Is my fish trying to communicate w/me?
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Is my fish trying to communicate w/me?
I have never kept a Beta alive for this long. So I never have had much of a relationship with any of my fish. Do fish have personalities?
Everytime I walk in the kitchen he starts swimming real fast all around and lately he has started flipping a rock on the bottom of his bowl and making a noise with the rock when he see's me... hmmm
How long have you had Mr. Betta? My DD's betta likes us....he swims right to the front when we appear and bobs around and does flips and looks to the top for food and hints around and just gets more active when we stand in front of him and talk to him.
Do you have a filter? What do you do about, um, fish poop? Do you try and remove it? I'm having this issue now...
Fish poop? We bought the non pooping beta. ;)
We got him in Sept or Oct... I have only used bottled water in his bowl and I am the only one allowed to feed it. (Unless I specifically ask one of the boys to feed him for me) I think we were overfeeding our other fish. And used tap water a time or two in the bowl. They never lasted more than 2 mos... I waited about 3 yrs before I had the nerve to buy another one. I have been pretty anal about his care for fear of losing him.
I really didnt know that fish would act like this when you walk in the room.  It's cute. If you have fish in a larger aquarium do they act like this??
No, we dont have a filter, I change his water and wash his bowl once a week. His water is getting cloudy by the end of one week.
Okay, so you have him in a bowl and you dump ALL the water out each week and start fresh? We have two bettas. One is in a one gallon tank with an undergravel filter which most people will tell you does absolutely nothing. The other is in a 2.5 gallon tank with a charcoal filter. Both are the only fish in the tank. Our water is never cloudy even in the one gallon tank, and every week I remove about 2/3 to 1/2 the water in the tanks, and replace with bottled water and a few squirts of some sort of stress zyme and some bacteria. I've never scrubbed their tanks but we've only had them for three months. Some sites swore I'd have major algae by now, but I have nothing, thank goodness! Anyway, if you empty all your water out each week and scrub the bowl, you're getting rid of the poop your fish doesn't make anyway.....;o)
And yes, they're very cute when they react to you! The more active, fun fish we have will 'flare' at just about anything and it's so adorable to see this maniac fish (she swims and flips like crazy when you talk to her) suddenly try and look menacing and evil, defending her one gallon space against TOOTHBRUSHES and PUFF BALLS and photo frames, and other odd items we hold up to the tank to get a reaction. (btw, 'she' is a 'he' but the mommy of this fish, who is five, decided to give him a sex change, hence my referral to 'him' as 'her', altho in my first post I reverted back to the true 'he' so as not to confuse you. This time around I naturally wrote 'she' as that's how we always refer to her, and I didn't want to waste time changing all my pronouns, so I decided to waste MORE time writing this lengthy explanation. *grin*)
http://www.bettatalk.com/
This site is fantastic, Conni. This breeder knows EVERYthing about bettas and she's a good writer, too, so it's really fun to read. Enjoy!
I used to have a 55 gallon tank with some different fish. The two angel fish liked us. When the kids or I would look at them, or talk to them they would swim right up to the glass and look at us.
When i had gold fish, sometimes they would swim around and around the bowl when I would walk into the room. Almost like it was happy to see me.
So i don't know, perhaps fish do have personalities!
I had a kamikaze beta that literally "jumped" out of its bowl. We came home and Scott thought it was a dried leaf and threw it away. Later, we noticed our fish was missing and Scott had an "AHA!" moment. It was really weird.
Be appreciative of your fish...it sounds so cute.
The betta guru I listed above says bettas who attempt suicide actually can live for a long time on the floor so if you find one that has escaped, put it back in the bowl and see if it comes back to life. She said this can happen even if it looks totally dead, but if it's dried up, there's no hope.
"if it's dried up, there's no hope"
EEEWW!
Heidi, I had a goldfish that committed suicide by jumping out of the bowl. My sister stood by the bowl one morning looking into it and wondering where the fish went. THen she looked on the floor and there was little Goldie on the floor between her feet. It was actually stuck to the floor....GROSS! I was a little kid. I cried and cried about it 
Conni, did you check out the website I mentioned?
We have a Beta named "Ming". He also responds to us, and gets all excited when we put our fingers near the side of the bowl. I think they're so neat!
We keep ours in a bowl with glass pebbles in the bottom. When we clean him, we transfer him to a jar of clean BOTTLED water (only). Then we dump his bowl into a colander, and wash all of his pebbles and scrub the bowl with white vinegar on a paper towel. Then we rinse the bowl really WELL, put the clean pebbles back in, add bottled water, and then pour him in with the water from the jar. We bought ours at Walmart, and the cashier was an Asian lady and she told us all about the care.
BTW...it is only legal to sell male betas. Females can only be kept by breeders.
I think ALL living things have feelings and emotions. We have goldfish, also, in an outdoor pond near our patio. When we sit there, they come to the surface and make bubbly noises to get our attention.
OMG!! Thank you ladies! What neat stories. Heidi, I am sorry about your fish!!
Kate, I will try to check out your website this morning. I saved it in my favorites. We were gone all weekend and I havent been on the PC !!!
Thanks!
HOL, we have many female betas for sale all around (walmart, petsmart, etc). I wonder if it is a state law? Because I am pretty sure it is legal here!
>>>>No, we dont have a filter, I change his water and wash his bowl once a week. His water is getting cloudy by the end of one week.>>>>
The water in the bowl needs to age a bit and a weekly water change is a bit overboard for a Betta. They're a pretty clean fish (not the poop factory my goldfish is) so you can stick to a monthly water change of about 10% to 15% of the water. Scoop the water out, dump it and replace with new water.
You don't really need to ever completely change the water and this is because good fish water has some bacteria growth in it. Those bacteria will help break down the waste your fish produces. The water WILL get cloudy but that's part of the cycle while the bacteria get established. You can help them along by adding a product (I've seen it at grocery stores beside the fish food) that has some of the bacteria in it.
Rinsing the gravel once in awhile isn't a bad idea buut it's there to provide a surface for bacteria growth so don't go to hard on it. And if you get some green algae on the rocks and sides, bonus! Wipe as much off as you want with paper towel so you can view your fish but don't worry about getting rid of it.
I always just used treated tap water. Bottled water is fine as long as you treat it as well.
And yes, I think fish have personalities. We've had our little fantail goldfish for 2 years now and he's a great little guy.
Kaye, maybe it is a state law. I know that you cannot buy a female Beta in RI. Do the females fight, too, if you put two together?
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