anpa1019

Hi again everyone,

I have VT male betta that's been a troublemaker ever since I had him. After overcoming battels with parasites and fin rot, he decided to start biting his tail. I thought he was just bored so I would move the things in his tank around but that was just making it worse. As soon I pretty much gave up and stopped bothering him, his tail started growing back. He is doing great and his tail was completly back to normal until...I changed his water. As soon I change his water, he bites his whole tail off. Then a day later, no more biting until the next water change. When I originally moved him to his 6.6 gallon bookshelf tank, the water was uncycled so I was doing daily water changes and his tail looked horrible. He has been in there for about 3 months now so I am only changing his water every week or two. I try to change it less often to cut down on the stress but I can't avoid the changes completely. I treat my water with prime and try to match the water temperature to that of his tank. I am just getting frustarted because the two weeks in between changes is just long enough to grow his tail back to normal and then it's all gone again. Poor guy!

Lucy

Poor thing, it must be just as stressful for you too.
I wonder why water changes stress him so much.
How are you doing the changes?

anpa1019

I use a water siphon and do about 50% changes at a time. I have found that no matter how much water I take out, he still does it so I might as well change more of the water less frequently. I leave him in there and try to not move any of the decorations since that stressed him out even more. I can't do that forever though, I do want to clean some of the decorations eventually.

pinkfloydpuffer

Poor little guy
Sorry he's not being very happy.

Lucy

I'm just throwing this out there, by any chance do you start the syphon by shaking it?

When I did that my betta would get so stressed, I hated to change her water.

jdhef

I don't know if this would help or hurt, but maybe you could remove a little water from the tank and put it in a bowl, then put the betta in the bowl of tank water, do the water change and put the betta back in the tank.

Red1313

hmmm... I know that you've got to clean the gravel in your tank, hense you need to vac... could you maybe get a solid sheet of some kind and use it to coral you betta to one side of the tank and vac the gravel on the other, for water changes you could maybe try just scooping a few cups out of it a few times a day and changing only that. the smaller volume water change would possiably help her get used to it and also keep water quality up between changes.

Lucy

Good suggestion Red.

If there's just a betta in the tank, you could use a turkey baster to clean up it's waste and scoop out some water using a clean cup like Red suggested.
I do that in my 5g mini bow that's home to my ADF.