You Think They Do What?

[smallpond]

So I was telling someone about Bettas on another forum and one girl piped up and said:

Another thing, Bettas, in the wild, live in small pools/puddles of tropical water. To eat/mate/etc the often have to get to another pool of water, and they do this by flinging themselves out of the one they're in and flopping to another (hence the need to be able to breathe air for a time. This means that Bettas are programmed to JUMP out of the tank. Anything you put a Betta in had damn well better have a lid, unless you'd like to find your fish dried out and stuck to the table.

NO NO NO NO! Why on earth do so many people still think this!!!

I want to correct her but I don't want to sound condescending about it. How do you correct this without sounding like a smarty pants?

 

[iankent]

So I was telling someone about Bettas on another forum and one girl piped up and said:

Another thing, Bettas, in the wild, live in small pools/puddles of tropical water. To eat/mate/etc the often have to get to another pool of water, and they do this by flinging themselves out of the one they're in and flopping to another (hence the need to be able to breathe air for a time. This means that Bettas are programmed to JUMP out of the tank. Anything you put a Betta in had damn well better have a lid, unless you'd like to find your fish dried out and stuck to the table.

NO NO NO NO! Why on earth do so many people still think this!!!

I want to correct her but I don't want to sound condescending about it. How do you correct this without sounding like a smarty pants?

i'd go with the "you're an idiot" line... not only is it not true, it's quite unbelievably stupid!

 

[ALEXF]

Just explain that you frequently talk to people who bred/ own bettas and although you have heard the samething, you have found out that it is actually a myth. That they do live in small puddles during the drought season but the rest of the time there is pleanty of water.

 

[modaz]

dont use my usual approach tell her simply that she is wrong and if that was the case they would grow legs and walk from puddle to puddle. whoops that was my usual type of response

 

[Netty]

How very tactful of you Daz

 

[smallpond]

Well this is what I said back. I tried to be tactful and use science, I hope it works.

Well, yes and no. There are fish that can do this but Bettas do not do. Some eels and the Walking Catfish for example is very good at this, they are so good that they are an invasive species in parts of the US . Bettas do like to jump, at least some do, Oscar didn't, Felix does sometimes . But there are many fish species that like to jump, we had some Oscars that loved to jump, one died because he knocked the lid off the tank in the middle of the night and did die. (enter the honking big rock on the lid :laugh

In order to be successful at moving from one pool to another a fish would have to have ridged fins, think about a Mudskipper. They have very ridged fins to keep themselves upright while poking about on land . Bettas have very soft, long fins that are no good for this, even wild Bettas don't have fins for this. Any attempt at focusing their movement on land would be a craps shoot with very little directionality at all. Since they are tropical fish there is a lot of plant vegetation low to the ground and since they are very very little fish it would be very easy to get stuck somewhere.

Breeding and life takes place in, slow moving rivers, and ponds. All of this is stagnant water with very low oxygen content. And it's warm water, cold water holds more oxygen anyways :wink: . They need the Labyrinth to extract the oxygen from the air because there isn't enough in the water, they actually can't get their air from the water, their gills aren't efficient enough. There have been experiments done where the Labyrinth was removed and the fish died from suffocation in oxygen saturated water. Many fish have this organ, most in Asia and Africa in slow moving, low oxygen water. The worse the water the larger and more complex the organ becomes. Fish like Gourami, climbing perch, paradise fish and more all have one. So theoretically they can live out of the water but only for a short time and providing they don't dry out, but movement would be limited because they don't have those ridged pectoral fins.

I love this video because it shows the Betta's natural habitat. http/youtube.com/watch?v=aj5OEvBQPVo
During the dry season the rivers can dry out and they have to live in puddles but if the puddle dries up they are out of luck.

Sorry about the ramble and sorry if I sound a little snotty there but there are so many myths about Bettas. I had a friend who loved them but they kept dying because she kept them in a little cup on her dresser and all because she thought they liked it. So we did a ton of research came across a great fish forum (, asked tons of questions, and well, lets say that over time you learn quite a bit. We talked to a lot of breeder/owners and had a lot of myths expelled.

Did I get anything wrong?

 

[azulfire24]

yep modaz is being very nice, i would have gone with a resounding
de de de!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
{anyone who has seen carlos mencia on tv knows what i mean!}

 

[Million]

Very well worded post

 

[i love bettas]

well thats a damn lie my betta dosent have a lid on his cage he dosent jump out he does when he eats though but not enough to to need a lid

 

[ibbledibble]

well thats a damn lie my betta dosent have a lid on his cage he dosent jump out he does when he eats though but not enough to to need a lid

while its not correct that they can "walk" from puddle to puddle, they are well know for jumping, and it is definitely recommended to have a lid, lots of people have lost bettas (and other types of fish) to jumping. some do it some don't again its a personality thing, but if your betta jumps for food they might decide to jump at another time. if you have a big gap between the top of the tank and the water level this can help too.

 

[Netty]

Agreed Ibble.....we've had about 4 of ours jump either out of the tank or the dividers between. Even one of our babies at 2 months old jump out of his tank and into the bigger one he was in. Some of them are not bothered to even try but we always err on the side of caution and have lids on all of them.