Is there something wrong w/her?

[BettaMomma]

My new little girl Millie, now that her horizontal stress bars have gone away, looks like a zebra. The black/white stripes go up and down now rather than side to side. But... now that she's at her normal color, I noticed that on both her gills, there's something rather weird. At the edges of both gills, there is a patch of red. And then also in the crease where her gill flap folds out...

In this picture of Jasper, it looks like he has what she has going on, but Jasper's just shows thru because of a leftover blood spot under his skin from his septicemia - and you can't see it without the camera flash going off. But, Millie's is very very bright blood red.

Is there something I should be worried about??
She otherwise looks really healthy.

 

[newfishies]

it may be part of her coloring?

 

[BettaMomma]

IT might be, but it looks somewhat as if it's kind of raw skin.
I can't really tell, tho - cuz she won't sit still long enough.

Also, she keeps switching back & forth between severe horizontal stripes and zebra stripes. MOst of the time she's got some ferocious horizontal stress bars but every once in a while she goes to her normal zebra stripes and light blue tinge.

Is she just probably stressing cuz of the new environment?

 

[RandomWiktor]

Vertical bars shouldn't be of any concern; they just mean that she is probably getting swollen with eggs and getting ready to breed. When my female is like this, the color patches on the edges of her gills seem to become brighter, too; perhaps your female just has red color patches on her gills and they are more prominent since she is readying to breed? Its hard to tell without a picture of her, though. Jasper's gill flaps and color look quite normal to me.

 

[BettaMomma]

okay, good.
I'll get pics posted tomorrow nite

 

[Sorrell]

Those are gill bars, another sign of spawning readiness in bettas, just means she's healthy and happy

 

[Elisabeth83]

I have one female who does the same exact thing BettaMomma. She gets the vertical bars and her gills are quite red compared to my other girls. She's the only one who gets the vertical bars and has since I brought her home. It's just normal I'm assuming as she's happy and healthy otherwise.

 

[BettaMomma]

YAY!
I'm so very glad to hear you all say this.

It's weird - she's like a chameleon. One minute when I see her she's got the zebra stripes, or marble effect. Literally, 20 seconds later she has horizontal stripes. Then she goes back to the marbling. and back again, etc. etc. Every time i look in she's got different striping going on.

Guess I just have a crazy little gal!