moved betta to Biube tank and now he doesn't eat...

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Dec 23, 2006
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He's 2-3 years old and has lived his whole life in a simple goldfish bowl. He gets 3-4 Hikari pellets at 7am and 7pm everyday and has always gobbled up his food. I've never treated his water. I just have water in jugs that sits around for months and I gave him 95% water changes every 1-3 weeks. He's always seemed to be healthy.

I started reading more about bettas and that how it's not ideal to keep them in a bowl because they swim around with their own filth/ammonia/etc without filtration and decided to get him a Biube tank because it has a filtration system and I thought he would enjoy all the space to swim around. I've also moved to another city which is notorious for hard water.

I setup the tank according to instructions by putting in the ceramic media, and then putting in the packet of water conditioner. I added my betta in 24 hours after the conditioner, like instructed. At first, I saw him eat a couple pellets. Now he doesn't eat any pellets and they float around at the top, uneaten. I've already removed them. I tested the water pH and its blue and darker than 7.6, but not super dark. I've tried pH decrease on 3 separate occasions and the pH isn't going down at all. I added aquarium salt, which I've never done. I've moved him back to his old fishbowl (with some clean water that I still had in a jug from the old house) and he isn't eating still. He's only been in there less than 30 minutes though.

What could be the problem with my fish? He hasn't lost any color. He doesn't have any sores or white spots. He swims around actively in both the Biube and the fishbowl. Is it the water's pH? Is it because the pump and water flow for the Biube are too strong? Do I need to replace the pump with a weaker one? Do I need to add a heater? Or was it because I didn't cycle the water for a longer amount of time to let the bacteria establish themselves? Sorry for the long post and multiple questions as I'm really a newbie =( Thanks in advance for any help!
 
in the bowl, you may have changed the water frequently to insure that ammonia did not build up? with a filter, you've got to cycle it. this can take as long as two months.

http://faq.thekrib.com/begin-cycling.html

http://badmanstropicalfish.com/start_up/start_up4.html

http://fish.orbust.net/cycling.html

I've tried pH decrease on 3 separate occasions and the pH isn't going down at all. I added aquarium salt,
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stop playing with the pH and stop the salt. your pH out of the tap is just fine and trying to change it will kill your fish. betta do not appreciate salt in their water.

betta fish do not appreciate alot of current in their environment.

betta need a constant water temperature of about 78° .. thus a heater is a good idea
 
Thanks for the links liv2padl. I will read all of them. The reason I added salt was because I read that it kills/prevents parasites, and also because the owner of bettatalk.com recommends it.

http://www.bettatalk.com/water.htm

Other good stuff you might want to add to your water:
Salt. Yes, bettas are not marine fish, but they do love a bit of salt in their water and it also prevents parasites and fungus. Add 1 tablespoon of aquarium salt, or rock salt per 5 gal of water (not table salt!!!! They are bettas, not pretzels!!). Now a day, I actually put 1 teaspoon per 10 gal. What that means is that you can play around a bit with your salt amount, and I have found that anything between 1 teaspoon per 10 gal to 1 tablespoon per 5 gal works.
 
if i had a nickel for every piece of erroneous information i've read on the net and even in books and magazines, i'd be a very rich man. just because bettatalk "recommends" that you use salt in a betta's water does not make it right. while mrs. bettatalk may be having success this way, her logic is bogus.

to begin with, you cannot 'prevent' parasitic diseases by adding salt to a freshwater tank. most of the parasites that exist in freshwater environments, also exist in brackish water or will soon adapt to one.

next, salt does not prevent the vast majority of fungal invections that freshwater fish can succumb to.

next, if you google betta fish and read their history and biology, you'll find that they are native to rice paddies of southern Asia where they inhabit standing or slow-moving water, including floodplains and rice paddies, at temperatures of 24 to 30 °C (75 to 86 °F). these are NOT brackish water environments. this level of temperature should be used in the aquarium. the pH level should range between 6.5 and 7 (slightly acidic). the most important factor in maintaining their ideal tank set-up is that bettas require consistent conditions.

the most important fact however is that the betta - aka Siamese fighting fish sold in pet stores are a variety which was created through selective breeding, by professional aquarists (Myers, 1947; Sakurai, 1992). these are brightly colored usually violet to red, blue and green, with excessively long fins. they have not seen a rice paddy in their entire lives and neither have their parents. they are generationally removed from wild-type specimens which have much shorter fins and are of a drab coloration, except for breeding males.
 
I will assume that you are using the correct ph up/down they are misleading in the kit I got the scale goes from blue at the bottom(ph 7.8) to yellow at the top (ph around 6.0) and I was thinking the number goes smaller as the scale goes higher?????

So what I did is after I had run the test, I added down which made mine stay dark blue...then I added up and one drop made it yellow...so then I knew which way I was changing the pH....although I probably just over think things like this lol.
 
liv2padl is correct with the info he provided.

I would stop trying to adjust the pH, and just maintain the consistency as it comes out of the tap, adjust for temp and condition for chlorine/chloramine as needed.

Keep up a regular water change routine as you shold do with all tanks.

A lot of the issue is probably just getting use to new surroundings, IMO.
 
Especially with older fish, depression shock can be a common thing. Sudden complete environment change with new water conditions probably brought it on. Just keep watching him and feed him what he'll eat (and remove excess) and he should come around.

I also agree on the salt thing. I keep some on hand for use in medicating treatments only, not as an addative. Some people also suggest you dose a small amount of aquarisol for anti-parasite, but I don't follow with that either. (though again, I have some on hand for when I need it)
 
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liv2padl said:
stop playing with the pH and stop the salt. your pH out of the tap is just fine and trying to change it will kill your fish.
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liv2padl said:
the pH level should range between 6.5 and 7 (slightly acidic). the most important factor in maintaining their ideal tank set-up is that bettas require consistent conditions.
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But my pH level is 8 or higher, which obviously falls outside the 6.5-7. Will he still be okay?
 
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lemans81 said:
I will assume that you are using the correct ph up/down they are misleading in the kit I got the scale goes from blue at the bottom(ph 7.8) to yellow at the top (ph around 6.0) and I was thinking the number goes smaller as the scale goes higher?????

So what I did is after I had run the test, I added down which made mine stay dark blue...then I added up and one drop made it yellow...so then I knew which way I was changing the pH....although I probably just over think things like this lol.
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I'm pretty sure I was doing it correctly. 6.0 is yellow whereas 7.6 is blue. My water was a darker blue than 7.6, so I can only guess it is 8.0 or higher, which is why I bought the pH Decrease. Should I instead be adding pH Increase?
 
a pH of 8 or even higher is not a problem unless you wanted to breed betta. they'll breed at a pH of 7 or below but i don't think you'll have much success at higher pH's.
 
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