How do Bettas survive in small cups?

[Kyanite14]

At my LPS the Bettas are in the standard small cups. I’ve seen customers bringing back dead bettas saying they died after putting them in their new home, despite proper acclimation.

How are they able to live in such small cups where the ammonia is probably SUPER high, but die when someone transfers them to a larger tank?

 

[Morganna]

There's probably multiple factors going on for why the bettas would die. You don't know what's going on with the customer and the new tank the betta is put in. Some tanks may not be properly set up, either uncycled, unconditioned, unheated or who knows what.
Then there's the betta themselves. I think that a betta is never truly living while in these cups, they just aren't dead yet when you buy them. When the bettas are purchased, some of them might just be too far gone for the customer to save.

 

[threecharacters]

At my LPS the Bettas are in the standard small cups. I’ve seen customers bringing back dead bettas saying they died after putting them in their new home, despite proper acclimation.

How are they able to live in such small cups where the ammonia is probably SUPER high, but die when someone transfers them to a larger tank?

It probably depends on the store, but I believe these cups get 100% water changes daily. Ammonia is unlikely to build up and there's no need for a filter or for the cups to be cycled.

Like Morganna said, these cups are temporary and just for display. You can't put the betta's in a standard holding tank at the fish store because they'll rip each other apart, and no fish store would give each betta a whole 10 gallon to itself as that would be a massive waste of space/money for the store.

Because you can't keep multiple male betta in a single tank, betta are often farmed in small cups like this. They're also shipped individually unlike most other fish.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

They survive in small cups the way a human could survive in a closet. We hope this is temporary, but in many cases it isn't. When taken to a house and plopped into a tank, they probably die for the same reasons many other fish die when taken home. Bettas, like humans, are very adaptable and good at surviving adverse conditions.

 

[emeraldking]

At my LPS the Bettas are in the standard small cups. I’ve seen customers bringing back dead bettas saying they died after putting them in their new home, despite proper acclimation.

How are they able to live in such small cups where the ammonia is probably SUPER high, but die when someone transfers them to a larger tank?

They're labyrinth fish that can be kept in low oxygen environments. That's all to it why they are kept in such small containers or tanks. But eventhough, that's the reason why they are small housed, I dislike the small environment. They need also space to move.

Why people have brought back dead betta fish to the store, could have multiple causes.

 

[Ellie11]

Hard to say how many dead ones the store discards before opening. They do the same with other species as well.
Keep your betta in a 10, or at least a 5 gal.

 

[GaryE]

The cups are used through their early lives, once they are identified as males. Or, rather, jars are used on the farms, til they go to the stores.

This is not for the fish, but for the fins. The idea is we will not buy Bettas with ragged fins, and swimming causes tears in their oversized breeder produced finnage. Look how many posters here think their fish have fin rot because they are swimming and using the showy fins for the first time.

If you grew up barely able to move, imagine your muscle tone. Bettas released into real aquariums for the first time are dragging unnatural fins while developing basic, survival muscle tone, and it is a hard and dangerous period for them. In the longer short run, the jarring kills them. They have to get out of the containers. But weaker individuals don't always make the transition successfully.