Tropical Fish Information

Posts Tagged ‘mate’

My male betta has recently (as in the last couple of days) stopped moving around his tank. He sits in one spot in the tank and just floats there near the surface. If I prod him to move him, he’ll swim the perimeter of the tank until he arrives back at that same spot. He hasn’t been eating well during this time, if at all. Occasionally, he’ll be tipped over slightly to one side, and just now, I saw that he had his nose tilted down in the water for a while. It looks as though he might have two very small white dots on his head, but I’m not sure if these are White Spot or not. They’re about the size of a pinhead; I think they may just be part of his colouring that I haven’t noticed before.

I’ve only had him for a couple of weeks. He’s a halfmoon (?) betta from Wal-Mart. In the time I’ve had him, he’s been building bubble nests like crazy. Is this happening because I haven’t brought him a mate? He’s in his own 1 gallon tank if that makes a difference.

Does anyone know what’s wrong with him?

I’ve been trying to breed my betta fish for a while now and i conditioned them both and put the female in a chimney glass tube where the male could see her but they couldn’t touch each other. About 6 days later I released her into the tank with the male because he had a nice bubble nest being made and she looked plump with eggs and i could see her egg spot. He was quite aggressive with her for the first couple days and i was thinking about keeping them together one more day and then trying again later. I had been watching them all the time to see if they would breed but they wouldn’t. So today i left my house for an hour tops and i came home to see little round white things hanging from the bubble nest. I realized they were eggs so i thought maybe they weren’t done breeding so i kept them together for a couple more hours but they wouldn’t breed anymore. But it looked like the male was still trying to attract her to the nest by flaring his fins and swimming around her. Then the female ate an egg so i decided to take her out and put her back into her original tank. She seems to be doing ok i fed her and i put betta fix in her tank to heal her ripped fins and scales. It doesn’t look like there are that many eggs maybe 50? So i feel like they weren’t done mating but they wouldn’t mate anymore. Should i have left her in the tank? Also i have a filter, a heater and plants for her to hide in and a styrofoam cup cut in half where the bubble nest is. There’s clean water and the PH level is 7.0. And the tank is a 10 gallon filled 5 inches up.

The tank I have is an Eclipse Hex 5 and the water stays at about 79 degrees Fahrenheit. I was thinking of getting a couple of Neon Tetras to put in there, but I’ve read that Chinese Algae eaters can be aggressive. Grover (the Algae eater) has had his own tank now for about two and a half weeks and he’s quite active in there. I don’t want to get him some friends only to come home and find that he’s eaten the other fish because they swam too close to his rock. I’d really like to get a few more fish in there, but the tank is on the small side. I don’t want to be accused of fish abuse for getting a fish that needs more room. Although I’ve heard that Betta fish are great for my style of tank, I do not want a passive fish. I would also like to avoid guppies because of the whole eating the babies thing. Any ideas?
First off, my bad. It’s a Siamese algae eater, not a Chinese. Like I said I’m new to the fish game and I don’t know what I have. I inherited the little guy from a relative who passed recently. He seems to be fine in his tank, but like I said, is there anything friendly that I can put as a tank mate?