Betta Depression

[sankaz]

This is my first and only betta, Grizm. He's been hiding more and not always eating when I offer food. I changed two things in the last month or six weeks. One was a plant light for the above-the-rim plants that was super bright. I've removed that because I thought he might not like how bright it was. And I added six gold white cloud minnows. I've had him three months or so, before all the above I bought him a betta mirror that scared him so bad he hid for hours. 

I'm so afraid he's depressed. I really love him, I visited him for weeks at my LFS and couldn't stand seeing him in a one liter tank with a plant so even though he was expensive I had to get him out of there. I probably sound like a nutjob but he isn't just a fish to me. Any advice? Will he be happier alone? I'm feeding him Vibrabites and freeze dried bloodworms.

SanKaz

Temp 78.9,  pH 7.6,  Nitrate 10,  Nitrite 0,  GH 300, KH 40, Chlorine 0

[Guppysnail]

Try a more varied diet. Add Indian almond leaves, a floating betta log or a floating betta playground anything you can to give him things to do. If he is bored he will not as happy as he could be. The up side is Bettas are smart the downside of smart is bored without enrichment. Check out @Chick-In-Of-TheSea journal on things she did for Geppetto and @xXInkedPhoenixX colossal journal for ideas. Freeze dried blood worms on a regular basis may not be the best as they offer higher fat than nutrients I think. Try a few betta specific foods also. 

[dangerflower]

How does he interact with the white clouds? Is he aggressive toward them, or seem scared of them, or does he mostly ignore them? That could clue you in to whether or not they are a source of stress.

Do you have any floating plants? Those often make bettas feel more secure, and they would block out some of the light and maybe allow you to keep using your plant light. 

I really like using frozen foods to give my betta some enrichment. Frozen daphnia is great and good for their digestive systems too. It floats in the water column for a while so he can kind of 'hunt' for it which might provide some entertainment for him.

[glenn anthony]

just to pitch in here,

have always kept bettas even for a few years when i was outta the hobby, i always had 1-2, they always love those leaf hammocks (see iff you can the type that has 2 leaves attached (found a few styles on amazon)  and the floating log that guppysnail suggested, also those tannins from the almond leaves work great, bteeder use them so the male can make the bubble nest under it. (it also keeps eggs healthy due to natural anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties.

Now even thou these aren't wild bettas they and many other fish do like tannins in their tank (discus, bettas, also shrimp love to eat the micro organisms that come from the leafs)

hope some of this helps cause i have had a few betta that were always a little sad (i would get them jumping and eating a pellet from my finger🐟

[sankaz]

I'm used to dogs needing their diet to be stable! And never thought about the caloric/fat content of fish food. I'll try frozen daphnia (thanks @dangerflower). And I'll read @COT and @xXLinkedPhoenixX (thanks @Guppysnail). 

[sankaz]

[Hally M.]

He’s beautiful. I agree with @dangerflower depending on how he interacts with the other fish that will suggest wether or not he needs to be alone. That might be the cause of the shyness. Also yeah try varying the diet and adding more enrichment. Good pellets I’ve found are  Xtreme Betta pellets, Hikari Betta pellets, and Bug Bites Betta pellets. 

I might’ve missed it but how big is your tank?

[sankaz]

Grizm is in a 10 gallon tank. Anubias plants, a banana plant, amazon frogbit and duckweed #!&^$. Thanks @Hally M. for the names of foods to try.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I try to vary the environment a little from time to time, offering different swim throughs and floating things. I noticed he loves to bubble nest when I first add a catappa leaf, because it floats for awhile. But it sinks in a day or so, ruining his creation. So I attached a little piece of cork to silk leaves and they remain floating and he bubble nests under those now.  Recently I added another silk leaf at the waterline held in place by a suction cup. Something that doesn’t float around. He loves hovering under it.

 

I attached an anubias to the wall with an heater suction cup, and he uses those leaves as resting spots, similar to what the fake betta leaf hammocks that you can buy do. 

The most recent addition to the tank is a swim through that looks like a rock. 
 

He likes interacting with me. I give him one piece of food at a time and he hunts it. I vary the diet- frozen bloodworms, betta pellets, frozen brine shrimp, daphnia. I play this game with him also. Usually once a day. No more than maybe 10-15 seconds. It makes him think he’s defending his turf and gives him purpose, I think. 

You could try offering a swim through. A lot of bettas like these floating logs.

My tank is 5g and the log was a bit big for the space, but he does have plants he enjoys in there. And this is the rock he has to swim through. 

He seems to get excited and interested when I add something to the tank. Such as this floating plant. 

Based on his interaction with the fake fish, he will not be getting tankmates. He has a bad attitude. That’s why I agreed to adopt him. He wasn’t getting along with my friend’s mystery snail.

For your lighting- you could try placing parchment paper between your light and your lid. It softens the light.

One more thing - make sure there is little to no current in the tank. Bettas do not like current.  Use a sponge filter or put a baffle on your hang-on-back filter if you have one. Girl Talks Fish has a great video on YouTube for reducing current.

Bettas like warmer water and need a heater, but white clouds are cold water fish. See if you can look up the temperature range for each type of fish and set the heater for the temp that overlaps, if that makes sense.

Edited December 18, 2022 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

 

[sankaz]

Super fun videos, and Geppetto is interesting to watch. He's really interactive with his territory! 

I had a small HOB filter but took that out a month or so ago. All along I've had a sponge filter and a small box filter. I bought a white perforated tunnel with a suction cup but he stays away from it. I'll try the floating tunnel, with 10g there should be room. I tried plastic leaves with suction cups but he avoided those too. He enjoyed the almond leaves while they floated. Grizm tolerates the otocinclus but I have noticed that he's a little edgy with the minnows. I'll move them to another 10g. Fortunately they are very healthy and swim around in their pack of 6 all the time. My observation has been that he occasionally will face them when they get close to the food he's eating, I put some by him and some elsewhere in the tank. I work in a fruit fly lab, can he have larvae do you think? Probably only a few a week because they're grown on rich medium.

Your videos are a huge help. I realize that I've maybe expected more vigorous activity from him than reasonable. Maybe he's more of a couch potato like me!

Thanks for spending time to help. 

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/18/2022 at 1:03 PM, sankaz said:

I work in a fruit fly lab, can he have larvae do you think?

I don’t see why not; bettas are insectivores. @Odd Duck?

[Odd Duck]

I don’t see why a few here or there would be a problem as part of a varied diet.  I tried wingless fruit flies for my pea puffers and they were disdainful.  Seemed offended that I thought they would accept such poor fare.  😝 😆

I didn’t have bettas at the time or I would have tried the flies with them.  I’ve read some bettas appreciate them.  I never thought to try the larvae with the pea puffers.  They do tend to like worms.  You could pretty easily compare nutrient content of the FF larvae with bloodworms and betta pellets.  I’m sure the nutrient content is published for all life stages of FF since they’re studied and used for feeding so extensively.

@sankaz, one of the reasons we try to vary the diet of fish is that their nutritional needs aren’t nearly as well researched as domestic dogs.  We have decades of very solid studies on canine nutrition.  Just make sure to buy food from a company that actually does research and life-long diet trials with their foods as opposed to just formulating food to the numbers on paper like so many companies that spend all their budget on commercials that spout false nutrition claims like “by-products are bad” which is garbage based on not a speck of scientific knowledge.  “By-products” are usually the first parts of the prey animal eaten by wolves or wild dogs.  Take THAT unethical marketing gimmick!  Stepping off the soapbox now.

Fish nutrition has some solid info behind it for some species, but nobody has done in depth research on hundreds or thousands of bettas over their entire lifespan.  That information just doesn’t exist.  Decades of experience help, but that isn’t really solid, science backed research.  Fish are hundreds of different species with a huge variety of diets.  There are studies that look at stomach contents of wild fish in a small area, usually at a single time of year. Which has some value, but it’s limited value, not a comprehensive, be all, end all, we now know everything we could possibly need to know about betta nutrition kind of studies.  So legit companies have to extrapolate as best they can based on the studies that are available, along with using knowledge gained by success of experienced breeders, comparisons to other fish with similar diets and expected needs, etc.  Poor companies make generic diets and try to make them so they at least don’t kill the fish quickly.  Most fish still survive and do OK despite some questionable quality of formulation of some diets that are out there.

So, feeding a varied diet to fish to try to minimize any risk of deficiencies, then letting their bodies sort out their nutrition needs from there is basically what we resort to doing.  Usually it’s reasonably successful.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/19/2022 at 4:38 PM, Odd Duck said:

nutrition claims like “by-products are bad” which is garbage based on not a speck of scientific knowledge.  “By-products” are usually the first parts of the prey animal eaten by wolves or wild dogs.

I saw or read something about wet food that is labeled “dinner” or “entree” is bad - maybe it has too much filler or something?  I never know what to believe, there are differing opinions. Interested to know a vet’s point of view on that one!

[Odd Duck]

I wouldn’t buy any dog or cat food that isn’t produced by Hill’s/Science Diet (same parent company), Purina, Royal Canin, or Iams.  These are the only companies that are doing life-long diet trials.  I haven’t used Iams in years, but have used many foods over many decades from the other three companies and can feel good about recommending them.  I can’t feel good about recommending most other brands.  There aren’t many brands I recommend against but they are all on the list the FDA made as the 16 brands most often associated as potentially causing nutrition related dilatative cardiomyopathy in dogs.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/19/2022 at 5:05 PM, Odd Duck said:

I wouldn’t buy any dog or cat food that isn’t produced by Hill’s/Science Diet (same parent company), Purina, Royal Canin, or Iams.  These are the only companies that are doing life-long diet trials.  I haven’t used Iams in years, but have used many foods over many decades from the other three companies and can feel good about recommending them.  I can’t feel good about recommending most other brands.  There aren’t many brands I recommend against but they are all on the list the FDA made as the 16 brands most often associated as potentially causing nutrition related dilatative cardiomyopathy in dogs.

We aren’t dogs but we think the info applies and we thank you!  We eat Hills and have silky soft coats since we started on the Hills food a few years ago!

 

[Patrick_G]

On 12/19/2022 at 2:05 PM, Odd Duck said:

 

I wouldn’t buy any dog or cat food that isn’t produced by Hill’s/Science Diet (same parent company), Purina, Royal Canin, or Iams.  These are the only companies that are doing life-long diet trials.  I haven’t used Iams in years, but have used many foods over many decades from the other three companies and can feel good about recommending them.

 

Odd Duck is the fourth vet that I've heard this from. I have to bite my tongue when I see friends spending money on the latest high-dollar food.

As I was typing that I was thinking about how much I spend on fancy fish food, I guess my fish don't care if the label says TetraColor or Xtream! 😁

Edited December 20, 2022 by Patrick_G

[Guppysnail]

We are Hills dry/Royal Canin wet kids. 🥰 (not the dragon🤣) 

My vet recommended the same as @Odd Duck 20 years ago with my other cats. The difference once I switched them was night and day.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/19/2022 at 8:19 PM, Guppysnail said:

We are Hills dry/Royal Canin wet kids. 🥰 (not the dragon🤣) 

My vet recommended the same as @Odd Duck 20 years ago with my other cats. The difference once I switched them was night and day.

It’s pretty obvious the dragon would eat atomic fireballs. Favorite condiment is Liquid Smoke. Helps light all the candles in the house.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[sankaz]

Grizm is a little more active. But two days ago I saw him swim into a tight space next to the cholla wood that's in there for the otos. Now his left pectoral fin is clamped to his side. I started maracyn yesterday to prevent infection. He's still not eating much. The cholla wood is out of there now.

I've tried Xtreme Betta Pellets and even the Gold White Cloud Minnows turn up their noses at them. Next I'll try some frozen brine shrimp.

My GoodGirl (GG) is on Science Diet too. She's still frisky at 11 years old.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/20/2022 at 10:52 AM, sankaz said:

Xtreme Betta Pellets

Huh.  Geppetto likes the Xtreme Betta Pellets. He also like Top Fin betta pellets, which came with him when I adopted him.  He likes frozen bloodworms and daphnia.  I give him the bloodworms one at a time with aquascaping tongs.  He is not too good at seeing the daphnia or the frozen brine shrimp though.  The frozen brine usually fall to the bottom, but the daphnia floats for a good while and he eventually does find that.  Also I dropped in a small chunk of algae wafer for the snail and Geppetto ate it. 🙄

A lot of people feed Bug Bites to their betta.  I believe @xXInkedPhoenixX feeds Ocean Nutrition betta pellets.

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

On 12/20/2022 at 9:53 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

I believe @xXInkedPhoenixX feeds Ocean Nutrition betta pellets

Yes, I feed these- found them once when I had a very finicky Betta years ago. They're small and float too so that was important. So I have them again for my new Betta, but I mix in all sorts of other foods for them. 

[sankaz]

Thank goodness that I have access to fish meds. Grizm is perking up so much. His left pectoral isn't clamped anymore and I can see that it has a severe tear! Day three of Maracyn and he's recovering well.

I also think he prefers having the Gold White Cloud Minnows living elsewhere, he's much happier. The pygmy cories don't seem to have a problem with the minnows.

Is it weird to have a fish tank in my bathroom? Oh well, I like it so I don't care. 😁

[Odd Duck]

On 12/21/2022 at 5:03 PM, sankaz said:

Is it weird to have a fish tank in my bathroom? Oh well, I like it so I don't care. 😁

Hmmm.  I’m pretty sure I could fit a 5 gallon on my bathroom counter.  🤔 😃 

[sankaz]

I like looking at the tank while brushing my teeth, and putting in my contacts. They get visited often during the day when I'm home. 🙃

m