Anyone Here Kept Bettas In Really Hard Water?

Assaye

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Since getting into the hobby last summer, I've had countless bettas. The oldest lived with my for 9 months before passing, and many died after only a few months.

My water is always double zeros with low nitrates. The fish get Atison's Betta Pro, Hikari Betta Bio Gold, bloodworms, brineshrimp and the occassional bit of pea. The tanks are heated to 27C and the bettas are not kept with problematic tank-mates. The males are kept alone (apart from one who lives with ADFs) and the females are were kept with corys and neon tetras (now corys and otos).

The only problem I can find is that my water is 'very hard' with a pH of around 8. Before getting bettas I was assured by countless people that bettas were hardy, would be fine in harder water, often bred in hard water, etc etc. I wasn't going to get bettas after I read they were a soft water species but was encouraged to get one as apparently they are very adaptable, etc. Not in my experience!

I have have lost the following bettas:

Orion, Ffinsan, Cygnus, Nightshade, Marble, Boann, Fenrir, Lillith, Rei, KT, Azrael, Aurora, Amalthea, Osiris, Howl, Deimos and 5 un-named females. I may have lost more but my memory isn't serving me well today.

Some died to columnaris and I don't believe this was my fault as they died very soon after coming home from the shop (and in one case took out some of my healthy stock). This strain of columnaris was highly contagious and killed before treatment was able to work. Most died to something like dropsy, or that presented dropsy-like symptoms - abdominal swelling, pine-coning, restlessness (and no interest in food) and lethargy. Deimos just wasted away, going from a spectacular red, black, blue and white marble HM to a little, grey drab thing with fragile fins.

I rarely get an easy to identify, treatable disease. No fin-rot or ich to speak of, no identifiable parasites, no velvet, no ulcers or fungus. Nothing other than this wasting away and then dropsy (in most cases). Th only symptom that all bettas share (even the healthy ones) is fragile fins. Not fin-rot - no blackness, redness or fungus - but fins that don't seem up to much and tear easily. The only boy with decent fins is my PK! The girls don't seem to suffer from this, though.

I've now stopped buying bettas. At one point I had 9-10 males and a sorority, all in excellent tanks with loads of plants, 3-5 gallons of space each, warm water, great food - the works. Now I have 5 males and 3 females, if you exclude my little batch of rescues that I hope to move on once they have grown a bit. I want to keep bettas seriously but I find I am prevented by this fishy Grim Reaper that seems to haunt my house. Even though I know I am doing the best I can, it hurts to know that so many bettas have died in my care. I feel like a failure and that I must be unwittingly abusing my pets for so many to have died. Even idiots who keep their bettas in 1 gallon, unfiltered tubs with no water changes and only plant roots to eat seem to have more luck than me.

So, someone help shed some light on this. Does anyone here keep bettas in hard water? How long do they seem to live? Any symptoms when they die?
 
Ok, well sorry for all your losses. Sounds like you've had a rough time.
Do you filter any of these tanks? It's one thing you haven't mentioned is all.
I kept bettas for years in hard water conditions and bred them too, very successfully I might add. I only stopped as they took up too much of my time and, as a single parent, a university student and working in a primary school for my degree, I really was stretched! Some of my bettas lived up to 3 years. The oldest lived in a 5g tank with no filter. She lost her eyesight shortly after a serious case of pop-eye (the lfs gave her to me already ill, for free). She pulled through but with no sight intact. She lived alone in her tank and always hated her weekly water changes. :lol: I used to change a minimum of 50% every week and used amquel plus to neutralise ammonia etc.
Most of my other bettas lived in larger tanks with a minimum of 7.5g each (that was my split 15g) and filtration but with good sized changes weekly also. The girls lived in a 30g heavily planted tank.
I don't claim to understand what is happening in your tanks but I suspect your source may be a cause. Are you buying them from the same places? It may also be due to the age of the fish. Many found in lfs are shipped in at an unknown age but a usually fully grown adults. This, in itself, could mean that the fish you are buying are not particularly young upon purchase.
Have you tried using a specialist breeder? Someone based in your home country is always best as the water conditions will have some similarities. Better still if you can find someone who breeds in hard water. Avoid lfs's where possible. The fish are often stressed and in tanks with other stressed fish which could be carrying a number of pathogens (we've all made that mistake) and if they die within a short time of coming home, take them back to the store.
Hopefully someone else will also help you on this and prehaps know someone who breeds them and can you can purchase safely from. Bettas ship well on the whole and you will have the peace of mind of dealing with someone who knows what they are talking about and, hopefully, be trusted.
P.
 
All my tanks are filtered and cycled. The fish are all different ages and from different sources - some breeders, some shops, etc. The fish came from 2-3 different shops and 2-3 different breeders.

Of my 5 males, 4 are from lfs and 1 is a breeder boy. These guys seem (*touch wood*) to be doing well. I've lost two very expensive imports before as well as your run of the mill lfs fish.

I have a favoured UK breeder and his fish are always excellent. I am pretty sure it is something happening my end - maybe something to do with the water company.
 
My water ph is 7.6, and pretty hard. I have had four bettas since last October. The first one died within 36 hours and I don't know why. The second one died within 36 hours of columnaris before I had a chance to treat it. The other two are still with me, but they do seem a bit delicate. They have both had white spot, and one of them had internal parasites, but they have responded well to treatment and are active and healthy. I also find that their fins tear easily, and I am tempted to go with plakats in the future because of this. It could be something to do with your water, but I would expect anything wrong with your water would affect other fish that you keep. How do other species fare in your water?
 
my ph is 8 and i've never had an issue with bettas/

Maybe try feeding yours brime shrimp in garlic or food soaked in garlic, once a week, to help their immune system.
 
Mine get brineshrimp in garlic whenever they get frozen food, which is usually once a week. They get a mix of frozen foods.
 
Never fed mine garlic! :blink: I have had water company issues in the past....and recently and it tends to only cause issues with fish that are either slightly off 100% or sensetive. I've lost bettas to bad water (not mine, but what came from the tap). If you can watch your water companies activity in the area and avoiding changing water on days they're doing work etc. Beyond that, there's little you can do....except check the tap water stats b4 adding it to the tank.
P.
 
Bettas are pretty hardy fish, so I dunno what to advise, if they aren't lasting long :sad:
 
Our water is hard. I have lost lots of bettas over the year but (touch wood please) since using Intepet Bio Active Tap safe (with aloe vera) at every water change and also for sick fish I have had no losses. Got about 12 or 13 bettas at the moment.
 
I have hard water (I've never tested it) but we have hard water. My pH is around 7.5; I've had my male since about March time and he's doing fine (ok he is my first betta so I can't really say). I guess the trick is to try and get betta's that have been bred in your local water; as buying from different locations may have different waters etc?
 
honestly i think you are harboring something in your tanks. do you share equipment between the tanks? easy way to transfer all sorts of nasties. not to mention if you are sharing media between tanks.
likely just down to the fish being stressed for one reason or another, or arriving from less than suitable conditions already carrying a pathogen and then it crops up when in your hands. sadly, it happens more often than youd think.
doubtful it is down tot he actual water chemistry. bettas can and do tolerate a wide range of parameters.
cheers
 
When it comes to hard water and a high pH to boot. I can say, without any equivocation, that my Betta splendens do very well. My own B splendens male lives in my endler tank and gets to have a pH of 7.8 and stable water chemistry statistics. My water runs close to 7.8 pH at all times and my Betta splendens spends all of his time trying to control my 45 gallon endler tank's population. He is a complete disaster when it comes to endler fry population control. Instead, the male betta is not much more than a simple resident in that tank. As it happens, my endlers do great with the resident splendens or without him. Either way the population of fish keepers and breeders ends up about the same.
 
I've had similar problems, although my pH is higher than yours, about 8.5. And the city website says the pH is 9.2 on average! ugh. My water is very hard too. My fish always just die in the same way, and their symptoms don't match any symptoms I've ever been able to figure out. No medications have helped either. They seem healthy for awhile, then they get some fin rot, then they suddenly waste away over a couple weeks. With high pH the ammonia and nitrites become more toxic, so I think this contributes, and I think maybe the hard water weakens their immune system so they are more prone to getting sick. I only have 4 fish now, and I just add 1/5th R/O water to their 5 gallon (filtered & cycled) tanks with each water change, and I haven't had any illness or fin rot in months. My pH and hardness are still high but more in the normal high range. They have driftwood and coconut shells in their tanks too which brings the pH down a little more. I've also noticed that males get fin rot super easily in my water. I now have only females. One of my females had fin rot when I got her and now she is all healed up and it never came back so I think my water mix is working pretty well. Btw my fish were all from local breeders, although the breeders all managed to get their pH down a little with R/O water and IAL so I wasn't able to find any breeders that actually bred in my areas terrible water.
 
I find that I must add to my last post. My water is not just a high pH water, I have a mineral content over 225 ppm of total dissolved solids with bot GH and KH values consistently above 10 degrees. My bettas all live well over 4 years in that environment without any special betta pellets or similar enhancements. They get the same diet that the rest of my fish get and they need to compete with my other fish to get any food at all. When I feed my community tank, the bettas are competing with a wide variety of cichlids, barbs, livebearers and tetras. In my endler tank they compete directly with the endlers for their food. Since I refuse to feed special foods to my bettas, the one in the big community tank gets a high protein flake most of the time and the one in the endler tank mostly lives on a high vegetable content flake. Both bettas are doing great.
 

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