Eucleides Is Scaring Me!

[chibi]

I have a betta named Eucleides (You-clyde-ease; it's a funny Roman name). I have him in a 6 gallon with 4 or 5 pygmy cories. He acts rather funny. He swims fine sometimes, but sometimes he lays on the bottom in strange positions. I just saw him and he had himself wrapped around the filter. It scared the crap out of me, because usually I see fish like that and they're dead or dying. I tapped on the side and he came off, swimming perfectly fine. No signs of illness or anything, although it looks like his tail is bit or ripped off in the very middle. It's really really tiny, though. He could've scratched it on something. I'm not too concerned with it.

The tank has a bubble wall, filter, live plants, and sand. I feed him once every 2 days or so a mixture of pellets, flakes, an occasional bloodworm, and Sprinula (sp?). Is he just weird? Do other bettas do this?

 

[Lynda B]

Bettas exhibit all kinds of scary behavior. Quite often, I find my males just laying somewhere. This morning, one of them had himself draped perfectly along a leaf of a plant. But, ends up he was just resting. So yeah, they are weird. But we love them anyway.

Don't ever tap the glass to get their attention. Fish, as a whole, don't like that and it scares them. You're much better off (and so are they) if you just observe that kind of behavior quietly. Of course, then you can teach him to swim through hoops and stuff. Just don't scare him!

 

[jollysue]

Long tail Bettas like to wrap their tails around filter intakes. If it is a mild filter with very slow intake suction, I have found them to do fine. But if the intake is strong and can suck up the tails in the filter, it can and will damage them. This is bad! It will cause damage and can lead to infection.

Watch the tear carefully for redness or increasing loss.

You can protect him with a sponge or something on the intake. Some use a nylon stocking piece, which I found to be more trouble than it is worth. He may be wrapping to stabalize himself due to the excessive water currents in his tank that blow him around with his large tail.

I think a more reasonable feeding schedule would be once or twice a day (I feed once) with a once a week fast day followed by a once a week pea day for regularity.