Do Bettas In Cups In Stores Have Ammonia Exposure?

[griddlebone]

In my area, bettas are always kept in cups or small ( tinyer then the cups) vases. Petsupermarket has the smallest cups ive ever seen in my life, about 3 inches high and 2 wide, AND have no air holes. Petco keeps there bettas in better cups there twice the size of Petsmart cups. Big Al's keeps the bettas in tiny vases, which in my opinion is worse, cause they are so close togather that they could jump into the vase! there are no tops. but the only store that actually treats the cups water is petsmart. Its treated with methane blue and ammo lock. it seems pretty uniform that every petstore here is SUPPOSED to change them every other day. Somehow I doubt that though. Alot of my fish that I bought had ammonia troubles. Its really sad.

 

[lljdma06]

Bettas in unfiltered water, just as any fish in unfiltered water, will be exposed to dangerous levels of ammonia unless water changes are performed several times per day. I doubt somehow that sufficient water changes will happen in most LFS's.

It's quite sad really. They don't seem to keep any other fish in unfiltered containers, and I'm not sure why Bettas are the exception to the rule.

Even small concentrations of ammonia can have a long-term detrimental effect on the health of the fish.

BTT

See, I'll tell you what's sad, is that I actually changed the betta cups 2x a day when I used to work at a pet store. Part of the reason I was let go, spent too much time actually taking care of the fish when I was there, rather than out there selling stuff.

llj

 

[ellena]

It's a wonder they survive at all isn't it? Maybe a lot don't
Around where I live in the UK, 2 LFS have them in unfiltered individual containers, one the size of a large mug and one little cubes. Neither have lids.
Everywhere else puts them in community tanks, often wth poorly selected tankmates.
I can see why they keep them like that, 'cos they can't just chuck tons together in a tank like most other fish. And from a selling POV, they are much easier to see than trying to hunt them out in larger tanks. That shouldn't be the point though should it?

 

[Rediahs]

yeah those cups are small...


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that small...so sad..

To all those saying things like "that's bigger" or "that's smaller" I just need to clarify something with everyone....

The size that it shows on your monitor is different from the size it shows on almost everybody else's monitor, as such that diagram is useless and can't be used to show people sizes whatsoever. The size it shows up as depends HEAVILY on a number of the computer's and monitor's attributes like the size of the monitor itself, the resolution that it is displaying at, the size of text displaying on the operating system, the size displaying on the browser, and any number of other attributes... one person could look at it and it's 1 inch wide and another could look at it and it's 10 inches wide, literally....

An image would come a tad bit closer to having a fixed size but still wont' do, the only thing you can do is tell measurements, you can't display them to people on different systems reading this from different places and different computers.

So basically pay no regard to the cup size diagram that newfishowner posted because it will look dramatically different to almost everyone looking at it.

I think newfishowner has a high-tech setup at least compared to me, since I just compared the cup my betta came in (which is actually quite roomy) to the one on the screen and mine is about a quarter of the size and it was on the large side as far as betta-cups go.

 

[griddlebone]

It's a wonder they survive at all isn't it? Maybe a lot don't
Around where I live in the UK, 2 LFS have them in unfiltered individual containers, one the size of a large mug and one little cubes. Neither have lids.
Everywhere else puts them in community tanks, often wth poorly selected tankmates.
I can see why they keep them like that, 'cos they can't just chuck tons together in a tank like most other fish. And from a selling POV, they are much easier to see than trying to hunt them out in larger tanks. That shouldn't be the point though should it?

you would be surprised to know that almost none of the bettas in the cups ever die in-store. i watch the bettas very closely and the only time ive ever seen one die was one that had dropsy when it arrived in shipment, but alot of them do get bad swim bladder problems... so i keep a bag of frozen peas in the back freezer... dont tell anyone! im thinkin that swim bladder issues have a direct link to high ammonia. its pretty sad.