Female Betta Jumper

Steven 1

AC Members
Feb 27, 2014
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My female Betta jumped out of the tank onto the floor while I was out tonight. I've had her for 4-6 months or so - she was juvenile when I got her. I have changed the substrate to dirt and installed a new filter recently - could have had some impact. I also just did a 25% water change bringing the water level to the underside of the 10g plastic frame's "lip."

When I got home, I noticed something strange on the floor. I turned on the light and it was my blue betta. Her skin was pretty dry - I estimate that she had jumped 1/2 hour earlier. She moved when I picked her up so I put her back in the tank.

I don't know if she'll make it even to tomorrow morning, but I think she is alive. I was hand-feeding her frozen brine shrimp from an eye-dropper to make sure she got enough. This whole jumping experience affected me a lot. I looked in Google and there are lots of examples of Bettas jumping. I will have to keep track of her.
 
Oh yes. I've got 4 female bettas in my community 55g. One of them took a flying leap out of the tank on me two different times and splatted onto the ceramic tile floor below. Both times were when I lifted a glass top for feeding. Both times I was able to immediately grab her up and get her back into the tank. She had a popped out eye both times, but over a short time, completely healed. These bettas are such fatties now, I don't think they could leap that far if they wanted to. LOL. You can see the 4 of them to the upper right:

 
Found her dead where she was lying this morning. Maybe it's for the best, her injuries were quite severe.
 
Ah! That's too bad Steven. They're generally pretty tough fish and can breathe air. Between the trauma and being dried out was too much for her. Like I say, the one I have that plopped to the floor twice looked horrible for a day or two afterwards.

I also had one of my silver hatchets dart out a few times. They're a good time to grasp also.
 
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