did move him to a quieter, darker room as all movement sends him into hyper rage.
Peter has been this way for, well, ever, which is since last November, and, again... he seems active, curious, smart, strong... just different from all the other bettas I met.
I appreciate any insight! :hmm: I want Pete to live, well, forever, but whatever his actual plausible lifespan is, as happily furious as possible.
I have had many bettas, and had several for many years, though I admittedly did not know what I was doing. I barely survived my undergrad - God bless the fishes who did. I did not keep bettas for a long time after my last one died when I just wasn't able to save it. I finally got Peter the Fish from a breeder (the first time I did that as well), and he is a righteous, mighty ball of man-fury.
Peter is a pink and cream dragon crowntail, and he is super attentive to his environment. Peter will follow, and murder any moving object mercilessly including: food, the thermometer, my finger, a moss ball, some dust I accidentally knocked in there once. I have had to utter the phrase "No Peter, don't eat your poo!" This is my fish. He is extremely vibrant in personality and will actually leap out of the bowl to bite my finger and he will HANG ON. (I do not do this excessively, as I do not want him to explode in a tiny fishy anneurism).
So I had a few questions for other lovers of violent fish babies.
- Peter does his standard male-beta fight-dance - shimmying his body, fanning his fins, etc - but has NEVER flared his gills. Not once. I know he wants to kill me, and he is FAR from mellow, but this one common thing he has never done. Anyone else have a rage-fish who doesn't flare his gills?
- Peter seems very healthy (minus a bit of fin-curl... our water leans basic, maybe 7.6-7.8 out of the tap, and I hear chemical pH treatments can be very touchy to make such subtle changes so I have yet to think of a safe solution) but he has only made his bubble nest once. I worry that he does not ever feel secure enough to do so again. The oddest bit (to me) is that I have had many bettas bubble, including Peter, in very small bowls. Peter is the first fish I have gotten a better tank for - still only 3 gallons and I do manual water changes and test the water often, so I was thinking of getting him in a 5 gal cycling tank, but that's all new to me. That aside, Peter did bubble in a sub-gallon, low, wide bowl with just a mossball and a few rocks when I first got him. Nowadays he rolls in a big bowl with gravel, driftwood, living plants, river stones (and still the mossball) and has plenty of places to hide and rest in and poke at and he just never bubbles.
I did move him to a quieter, darker room as all movement sends him into hyper rage.
Peter has been this way for, well, ever, which is since last November, and, again... he seems active, curious, smart, strong... just different from all the other bettas I met.
I appreciate any insight! :hmm: I want Pete to live, well, forever, but whatever his actual plausible lifespan is, as happily furious as possible.