Between The Rocks?

[tagerlilly18]

hi guys im new here but i made an account here to ask about this habbit. I dont knoe if there is a reason or just a quirk he does. Firstly about a week ago I bought a male Plakat betta. However just today i found out he was a Plakat . All his container said was dragon scale. Anyways i have him in a 1 gallon tank with a light at the top and an airstone in it, along with rocks at the bottom. I have a heater on its way and the rocks are all smoothed,none are sharp or pointy. Im very attached to this little guy just because his face looks like this :c . also i never saw a betta with short fins that was a male. Now that i diverged from the point several times he will wedge him self between this one rock and the tank. I have no idea why he only does it when he wants and he gets out fine but im rather worried that the rock will fall a lil or move and squash him. he has a little leaf above the rocks that he could hide under and he does. I also have a magnetic tank cleaner thing like to scrub algae off with( i never ued it for that i just used it to knock the bubbles off the side on the tank) and he will go between the botton on it and the rocks to hide/sleep as well. So my question is Is it ok for him to wedge himself between the rocks or no?

 

[372xp]

yes its ok. normal behavior

 

[Flute]

It could be that he's just looking for more places to hide. Betta are very inquisitive little critters, and love to explore. If there isn't enough in his tank then he might not feel confident enough to be out and about as much.

A little off topic, but have you got a filter in this 1 gal? If so, is it cycled, if not, do you change the water daily? Just asking because it's a very, very small tank for him to be in, and these small tanks can be difficult to keep stable. He'd probably be a lot happier in something like a 5 gallon tank, which you can do so much more with and make it loads more interesting for him to have a nose about in. Just a thought

 

[tagerlilly18]

i was thinking about upgrading him to at least a 3 gal but not only do i not have alot of spare $$$ but i also don have alot of space to sit the tank. i dont have a filter in the tank but i do a 100% water change once a week, the water is really clear and he swims around and seems happy even though its not very big. I also bought little plant bulbs today they are called hardy aponogeton bulbs

 

[Flute]

Personally I wouldn't put a betta in anything less than a 5 gal tank. You can get some really lovely cube tanks around this size, that don't take up a lot of space. You can also get them for pretty cheap too

With no filter then you need to be looking at doing daily water changes instead of a weekly 100% change. It wont take very long for ammonia levels to build up, which obviously will cause a lot of problems both short and long term. Do you have a test kit? If not, you really need to look at getting a liquid one so you can keep an eye on ammonia and nitrite levels, and start doing daily water changes- 30-40% or so. I can't stress enough how important it is for you to upgrade him to a filtered tank

 

[tagerlilly18]

i looked into pH levels and perfect ones for bettas and also how ammonia affects pH. i did have a water tester when i had my goldfish but now it seems i could find nothing of it but that little tube so since i was worried because the last time i cleaned Beastly's (the betta) tank was almost a week ago i found pool test strips that were good and not afected by moisture or anything and the pH was fine it was about a 7.2-7.5

 

[Flute]

pH in't something that you really need to worry about. It's ammonia and nitrite levels. Do you know about the Nitrogen cycle? If not then please have a read here. The information in that article is invaluable and will explain to you why you need to be doing daily water changes.

Basically without a filter, your betta will be swimming around in his own waste for a week until you change his water. This will do a lot of damage to him over time, and will shorten his life span and also make him vulnerable to infections. By doing smaller water changes every day you'd also be stressing him out a lot less than doing a complete 100% change