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Oh yes, and this is a screw-in type of compact fluorescent.

I just bought a Finnex 4 gallon tank to use as a freshwater red cherry shrimp tank with moss in it. It came with a lamp that uses a 26w, 115V, 60 Hz bulb that is part blue, part white. I'd love to replace this with a more plant-friendly bulb. I've found some CFL "grow lights" online, but none...

Well, you can always try just doing the water changes and keep a close eye on the betta. If he gets better, then you've done OK with just changing his water. But if the fin rot gets worse even as you keep the water cleaner, then you need to medicate him. Also, you might want to check the Aq...

Oh, and you already have several fish in there, right? Well, you probably have high ammonia, which is what is most likely causing your betta's fin rot. I hope you get the freshwater test kit soon to confirm. In the meantime, do frequent partial changes to help keep the ammonia down. I believe...

Is your tank cycled? Most fish meds are fine for fish, they just tend to hurt inverts like snails. I'm sure you can read up on it online to make sure, though. Antibiotic meds can also kill off some of your beneficial bacteria in the filter. Do you have a little bowl or "hospital tank"? You can...

Having read a lot of message board and blog posts about flaring, the consensus seems to be that allowing them to flare for something like 10 min a day is fine, and even good. Gives them exercise, shakes off their boredom, allows them to feel tough. But more than that can stress them out. HTH.

I've been having an e-mail chat with one of the big betta breeders/importers from aquabid, who has perfect 100% good feedback, and he says the same thing as loraxchick and OldMan47. He keeps his bettas in small jars in a warm room, changes their water completely on a weekly basis. I told him...

What size tank is he in? What are your water params? Is your tank heated and filtered? I think fin rot is caused by gram negative bacteria, google to confirm, but I think Maracyn 2 is effective against gram negative. I don't think fin rot is contagious, either. Never read that it was, anyway.

My betta flares at anything that is a bright blue. I realized this when I unthinkingly left a bottle of Bettafix, which is a strong cobalt color, right next to the tank. A few minutes later I noticed betta was flaring like mad. Then I realized he was flaring at the bottle, lol. Moved it, of...

Aww, so sorry.

I have a Theo Hydor adjustable 25W heater and I really like it. I had a Marineland Eclipse 10w non-adjustable heater, which was cute and compact and easy to hide, but it always ran hot. It was supposed to keep the water temp constant at 78 deg F, but it kept it at more like 83-84! Once on a hot...

Heh, not a helpful response, but thanks for tryin. :lol: What I mean to ask is this: how long (months, years) until a betta is fully grown from the time it is hatched?

Yeah, but yours looks more like what I thought plakats were supposed to look like, with the pronounced slanted shape of the anal fin, the shorter dorsal fin, and the rounded-edge tail as opposed to the straight-edged tail. I found a betta listing on aquabid that has fins a lot like the one I...

Just curious. It seems as though they can start spawning around 3 months of age, but is that when they are "full grown" in terms of their body and fin size? I read on some other site that one hint about your betta's age is how long its fins are and how big its body is, with the idea that...

Ah, OK, I guess this was a breeder reject then. He had a very stubby body too, which is more of a plakat trait?

I was at my LFS yesterday and I saw a small betta that had shorter finnage a la the plakat look but with the shape of the halfmoon finnage. The length of his fins were longer than the typical plakat but definitely way shorter than the typical halfmoon. But they were symmetric around the body...

Ah, so I had an e-mail discussion with the seller. Because, yes, I was interested, I love "mini" things. Well it turns out these are not bred to be mini, they are just the runts of her latest spawn, lol.

Mine won't eat flakes or pellets. Period. I wasn't going to do the whole "wait until he's hungry enough to eat" control game with my betta. Instead, I gave in. I feed him frozen blood worms and daphnia only now. He always eats those. :good:

OK, so I got rid of my sulfuric acid/pH down by combining it wtih the ammonia I used to do the fishless cycling in order to neutralize both harsh chemicals. Didn't end up having enough to neutralize all of the ammonia, though, so I breathed ammonia fumes for a while. Pew! Then I went to LFS...

I think that's caused by a bacteria called "Columnaris" and it's a very common betta disease, along with fin rot and velvet. I'm a new betta owner too, and that's what I've gathered from reading online. My very very first betta died of it. I only had him two days, though, so I think he actually...

Any ammonia reading is bad. Try changing his water daily to make sure you get a reading of 0 ppm. I know the others here said not to change 100% daily, but if you're getting an ammonia reading, it's probably a good idea. From a thread I put up recently, the consensus seemed to be that having...

Geez, I'm a horrible fish mommy. I hurt my betta this morning. Here's the whole sad story... Yesterday, I got a nice piece of driftwood with anubias nana rooted on it in the mail that I had bought from a guy on eBay, along with a Lace Java Fern to attach to the piece of driftwood I already...

So I have my first betta in a newly cycled 5.5 gallon tank with a Red Sea Art Deco Nano filter. I have the filter flow turned down to close to its lowest setting, such that the surface of the water barely moves, but it's not completely still. Even in the areas of the tank furthest away from the...

Thanks for the moss ball suggestion. Will look for those online and if no luck there, LFS.

Right, OK, so maybe I didn't clarify one important thing. When I got the reading of .25 ppm ammonia, I did a 100% water change immediately. After I had gotten the ammonia to 0%, I was letting the ammonia build up over two days from 0 to a barely perceptible amount still far less than .25ppm...

Are you kidding? I've never seen a betta in a *tank*--of any size--in any US pet or fish store. In the US, they always keep them in little teeny cups. Like the size of coffee cups. In most large chain stores that sell fish in the US, you can pretty much bet that at least one third of the...

Tell me about it. Yes, I know I paid way more than I should have. But it's not just $200 for the tank plus equipment. This number includes the cost of the original 2.5 gallon kit, the new filter which everyone said was better than the one that came w/ the 2.5 gallon kit, and then the 5.5 gallon...

I came here not so much looking for advice as an answer to my question...you remember it, right? Can an unfiltered container cycle? But some advice I would have used -- doing a 50% water change every day in a 2.5 gallon -- had I kept my fish in that container. OK, now that actually sounds...

Yeah, I asked for advice, not self-righteous indignation and aspersions cast upon my behavior. Especially given that the more I have read and learned, the more I have attempted to do right by my fish. Advice is welcome, the other is most definitely not welcome. And yet there are people posting...

Yet you haven't made any good arguments in support of that statement. Keeping an aquarium requires adding chemicals to the water to remove the harmful compounds, fertilize plants, medicate fish, etc. So why it should be such a big deal to add one more chemical to lower pH is a mystery to me...

Oh right, so he could have spent more several weeks in a little tiny cup without a heater or filter. I'm sure he would have loooooooved that. Please, spare me your holier-than-thou indignation. He did just fine...he made bubble nests every other day so he obviously wasn't unhappy in my keeping...

I did that late last night. He's in his new home now. I did about a 90-95% water change beforehand. Yeah, but everything I've read says that bettas prefer a pH of 6.8-7.0. It seems cruel to force him to adapt to a really high pH just because that is what my tap water is, especially when I...

But do these meds actually work as advertized? I haven't seen much evidence in Melafix/Bettafix's favor, and at least one poster on another board looked in research literature to see if there were any studies supporting using tea tree oil (active ingredient in these meds) to heal fish...

But he hasn't had an ammonia concentration at .25ppm concentration since I discovered it had gone up that high if I waited three days. A reading on ammonia that high only came up for me twice. Before the mysterious disappearing ammonia problem started (and nitrites being formed), the ammonia...

Tried that. pH stays in the high 7.x range even letting water sit out overnight uncovered.

Shouldn't the amount of nitrates and other chemicals in the water determine how much of the water I change and how often? Other posters on a different board recommend doing a 25% water change weekly, not a 40% water change every five days. Forgive me for being contrary, but it seems as though...

Well, yeah, I guess I could do that. I'll miss seeing him make bubbles, though. I only realized that there was an ammonia reading when I started testing his water. Since I started doing the every-other-day changes, the ammonia reading had been coming up very *very* slightly (going by the...

http://cgi.ebay.com/UNIQUE-MINI-MARBLE-HM-MALE-LIVE-BETTA-FISH-1-/230486353553?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35aa0ea691 (male) http://cgi.ebay.com/UNIQUE-MINI-MARBLE-BHM-FEMALE-LIVE-BETTA-FISH-1-/230486352510?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35aa0ea27e (female)...

There's a betta-breeding seller on eBay selling specimens from his new line of mini Bettas that he says are 1/2 the size of normal bettas. They are blue/white halfmoon marbles, sorta in-between plakats and full halfmoons. Anyway, they look positively adorable and yes, I'm tempted to get one...

Mine would spit out any pellets I tried to feed him (tried three brands). So I gave up. Many betta keepers online disdain pellets and flakes anyway. Now I just feed him the frozen bloodworms and occasionally frozen daphnia. And the mashed pea thing every so often. He's doing great on that diet...