Female Betta stripes

[Elisabeth83]

I'm new to keeping female bettas so sorry if this seems like a dumb question but I read that when the female shows her stripes that she is stressed..does it always mean shes stressed or do they just do it occasionally?

My girl betta does it throughout the day. Sometimes I'll look at her and she'll have her usual beautiful solid colors and then the next hour she'll be more dull and have stripes.

 

[cation]

Horizontal or vertical stripes?

 

[Elisabeth83]

they are horizontal stripes

 

[cation]

Yeah, those are stress stripes. If you know that water conditions are good, diet's good, all that stuff, she may just be easily stressed. In my community tank I have one female who is almost always showing stress stripes, but she seems pretty happy. Waters good, everyone else is happy, she doesn't get picked on, she just gets stressed easily, I guess.

 

[Elisabeth83]

Well I've only had her for a week so maybe she's just stressed getting used to her new surroundings? She seems happy, eating and is quite active. I did switch to sand yesterday so that probably stressed her out.

She should be happy she's living in my divided tank and has a nice roomy 3.5 gallons to herself with a nice live amazon sword plant.

She's full color most of the time but like I said sometimes when I look at her she's got the stripes.

Her diet is good..I feed bloodworm, black mosquito larvae and betta flakes. She loves the bloodworms!!!