Hi, I recently acquired myself a male betta! I'm absolutely in love with him already. And always stressing out, especially after discovering that in 12 hours my water had gotten so cloudy it's unbelievable!! I went to the petstore and they gave me something to help the Cycle going. I have my betta in a 1.5 GL tank, with a filter, bio-wheel, and 2 plants and one rock. I also have him in with 2 ghost shrimps because they're just awesome i find!

The guy at the pet store told me to go home and do a 50% water change and put drops of CYCLE in the water to integrate some of the good bacteria to help turn ammonia into nitrites into nitrates. Now my fishy's water is still quite cloudy, although a lot lighter, and he's acting a lot happier! I don't know why they say that Bettas are very dormant fish, this one loves to swim around! Anyways, from now on every other day i have to do a 25% water change in order to clear up teh cloudiness, but the drastic change between yesterday and today is unbelievable! He was just laying, barely ever moving yesterday. Today he's all over the place and is interacting with my ghosties. There doesn't seem to be any negative energy in that tank either!!

Anyways, on to my point.. How should I clean my tank? What's the best way to do it? I only have a 1/4 inch gravel on the bottom so they say that I shouldn't even bother with a gravel vaccuum, but I have no clue how exactly i'm supposed to clean it! Back in teh day when I was a kid, they used to take fish out of the tank entirely put them in a different jar and do a full cleaning! Do I basically take out 50% of the water adn put it in a different container with my Betta and wipe it down?

TIA
Erin

Just another question, today i noticed that my ghost shrimp doesn't seem to be able to move it's "legs". He's just jumping around the tank and getting around by jumpign and floating. Could it be possibel that my betta injured it?

Erin

I really don't know anything about ghost shrimp, so I'm afraid that I can't help you with your second question.

However, Bettas are supposed to get along quite amicably with just about anything other than more Bettas, so I don't think that's the issue.

As for water changing, around here we dump the whole thing and put the fishy in a smaller container while we clean the fishbowl, but we don't have filters for our Bettas, so you may be able to get away with a 50%. I'd say try it and see how it works for you. If you find that the 50% isn't keeping the water clean enough, then do a full clean.

Well 1 ghost shrimp died today, and the other one is hurting badly. I've seperated the shrimp from my Betta, and he seems to be "livening" up a bit, I put him in a vase with an algae tablet and he's eating it. So hopefully he'll survive so I can put him back in my tank once the tank has cycled. If not, oh well there are always snails.


Erin
"Alpha" Betta

Hi Muddy!!!

I currently 'breed' bettas & find that a 50% water change with a filter is more than enough to keep the water clean. The smallest container that a betta of mine is in, is 2 gallons. I have 14 'tanks' right now and it takes me a good 4 hours to throughly clean all of my tanks.... Betta's are awesome fish

if your water was cloudy in the beginning i hazard to guess that you didn't rinse your substrate before adding it to the tank initially ... no biggie ... it always settles after a few days.

Well the water has cleared up, with the help of "cycle" and my betta's happy as ever. I rinsed and cleaned everything with practically boiling water, but it could've been that, plus my ghost shrimp caused too much waste in my opinion, as soon as they both died it was a lot better.

I had a 10 gallon fish tank with 3 goldfish and a betta. The betta really liked being with the gold fish. I would use it for a night light for my daughter as an infant. As long as my betta;s were in a big tank they survived and when i had them in something small they would die..

In my experiance ghost shrimp are not very hardy. I've kept them at a max of month and a half, in perfect conditions with smaller fish that didn't bother them. Here ghost shrimp are used for the soul purpose of feeding to other fish and only cost 10cents a piece so I don't really think they are bred to be healthy and able to live out long lives in a tank. I bought them because I loved having them in the tank but gave up after they would just die off.

Its normal for the tank to get cloudy when first set up. Its one of the most common things you hear about for beginners. As far as your ghost shrimp go.. dont put it back.. your betta will eat it.

Ghost shrimp actually dont cause waste.. they eat fish poop. Thats what they are good for.. cleaning your tank. Your betta was probably attacking them. Bettas are fairly messy fish. I WOULD suggest getting a gravel vac to clean your fish tank. They sell tiny ones for small tanks. Its the only way your going to clean your gravel without taking it out and washing it.. that kills your biological filter and you have to start cycling all over each time you do this. Being such a small tank you want to vac it a couple times a week to keep conditions optimal. I wouldn't take much advice from an LFS. Half the time they dont know what they are talking about. Here is a good site you might want to check out. Be patient it takes a few min to load.

www.bettatalk.com