When you get a reading of 0.25 Ammonia keeping in mind if you do a 50% water change you are still going to be exposing the fish to 0.125ppm of Ammonia. So really you are in some sense "letting it sit in ammonia". On such a small tank there is really no excuse for not doing up to 90% changes.
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 going by my freshwater test kit's color chart. Then I did a 100% water change.
Plants will consume what they can and I can't remember the figure or even a rough estimate on how much Nitrate plants will consume but it's probably a lot less than you are currently thinking.
I read elsewhere that java fern (I have one) is a "nitrate hog". So how much nitrate should you keep around for plants? And how much nitrate is too much? Some places say 20ppm is the upper limit, one said 80ppm is the upper limit for bettas.
I do sincerely hope you have a gravel vacuum, this will help you much more. 25% is kind of hard to entirely clean your gravel in one go as well and therefore 40/50% allows you to have a thorough clean.
Yes, I have a gravel vacuum. How much stuff is going to build up in the gravel, though? He's just one fish plus two plants. Whenever I feed him, I scoop up all of the uneaten stuff right away, so it doesn't fall onto the bottom. Probably most of the waste on the bottom will be flecks coming off of the driftwood and dead plant roots. OK, well, I'll see how much water vacuuming I need to do to get all of the stuff out of the gravel.
I do worry about removing too much water for another reason though--I bought plant fertilizer tabs, which are supposed to last one month. If I keep removing that much water, won't most of the plant fertilizer go with it? My java fern is already turning a bit brown...I thought it might be nutrient deprived.
Implies you were doing under 50%, probably way under and therefore when you were changing the water you were still leaving them in high concentrations of ammonia and nitrite.
No, I meant doing 50% water changes every day assuming a baseline of 0ppm ammonia and nitrite.
At one point you did say you would change the water every other day, which is allowing the ammonia to build up for 2 days before replacing it.
Well, yes, but the ammonia only "built up" to a level that was very barely perceptible by the end of the 2nd day.
Also the whole bubble nest seems to point to the fact you did allow it to "build up" purely because you liked seeing him make a nest.
I have read in many, *many* places that a nest is a sign of the betta's good health. Yes, they can make nests while sick, but the sick bubble nests look different from the healthy ones (bubbles of many sizes rather than even-sized bubbles). I know someone disagreed with that assertion earlier in this thread, but about 80% of the stuff I've read re: bettas and bubble nests say that presence of bubble nest = happy betta. Which makes sense, because a betta won't get ready to spawn if it's seriously stressed out or ill.
I deduced that the betta got stressed out by the water change because he wasn't bubble nesting the night after I did one. He only did it after a full day of no water change.
I don't understand what point you're trying to get at, however throughout this discussion you have been rather resilient to perform large water changes. Initially it appeared that it was due to the fact he wouldn't do bubble nests until the 2nd day after a water change.
You mean "resistant to perform large water changes", not "resilient". And yes, because my observations told me that the fish didn't really like them/got a little stressed by them. Of course I had to do them--and I did 100% changes--when the water params were bad, but I was trying not to *overdo* them. And yes, I had a problem with chasing him around with the net to get him into the acclimation baggie that resulted in me tearing his fins a couple of times, which is another reason I was resistant.
Then it was because it was too stressful...
Right, I reasoned that doing them too often == stressing out fish more than absolutely necessary.
...then because you read somewhere else something else.
Well, that too. Everyone's got an opinion, right? I'm trying to get a range of opinions in the hope that the general consensus about something is right. I will say, you were the first person to mention that I didn't need to float him in a baggie if the water pH and temp were the same in the new water as in the old. I was thinking big water change necessitated baggie-acclimation cycle.