mlinden84

Yup. I thawed them, peeled them, and broke them up, and he acted as if they were poison! He has been eating so much better since I started sitting by the tank more giving him attention. Tomorrow he gets moved out to the living room (he'll have the whole 20 gallon to himself until I get another betta) Hopefully it will be more human interaction for him. If not, guess I'll have to get a 5 gallon tank to put back on my desk. (amazing how much I am willing to spend on a $5 fish! oh but I love it!)
Did you say you had wild bettas? where/how did you get those?

COBettaCouple

you might try a peeled canned pea on him.. our first betta would turn his nose up to frozen peas so we caved in and gave him canned ones for a while and one day tried frozen again and he loved it from then on. i guess the canned ones got him liking peas and ready for frozen ones. just get canned peas with no salt.

yea, we have a pair of betta sp. mahachai that we got at a betta show and 5 fry from their 1st spawn. you can read about the spawning and our learning what NOT to do on our fishblog, along with lots of pics of them. There's not a lot of info on this betta's breeding so we've lost most of the spawn to mistakes , but have a much better idea of how these guys need to be cared for when we let them do a 2nd spawning.

There are many species of wild betta, including the splendens (these LED to the pet store splendens we buy at the stores now). check out this link to see pics of the other betta species. mahachai are near the bottom and a pretty recent find. http://smp.ibcbettas.org/species/index.html

mlinden84

How often do you feed peas? I fed all my fish some last night, the guppies were fighting each other over the pieces, it was so funny. They were worse than my cichlids (which loved them too)

Your bettas are amazing...very beautiful!! I love the colors.

0morrokh

Once a week is good. It helps clear out their system. But, you don't want to feed them every day or something to carnivores...they still need their protein.

mlinden84

Ok thanks! I got Betta some Hikari Betta Gold something and boy did he love it! He stayed at the top like come on give me more! I also liked that they were a lot smaller than the other stuff I had.
On a side note, I lost one of my smaller cichlids overnight (within 48 hours of getting him ) but while I was at Petland trading him for a new one, there was someone else doing the same. They require you to bring in a water sample to make sure it's not the tank that killed the fish. After the fish guy tested her water, he said he would give her a credit for the fish but he wouldn't let her take any more fish until she got her tank numbers under control. After the lady yelled for about 5 minutes, he just calmly told her sorry and walked away. It made me smile, that they actually cared enough about the fish to do something like that. The replacement fish weren't coming out of his paycheck, so it didn't matter to him, but he did the right thing and refused to let this lady kill more fish. I just though that with all the bad stuff i've heard about chain fish stores on here, I needed to tell my story about how they actually did something good! So me being the dork I am, thanked the man for doing the right thing and set home with my new yellow lab cichlid (and betta food and a new filter). Gosh this fish hobby is addicting!

0morrokh

First of all I'm sorry to hear you lost a cichlid.

Yeah, the Hikari Betta bio gold is the best kind of betta food imo, and most Bettas love it.

Glad to hear of a store that really cares about their fish. There are plenty of decent LFS's out there that take good care of their fish, but don't bother checking on their customers. I wish more of them were like the store you went to.

COBettaCouple

Thanks, we love our little gang of characters. we feed them a pea dinner once or twice a week.

I love Hikari foods.. they cost more, but our Bettas really enjoy them. We're sorry to hear about you losing your cichlid, it stinks when you bring one home that's already on his way out.

Phloxface

I'm really glad to hear someone cares enough for fish NOT to let someone take one home if their tank parameters are bad. It should be a LAW for all fish stores to do that! What I can't understand is why the woman would yell at him. Does she want to take home another fish which will die and then she has to come in AGAIN to get a refund? Her tank was probably overstocked and not maintained well enough or too new. Some people refuse to believe anyone who tells them about the cycle process and that you should only have 1 inch of adult size fish per gallon (preferably 2 gallons). They see the heavily overstocked tanks at the store and think they can cram that many fish into their brand new tank too.
I hate when people sell a fish without asking the person what other types of fish they have, tank size and how many fish. A lot of newbies don't know that certain fish are incompatible, but then again, most of the teenagers working at the pet stores don't know anything either. :

mlinden84

Very true! They only have a 1 time replacement, so if the others died she woulda been outta luck. The only thing that kinda bothers me is they only have a 48 hour replacement window...is this what everyone else is? (ive only bought fish here and in the past, walmart) The guy working was in his early 20s (like myself) so you can't say that all young people don't know anything about fish!

Phloxface

I don't know about other stores but Petsmart guarantees all pets for two weeks and often will give refunds even a little beyond that if the customer is very upset. For all pets other than fish for some reason you are required to read and sign a contract stating that you will take proper care of the pet, that you will feed it nutritious well-balanced food, that you will provide appropriate sized housing for it and that you will provide affection and kindness. My brother had to sign that sort of contract when he got the Quail. It still doesn't guarantee the pet parent will take proper care of the pet, but it's a nice idea. Too bad they didn't have the same thing with fish.
No, not all young people are clueless about fish care but the kids they usually hire are not even in their 20's. They are like 16 or 17, first job, never owned a fish other than maybe a small goldfish in a bowl when they were even younger etc. They don't recieve enough training IMO. There are a couple of employees there that I like that are a little older, in their 20's and are very knowlegable about fish and really seem to care. I talked to one girl there one time who was very upset about a customer she had tried to help just before me and he was refusing to listen to her advice and was overstocking his tank and wondering why his fish were dying. Unfortunately it is against the store's policy to refuse to sell a fish to a customer so even though she probably wanted to say "no more fish", she had no choice.

0morrokh

Yeah, a lot of other teenagers bug me simply because they have an attitude of not really caring about anything. Too bad most of them working at pet/fish stores don't actually keep fish like I do. IMO unless you actually keep pets and know about them, you shouldn't be working at a pet store...

The other thing that bugs me about stores is when they'll sell someone 2 or 3 tetras. If I ever owned a fish store, I would make a policy that you are not allowed to sell anyone less than 6 fish of shoaling species. Most stores just care about the 2 or 3 fish that get paid for rather than the happiness and wellbeing of those fish.

mlinden84

Thats a very good point, but sometimes people don't want to add six or more fish to their tank at a time. But then again, those who probably know that you need that many are prepared to take on the six at a time (with water testing and changing and such)
I feel like the fish store should at least include some info with the fish you buy. Not everyone would read/abide by it, but some would.
Kinda like my first tank, I was given a 20 gallon tank w/ 3 guppys, 3 platies, 1 fully grown molly (quite big i might add) 2 panda cory cats, 2 otos, 8 neon tetras, 7 tetras (cant remember the exact name but they were bigger than the neons) and a 5 inch clown loach (a very lonely one at that). Looking back I can't seem to understand what this person was thinking. Unfortunately, all but 1 oto and the 2 panda corys have died (most within a 1 week span before i fully understood water changes and all the important things. i feel horrible now i wish i would have done more reading, but hindsight is 20/20) Someone should have asked her what she had in the tank before allowing her to get more, as well as stopping her. Especially the poor clown loach, being coped up ALONE and in a small 20 gallon high tank.

0morrokh

Well, 6 small tetras are probably the same bio load as 2 or maybe 3 Guppies or Platys...I wouldn't have a problem adding that many to a tank at a time, especially since most of the tetras sold in stores are very young and small.

That's too bad about the 20gal you were given. That's gotta be one of the most overstocked tanks I've ever heard of...too bad a store employee didn't think to ask about it somewhere down the line and prevent her from adding more fish.