Tank crashed?

[Nana Finopolis]

Thought I'd share my experience this morning in hopes it may help someone else. I've kept fish for many years and never had this happen, until today. I was enjoying my planted Betta tank and saw him attempt to jump! Shortly after that he was flashing every few seconds. He was rubbing especially on one particular plant over and over again. I couldn't see anything physically wrong with him. There were no spots, fungus, fins looked fine, etc. Next thought was WATER! I probably should have tested it but I panicked and grabbed my water changing supplies and changed about 50% of the water. It absolutely cured him. I'm keeping a close eye on him, but he has settled down and stopped all the flashing.

What's so interesting to me is that nothing was added or taken out of that tank. I just did a water change 3 days ago and he was fine until this morning. So that tells me that my tank crashed. I'm not the best in testing water as often as I should. I think I better do it more (ya think?). I plan to test the water for the next several days to see if anything goes wacky again. Our fish can tell us so much if we just watch and really observe them. You know what's normal for them and when they act differently it's so obvious. 

I guess what I've learned is to really pay attention to the individual fish so I know when something isn't right. I'm still not sure what happened or why. I could kick myself for not testing the water. Then I would know instead of wondering what happened. Lesson learned. 

[lefty o]

imo, if the tank had crashed a water change would just make things worse. for sure something was off in the water, and changing some helped reduce whatever it was. watching the fish is always the best indicator of something is off. good job watching, and reacting.

[KimM]

I read an article that Betta will flash, rub on decor, and try to jump out of the tank if the pH is too high.

[Daniel]

11 minutes ago, KimM said:

I read an article that Betta will flash, rub on decor, and try to jump out of the tank if the pH is too high.

I kept a lot of bettas over the years in a wide variety of containers and found bettas always had a propensity for jumping if you let them. I never saw any correlation between either pH or water quality that would lead a betta to jump any more than normal.