Tank reflections stressing betta?

Hey guys!

Its been a while huh? Well, after some more patience and much water testing, my tank finally completed its cycle recently! I added a beautiful Betta fish named Botan about a week ago, and added a small group of Pygmy Corys today (will be adding more later this week, LFS only had 5).

Everyone (including my Mystery Snail which saw this tank through its cycle like a true trooper) seems to be doing great. Water is looking good and clean, everyone is cruising around happily and eating well, ammonia has stayed at 0 and nitrates are still fairly low. But there's a couple things I've noticed about my betta.

One is that he's VERY active; whenever I look in the tank he seems to be zipping around everywhere. Like, often aggressively swimming from one place to another. I have a nice little Bacopa forest but I don't see him hanging out in there really. He seems to be moving a lot more than the other bettas I see at LFS (they are all in nice 10gal tanks).

I am also 99% sure that whenever I turn my light on, its creating reflections on all the walls of the tank because whenever I do he flys around the edges flaring and flapping his fins. I know some of that is good for them but he seems to be spending a LOT of time flaring and zipping around when the light is on. Im worried hes gonna get stressed/exhausted.

Is there any way to mitigate the reflections? Is it an illusion I am seeing just because I'm looking into the tank? Is it linked to the light?

I've been leaving the lights off pretty often, though I suspect any light in the room is causing the issue; the only time I really see him truly chilling out is when I first get up in the morning after its been dark all night. The plants are starting to suffer lol.

Anybody get any ideas on what I could do? Also anyone have any thoughts on reducing the brightness on my light? It seems WAY too intense.

Thanks so much!

 

Maybe try to find a light with a dimmer type feature.

Reflections, can break up reflections along the glas by putting plants along the glass or even like plain white non glossy paper up against it or anything else that may help dull/eliminate his reflection.

 

Matte paper taped to the back/sides would work probably. In the interim of me finding a permanent solution for my old betta who did the same thing, I put a few dark sticky notes I had in the areas that reflected the most and that worked temporarily. Also - is your bettas name a yu yu hakusho reference? It’s awesome

 

I have the same issue, and I change things around a bit to give him something "new" to investigate every other water change. I also use Indian almond leaves for the tannins, and that has a calming effect.

Also, when I added a floating betta log to my tank, that seemed to help as well.

 

Matte paper taped to the back/sides would work probably. In the interim of me finding a permanent solution for my old betta who did the same thing, I put a few dark sticky notes I had in the areas that reflected the most and that worked temporarily. Also - is your bettas name a yu yu hakusho reference? It’s awesome

Yes. He is blue. I'm so happy someone got it!!

I have the same issue, and I change things around a bit to give him something "new" to investigate every other water change. I also use Indian almond leaves for the tannins, and that has a calming effect.

Also, when I added a floating betta log to my tank, that seemed to help as well.

Actually I just did a big water change after posting this and during that I added some rocks to form a little cave and moved my Bacopa forest so it's a little closer together. I observed for a while with the light off and he seemed to calm down, also was a busy checking out the new setup. They're so curious lol.

I actually also added a tannin leaf during the water change so I'm hoping all that will amount to him chilling out a bit. I have heard they like the logs! I'll have to grab him one.

Thanks so much guys! Extremely helpful as always.