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YIACrazy
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I can't keep a betta splendins alive. I've got tanks of other fish with no problems. I want to blame my water chemistry. My water out of the tap has high pH an extremely low kH and but a reasonable gH. I understand that raising gH and kH raises pH. How can you have such a low kH, and relatively reasonable gH I heard that the the water "gasing off" changes things. I'm going to try testing water over several days, but basically I add a little salt and a wondershell/crush coral to buffer to try to keep these three parameters more consistent. They seem to drastically change gH with little relative change to kH. I keep my nitrates low with pothos and floating plants. I do fertilze with easy green. Can the change from dosing fertilizers be too much of a change? I see all these planted betta tanks... So people are successful. I noticed I lose less bettas if I change the water much more frequently... But if the plants take care of the nitrates... require fertilizers even... What does a water change do that the plants can't? I don't top off... When the water level starts to drop, I do a water change. I add liquid tannins...(a low dose at frequent intervals) Which I know is healthy, but it lowers pH. I used to use cattapa leaves, but I just take the tannins out because of the frequent water changes. At some point I tried to not use tannins. I didn't notice a difference in health. Is there something I'm missing about the benefits of a water change other than controlling nitrates? Why does salt help? Shouldn't it only be used for sick fish? I don't want to add a bunch of stuff. The only other thing I can think of is that frequent water changes means a constant presence of Prime. My tanks are cycled and always test negative for ammonia... I've tested for both bound and un-bound ammonia. The bettas don't die in a week. They do well for a while... It seems cumulative...

Thanks.

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I used to keep a lot bettas and my routine was to change the water almost everyday (mainly because they were in 1/2 to 1 gallon jars). I always used aged (at least 24 hours), dechlorinated tap water with no other additives.

The less you add to water, the better it is for your fish.

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12 hours ago, YIACrazy said:

Thanks. Someone mentioned something that has me paranoid. He mentioned that maybe I had mycobacterium in my tanks. I know nothing about this.

You undoubtedly do have all kinds of bacteria, microbes, fungus, and what not in your aquarium. I know I do. And thank goodness too because without that part of the world living in our aquariums our fish would die. Mycobacterium is just one more thing not to worry about.

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How long do the bettas live before they start to have issues? What symptoms do they exhibit as they decline? Do you keep a journal of your water params to see if anything/what changes? How old is the tank?

I keep a betta in my 5 gallon planted tank, and the params are so consistently steady (0-5 nitrates) that I only ever water change when the mulm at the bottom gets a bit too much: it's mostly just top offs. Just use tap water conditioned with Prime, 

 

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