A few days ago, one of my college friends decided he was going to "get rid" of his 3 white cloud mountain minnows because they are too small or boring for him or something. I am not too familiar with white clouds, but these have a golden body and red in the fins, so I assume they are a special variety.
I decided that I would adopt them rather than see the poor things "gotten rid of." I did not post this to the forum because I know I would get flak about overcrowding, but I am going home in less than a week, so although the crowding situation is not ideal, it is temporary. At home I have an empty 10 gallon.
Things had been going great for about 4 days. I could not asked for better tankmates than minnows, shrimps and my betta. Today things changed however. When I was doing the bi-weekly water change, one of the minnows jumped out of the half-full cup she was in (quite impressive as I was unaware that they jumped at all). I found her on the floor after noticing only 2 minnows in the cup. I put her back in the tank ASAP, but she was upside down and barely "breathing." After about two hours she righted herself and began, albeit slowly, swimming around inside of her "quarantine cup" floating in the tank. I decided being with her school would probably reduce her stress level.
Immediately after releasing her from the cup, my blue betta Ace began to follow and harass her with quick nips. I removed him immediately. He had never before shown any agression towards the minnows. I decided I would add my brown betta to the tank in the blue's place. After acclimating and releasing him, however, he too began attacking, but he attacked all of the minnows equally. For some reason, they chose to flee to open water rather than to their planted cover. Currently, both bettas are in isolation, and the sick minnow is in much the same state as she was after her suicidal leap.
Did my bettas contract a fishy version of rabies or something? Do bettas prey on the weak usually? I do not think they could possibly mistake the white clouds for other male bettas. I would give the white clouds to a LFS, but I do not know of any good ones and I think it might be a death sentence for them.
I decided that I would adopt them rather than see the poor things "gotten rid of." I did not post this to the forum because I know I would get flak about overcrowding, but I am going home in less than a week, so although the crowding situation is not ideal, it is temporary. At home I have an empty 10 gallon.
Things had been going great for about 4 days. I could not asked for better tankmates than minnows, shrimps and my betta. Today things changed however. When I was doing the bi-weekly water change, one of the minnows jumped out of the half-full cup she was in (quite impressive as I was unaware that they jumped at all). I found her on the floor after noticing only 2 minnows in the cup. I put her back in the tank ASAP, but she was upside down and barely "breathing." After about two hours she righted herself and began, albeit slowly, swimming around inside of her "quarantine cup" floating in the tank. I decided being with her school would probably reduce her stress level.
Immediately after releasing her from the cup, my blue betta Ace began to follow and harass her with quick nips. I removed him immediately. He had never before shown any agression towards the minnows. I decided I would add my brown betta to the tank in the blue's place. After acclimating and releasing him, however, he too began attacking, but he attacked all of the minnows equally. For some reason, they chose to flee to open water rather than to their planted cover. Currently, both bettas are in isolation, and the sick minnow is in much the same state as she was after her suicidal leap.
Did my bettas contract a fishy version of rabies or something? Do bettas prey on the weak usually? I do not think they could possibly mistake the white clouds for other male bettas. I would give the white clouds to a LFS, but I do not know of any good ones and I think it might be a death sentence for them.
