nieve5552

Awesome I think I finally properly understand the term for dragons now, thanks! :happy2: Yeah I asked the seller if she meant the standard halfmoon by saying longfinned and if the other halfmoon parent was a plakat if it wasnt a 'longfin' like the other. The seller offered me a refund and fish pick up but I think Ill keep him/her, its quite active and the colour is quite interesting.. Also I dont think it would be fair on the fish, he was showing some seriously washed out colour when he was bagged I thought they gave me the wrong fish

I was looking for a halfmoon so either way, I dont think he would be worth my money or me driving all the way out to Lincoln :-? He/she is pretty cute though haha I dont have plans to breed at the moment but I was thinking that I might in the future.. Yeah I guess that longtail thing doesnt make sense to me either, standard halfmoons, deltas, crowntails etc have large tails anyway so it seems fruitless to refer to them as longtail halfmoons etc. What happened with the elephant ear term?

Im in Christchurch :bggrn:

Thank you for your reply. The breeder cant seem to be able to provide photos of the parent fish, looking at the sibling offspring she says there are short finned, longer finned and some dumbos as well so she says she doesnt think that either mum or dad were entirely halfmoons. I assume she means genetically homozygous halfmoons or genetically fixed halfmoons. She also says that this fish is the only one with dragon scales.. Personally I dont seem to be able to distinguish dragon scales unless the fish has that thick painted scale look.. There are no other betta fish around him at the moment

Yip the anal fin being longer than the tail seem to present itself as a male in my opinion, I have asked the seller for photos of the parents to see if they are the standard halfmoons. Thank you for your generous offer but unfortunately Im in Christchurch.. The world of bettas is a complicated one :dno:

The temperature is kept at a steady 27 deg, he seemed pretty stressed with moving and the change in environment (colour washed out drastically with prominent stress line) and recovered in a couple of days but he still glass surfs and sometimes has a stress line that looks a bit faded. Yes I do wonder how they would do that, maybe they use a list of other traits to sort them, the judges must be judges for a reason :lol: and yes a lot of females do seem as colourful as males after all the selective breeding no dispute there. Ive even read of females blowing bubble nests themselves, laying eggs (when they are quite gravid) and picking the unfertilised eggs up and putting them in the bubble nests all by themselves... The use of other bettas is not really possible since I dont have any other bettas :-?

He/she does have an egg spot, but after some research I read that even some males can have egg spots (which is not so rare that International Betta Congress has banned male bettas with eggs spots from entering contests.. apparently) Yes when he flared the tail does seem to get close to a halfmoon but I thought that it would grow to the right angle with age.. The seller said the father was a longtail halfmoon and the mother a halfmoon, which as you said, doesnt really make much sense. Oh I just had a thought, maybe the longtail halfmoon means normal halfmoon and the halfmoon mother a halfmoon plakat? Even though the parents are halfmoons, theoretically they could create an offspring with delta tails if their halfmoon genes are not fixed right? I feel like I need some other more distinguishing traits to sex this one, Im so confused! :nilly: :happy2: His colour does look nice but I think he is more a turquoise than green, as he looks blue most of the time and green from certain angles.. Still, the metallic sheen looks very pretty especially in the sunlight

I got this fighter just over a week ago. He was 5 months old when I got him and on the auction site the seller had described him as a male green dragon fighter. His fins hasnt grown even the slightest in the last week and when I see photos of other bettas the males seem to have fins that are longer than this one even though they are younger by one or 2 months. He flares at his own reflection very readily and does have a visible beard which completely disappears when he is not flaring. My understanding is that bettas are fully grown at around 7 months and since he only has less than 2 months left till then, he doesnt seem like he will become a full halfmoon by that point (the seller also said that one of the parent fish was a longtailed halfmoon) He also seem to have very small ventral fins in comparison to other bettas.. Please help!

Thnak you for your advice But I dont have that many fish (not planning to breed yet either) and I've only just graduated and working a part time job so I dont have $80-$130 to spend on fish food at once Hence why I am looking for small amounts..

When you say the competitive prices, I guess you mean the large quantity sales? I tried looking on Kens fish today, the shipping alone is 50 bucks and all I need is the small jars

I called HFF today, they said they dont have the small fish granules Also the 1mm granule is the only one they have in small quantities according to the shopping site..

Oooh thats an awesome idea! Thanks! :thup:

Ive got cherry barbs and axelrods rasboras at the moment I bought a 80g New life spectrum for community fish which the granule size is 1mm. I knew it would be a little too big for the rasboras so I tried crushing it and feeding them which worked fairly well as the crushed particles tend to float longer than whole granules so they dont sink to the bottom before getting eaten But I just saw a female cherry barb having a little trouble chewing a whole granule as well.. So Im pretty keen to try New life spectrum small fish (granule size 0.5mm) but I cant seem to find any in NZ. Does anyone know where I can get them from? Cheers! :happy2:

Thank you for your advice I thought I did a decent job of acclimating.. Next time I will definitely be using a thermometer to check the bag water temperature as well! And also will definitely get a fighter that is old enough, how old should they be before they can be introduced to new environments without any problem? The reason I got the young fish was because I wanted to see his fins grow out

Thank you :tears: He was swimming around quite happily in the breeder's tank when I got him.. Im not fully sure about his age, I tried emailing the breeder to ask his exact age but did not receive a reply I did see a couple of his siblings and they were all around the same size, very small and cute Thank you very much for your advice! Quite saddened by his death, he was such a pretty one

I got him from a breeder, Im located in Christchurch Thank you for your offer, you're too kind :bggrn: I may go on a hunt for another fighter in a few weeks, I think I'll make it the last addition after kuhli loaches I had no idea that 8 weeks was too young, how old should a fighter be before being separated from its siblings? The water temp was around 27 or 28 (heater is set to 26 but a recently acquired thermometer said 28 :dunno: )

Hi I just saw that one of my cherry barb female's tail tips have turned white. Seems to happened quite recently (within 24 hours at most) as I spend quite a bit of time staring into my fishtank :love: and they all looked normal earlier today before I went to work Its just one of the females, and just the tips of the tail fins that are white. I recently added 6 Axelrod's rasboras (last Wednesday) and checked for ammonia and nitrite on Friday and got almost 0.6 ammonia (I have nutrafin ammonia test kit, and no colour development is 0.. The test was just very slightly about to develop colour which would suggest 0.1~ 0.6) and 0 nitrite readings. Did a 40% water change on Saturday (yesterday) Although the water parameters should be fine I will be checking it again tomorrow.. Could this be a start of a fin rot? All fish are eating fine and acting normal I've tried googling for female cherry barb tail tips turning white but nothing came up Any thoughts or advise would really be appreciated thank you! Tank size: approx 56 L (60 x 30 x 30cm) Temperature: 27-28C Moderately planted with black silica gravel. Some bogwood and small amount of indian almond leaf in a teabag. Filter: Tetra Whisper power filter Food: small amount of Tetracolor flakes 2-3 times a day and some frozen bloodworm once every 2 days

That seem to be quite true I thought they would be fine as cherry barbs are quite small and peaceful fish.. :fshi:

I thought so too I had the tank running empty for the first week, I was keen on doing a fishless cycle but coudlnt fine pure ammonia you're supposed to use for fishless cycle I added 7 cherry barbs after that, and tested the water every 2-3 days. Ammonia reading never went over 0.25 during the first week and a half and dropped to 0 I take around 30 minutes - 1 hour to acclimate all fish that I add to the tank. I've read in the Tropical Fish Keeping magazine that taking too long to acclimate the fish will stress it out more than it getting stressed out from a slight change in temp, pH and hardness My usual method of acclimation is floating the bag in the tank water, slowly adding little amounts of tank water into the bag water and netting the fish out, discarding the bag water. And then I leave the fish with the lights off and dont feed for the night.

He died :cry1: He'd just sit on the floor of the breeder and occasionally swim up to get some air He didnt move around much but when he was getting air he'd swim pretty vigorously He'd seemed fine until moments ago, he'd just swim up, get some air and fall down lifelessly onto his tail and stay unmoving And a second ago I noticed him lying upside down on the breeder floor.. and his gills werent moving &c:ry I tried holding him in my hands on the surface of the water and shaking him front and backwards to try put some air into his gills but to no avail I dont understand why he died, fighters can go for a long time without eating so I wasnt worried about him starving to death just yet.. The water parameters are all fine, the 7 cherry barbs are swimming around chasing each other as usual The only reason I can think of is he died of depression :cry1:

I got the tank water tested twice a week for the last 4 weeks and havent had any or mostly almost 0 nitrates. Maybe its due to the plants? Also the tank has only been set up for a few weeks (Was first set up on the 31st Aug) so that may be why theres not much nitrate build up, the tank only has had 7 cherry barbs for 2 weeks and the little fighter since around 5 days ago :bounce:

Thank you for all the advices :bggrn: I decided that he was at least 8 weeks old by looking at this fry growth chart http://www.bettatalk.com/fry_growth.htm I got him from a private breeder, she was feeding him tiny pellets like the Seachem nutridiet betta pellets that I got and when I was picking him up he was feeding well and moving around Im planning to get some microworm in the next couple days, would that work as well as the brine shrimp? Hopefully he is a male, but I will still love him if it turns out to be a female :love:

I recently got a young fighter around 8 weeks old. Hes really small so I put him in a clear plastic floating breeder container in the tank for the first few days so that he can get used to the water and the environment while not having to compete for food with the cherry barbs (I did quite a bit of research on having cherry barbs and fighters as tankmates and the general consensus was that they were fine, hardly found any piece of information saying they couldnt be kept together) I've tried Seachem nutridiet betta pellets, nutrafin flake (cherry barb food), daphnia and frozen bloodworm and it just wont eat any of them or show any interest. I thought maybe it was the whole being in confinement thing that made the fighter lose its appetite so i let it out in the tank, it looked quite happy for a bit but soon seemed to have gotten overwhelmed by the interest shown by some of the cherry barbs so it kept on hiding and sitting on the tank floor. So I put him back in the floating breeder with a bit of gravel, a tiny dwarf hairgrass and an indian almond leaf teabag. After this i saw that he seemed to have a bit of an injury on his mouth, like a little bit of his skin was hanging off his upper lip. The bit of the skin seems to have fallen off but the upper lip looks weird now like its got a tiny hole. Could this be the reason he is not eating even after 5 days from the initial introduction to the tank? Im thinking that he will be fine with the cherry barbs once he gets a bit bigger, problem is that he just wont eat! :cry1: Should I just wait until he gets really hungry or is there something else I could try? Im suspecting that he may be depressed from being apart from his siblings + the change in its environment. I've stuck a small mirror on the side of the tank so that it made him think that he was with another baby fighter but hasnt really changed him much.. What should I do? The tank is 57L, got a few plants in there with black gravel and a couple of bogwood. Ive been checking the water parameters regularly and they are all fine, no ammonia, nitrite or nitrate. pH is around 7.3 or 7.4. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you for your reply :thup: Ok it makes sense that it is needed to keep the fins strong.. But does not flaring make the fins actually stick and clump together instead of the fin rays just simply getting weak?

Hi I've read the most unbelievable rumour recently after joining an online club for tropical fishkeeping in South Korea. I know from first hand experience (Im originally South Korean.. living in New Zealand) that a lot of South Koreans are lacking in nature/biology-related knowledge since theyve mostly lived in densely populated cities with minimum contact with natural environment. However this piece of information about Siamese fighters is downright weird (in my opinion) and something I've never thought of or heard of in other places.. They seem to firmly believe that if you don't make a male Betta flare regularly (preferably every day, for around 20 minutes) then their fins will clump up, stick together and start rotting away. How would this be logically and biologically be possible at all? Its not like their fins are made of glue or velcro and they will stick together for an eternity if they are not spread and smoothed out every day… There was one member who expressed his concern about his veiltail fighter having gathered fins with sharp ends, as a lot of veiltails do when they are not flaring (especially their dorsal and anal fins). He was worried that the sharp ends meant that the fish might be showing a symptom of fins-sticking-together-due-to-lack-of-flaring. I thought this was the most bizarre and unbelievable rumour (but more like a reliable information than a rumour for them). I may be wrong but I just can't imagine how that would be possible. I would really appreciate it if someone could either support me or correct me on this one! Thanks! Nieve