I got Rosetta when she was a baby as a birthday party favor, and I’ve been raising her for 8 months. There have been some hiccups but otherwise she’s as happy as can be. Her temp is around 79-81.3, I have a 2.5 gallon tank for her which I know is small but I’ve heard is suitable for one fish and she seems to like it. However I was not aware of the cycling process, and her plastic tank decorations are constantly growing algae. Can someone explain cycling and how that would work if I implemented a completely natural tank with real plants? Would she be happier if it were less colorful than her current tank? I just want to give my fish princess the best life she can have, please be nice because I’m trying my best 🥲 (photo was taken JUST before a tank cleaning please don’t flame me)
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Posted by Beetlesarereallycool
8 Comments
Hey! i love the curiosity to make your bettas life better it’s super great! live plants are soooo beneficial to your tank and your betta :))) i’d definitely pull the fake decor out and place some new live plants as sometimes the fake ones can cut them. beautiful betta and i can’t wait to see what advice the others here have for you <3 need to re iterate how gorgeous she is lol
Hi, the color is only for you.
2.5 is NOT enough for one fish. Plastic decorations are useless and terrible.
Get real plants, a larger tank, real decorations (logs etc). View my recent post.
She is not thriving , you can tell by the color.
I’m glad that you’re trying to upgrade her tank, I’m sure she’ll love it! I recommend a slightly bigger tank about 5 gallons or above if possible. Algae is very prone to grow without plants sucking up those extra nutrients that plants love. If you want to plant things in the ground then you’ll need a nutrient rich soil to support it. However free floating plants like anubias or ferns are lovely options if the soil isn’t in your price range. Also floating plants will take up all those nutrients as well if you still end up struggling with algae. I would also suggest taking out those plants if they aren’t silk because bettas have very delicate tails! Let me know if you have any more questions!
Hey Mate, name perfectly fits her! 😀
Hmm…as you are a begginer, lets keep it simple first…
As for the tank, yeah, it is a bit small but what im going to advise you will be an old school basic setup…
So first , lets try adding a live plant in there…i prefer to cover the tank 30-50% of the tank…they will act as your safety net to anything that will go wrong. They produce oxygen and absorb waste.
Next is having a filter to keep things clean and do surface agitation….
Next is airstones…now, airstones’ job is to do surface agitation, filters are there but sometimes depending on the size of the tank, filters are not enough so airstones are there…with your tank, should be fine with filters for now but when youndo upgrade to bigger tank, dont forget about them…
With these three things we are aiming for a planted biological ecosystem and not a mechanical ecosystem which relies on gadgets.
With a more natural ecosystem, you will spend less time doing maintenance ie, cyling and water change.
As for the cycling itself, its basically setting up your tank for the first time or after a major general cleaning of the tank, its where you put in your substrate, plants and fill it with water, doing water changes daily or weekly, building up the beneficial bacteria in the tank, testing the water parameters etc…now this could overwhelm begginers especially those that does not really have the time to do all these at the moment…
So thats why i would suggest a more natural approach…
So if we go with a more natural setup, having live plants, filter and airstones…cycling the tank is more forgiving, less maintenance, less water change…
Give it a try, try adding.plants and observe after that…
Hi! I’m so glad you’re looking into how to make your betta happier 🙂 I can tell you care a lot about her, and I hope what I have to say helps!
I really do recommend upgrading the tank to at least a 5 gallon if you can! That size is just a bit too small for bettas to thrive in. If you’re going to go with a more natural tank, which is great, then you will definitely need to know about “fish in cycling” and will how to do it the safest for your finned friend. I would look up YouTube videos on it, but it basically involves testing your water parameters (ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate) and performing water changes based on what they read every day. It’s a bit of work, but your fish will survive and things will eventually settle after a few weeks.
Adding real plants will help with algae growth if it’s becoming really burdensome to clean! I have floating plants, annubius, and java moss in my tank right now and I can tell a difference compared to when I had none. If you pick live plants, make sure to look up what they need to live and that you can provide those conditions 🙂
If those plants in your tank are plastic and not silk, I’d remove them. Betta fins are delicate, so it’s better to be safer and remove them to prevent your fish’s fins from getting damaged <3 There’s nothing wrong with artificial plants if they’re silk though! You could even have a mix of silk and live if you want to test live plants too 🙂
I hope this was helpful and I’m happy to answer more questions if you have them! 🙂
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Are you sure thats a female? It doesnt really matter the tail just looks big for a female. Your fish also looks pretty fat. How many pellets do you feed them and how often? Id feed a little less. Bettas will eat a lot more than they need. She looks pretty dull colored. How often do you do water changes? Also have you been using anything like quick start,auquasafe, or water conditioner after your water changes? If you want to slow algae growth keep the lights off more. How long is the light left on?
They dont care much about colors. Get rid of those fake plants though. Those are the cheap walmart plants and will cut his tail. If you go with fake then soft silicone or fabric is better.
This is a copy paste I made to help teach new fish keepers about cycling your tank. It should cover most everything you need to know, if you have any questions definitely feel free to ask.
Cycling a fishtank is the process of establishing bacteria that can eat the poop your fish makes, to make the poop less toxic.
The way it goes is, fish poops in the form of ammonia, ammonia is eaten by a kind of bacteria turning it into nitrite with an i, another kind of bacteria eats the nitrite turning into nitrate with an a. Plants can then eat the nitrates completely removing the waste from the water.
So the way that Cycling a tank works is by providing ammonia to start establishing the bacteria. Its possible to do this both with fish in the tank and without fish in the tank, however doing it with fish in is riskier and more stressful since the fish would be exposed to ammonia until the cycle is completed.
Food rotting turns into ammonia, its why bad meat smells the way it does. So you can add ammonia to a fishtank by ‘ghost feeding’ or putting fish food into the tank when there is no fish. The fish food then rots turning into ammonia giving the bacteria something to eat. It’s not necessary to add additional ammonia when fish are in the tank, because the fish themselves will produce ammonia. .
Cycling is a slow process that you can watch by testing weekly for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates. You will know your tank is cycled if after 2-4 weeks of supplying ammonia, you no longer have ammonia or nitrites in the tank, only nitrates.
If you do this with fish in, you need to do daily water tests for ammonia Nitrite and nitrate. If ammonia or nitrite gets to .5 ppm do a 50% water change. Testing for nitrate is mostly to see how close you are to the cycle being finished
Tap water has chemicals in it that kill bacteria. This is the main reason why we condition water. If you put tap water into your fish tank without conditioning it, you will kill all the bacteria the keeps the fish safe from their own poop.
This is also the primary reason we have filters in our fish tanks. Your filter is not there to clean dust out of the water, its there to house the bacteria that this process relies on. As such, you must never rinse your filter media with tap water to clean it. When you clean your filter you need to use water that came out of the fish tank during a water change.
Nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia are the primary reasons we do water changes. Any amount of nitrites or ammonia, the first 2 chemicals of the cycle, causes damage to your fish so a healthy fish tank will always test 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites. Nitrates are much less toxic, you can tolerate up to 40ppm nitrates in your tank. Anything past that and its definitely time to change the water.