I was totally impulsive today when I was at Petco checking heater prices (the heater in one of my 10gal "fraternity" tanks shattered yesterday, so I had to replace it). I just happened to stroll by the
betta section and bent down to check their HMs and deltas. There I found this GORGEOUS dark blue butterfly DT. I'm usually not one for the deltas, but this guy was just gorgeous. So, I bought him.
His cup was only about half full of water so he could barely swim upright (if you've been to Petco, you know how shallow their betta cups are anyway) and he seemed to be kinda drifting over to his side when he wasn't moving. He did come to the front of the cup to watch me when I picked him up, which was unusual since usually I have to "chase" them around the cup to get a good look at them (you know, the whole spin-the-cup game where they stay just ahead of you so you can't see them :P ).
Anyway, I had some other errands to run after I picked him up and he ended up being in the truck for over an hour. It's freezing cold and I don't usually run my heater much to conserve gas, but I did run it tonight because I had him in the truck. However, I had to do some grocery shopping, so he was in there for at least 45 minutes with no heat. I covered his cup with a jacket and nestled him down in a protected area of the console so that it would retain some of the heat in the cup, but apparently that wasn't enough.
I got him home and put him in my temporarily divided 10gal (going to finish dividing it tomorrow since I got the report binder clip things tonight to do the
DIY dividers). The tank is at 79F and fully cycled (0
ammonia, 0 nitrites and about 10 nitrates). There's a VT male in one section and a rather beat up CT male in the middle (he and his previous neighbor, my other CT male, ended up being able to get at each other through the plastic canvas and tore each other up pretty bad...the other CT male is in a different divided tank now). Since I got him home, he looks a little better and his color is back to the nice deep blue it was (it had faded to a washed-out blue), but he's still swimming a bit oddly. He is kind of head-down, but will slip over to his side every once in a while.
Should he be okay once he warms up more and gets used to the tank? I will have to move him tomorrow since I'm going to be finishing up the tank he's in, but he'll be going straight into another established, divided, heated, filtered 10gal. Thanks, guys. No pics of the new guy yet, but I'll get some of everyone tomorrow after I get the tanks divided and completely finished. I haven't decided on a name, but he'll either be Caius, Felix or Demitri, depending on what his personality turns out to be.
He looks like this, just darker blue and his ventral fins are completely white (as are his pectorals):
http://ebetta.com/wp-content/uploads...betta-fish.jpg
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I guess that must be a common coloration.
