Miss Wiggle
Practically perfect in every way
Right, my little betta, binky. Has been flicking on and off for about 3 weeks now and I'm starting to get a little concerned.
Tank's 8g heated and filtered.
Water stat's I've tested a few times the last few weeks and they are consistently
ph - 7.4
amonia - 0
nitrite - 0
nitrate less than 5
It first started after I was about 2 days late with a water change, if this is co-incidence or not I don't know. I do about 25% change every week, vac the whole tank and prune off dead leaves on plants.
When I first saw it my initial thought was ich..... so I cranked the temp up and added salt, after a few days he seemed to be flicking less. he's not developed any white spots or other signs of disease, he's still eating and seems quite happy. But he just won't stop flicking, 3 weeks on now I'm a little concerned. Surley if it was ich he'd have some spots by now? It's not all the time or even every day, just sometimes I notice him doing it.
One of my thoughts is that my plants weren't doing too well so maybe the debris from the dying leaves could be getting caught in his scales, so this weekend I upped my lighting to 2wpg and started dosing with flourish and flourish excel so hopefully the plants should do better which will at least take this problem out of the equation if not fix it. The plants do seem to be doing better already so fingers crossed.
Another thought was stress, I've been tinkering with the plants and aquascape a fair bit to try and get it right and could this have stressed him to the point he'd be flicking? I've tried to keep my hands out of the tank as much as possible the last few weeks, but obviously with still wanting to remove all dead leaves and debris I have to put them in there a bit.
Sooooo fingers crossed things should start to look up with the plants gettign sorted, but I was just wondering if anyone else has any thoughts on what could be causing it or what I should do or watch out for.
Thanks
Tank's 8g heated and filtered.
Water stat's I've tested a few times the last few weeks and they are consistently
ph - 7.4
amonia - 0
nitrite - 0
nitrate less than 5
It first started after I was about 2 days late with a water change, if this is co-incidence or not I don't know. I do about 25% change every week, vac the whole tank and prune off dead leaves on plants.
When I first saw it my initial thought was ich..... so I cranked the temp up and added salt, after a few days he seemed to be flicking less. he's not developed any white spots or other signs of disease, he's still eating and seems quite happy. But he just won't stop flicking, 3 weeks on now I'm a little concerned. Surley if it was ich he'd have some spots by now? It's not all the time or even every day, just sometimes I notice him doing it.
One of my thoughts is that my plants weren't doing too well so maybe the debris from the dying leaves could be getting caught in his scales, so this weekend I upped my lighting to 2wpg and started dosing with flourish and flourish excel so hopefully the plants should do better which will at least take this problem out of the equation if not fix it. The plants do seem to be doing better already so fingers crossed.
Another thought was stress, I've been tinkering with the plants and aquascape a fair bit to try and get it right and could this have stressed him to the point he'd be flicking? I've tried to keep my hands out of the tank as much as possible the last few weeks, but obviously with still wanting to remove all dead leaves and debris I have to put them in there a bit.
Sooooo fingers crossed things should start to look up with the plants gettign sorted, but I was just wondering if anyone else has any thoughts on what could be causing it or what I should do or watch out for.
Thanks
