Female betta hunting flakes

Here's the thing. I'm losing a lot of fish. Every day I'm pulling out four or five, some days more. And that leaves drips on the glass. I'd be wiping the glass all day long if I kept up.

You see *strikes a professorial pose* the tank is freshly set up, new water, new gravel, new canister filter, there is nothing established about it except for the plants with no snails. Aquarium shops do not sell newly arrived fish. Too many are disrupted by transit. The biologic filter is not ready to handle the waste that the fish produce. The filter must be populated with bacteria to begin processing the ammonia to less harmful nitrate which can be removed by regular water changes. That ammonia is stressful to fish, especially the delicate ones. All my new ones are delicate types. Except for the betta. In the natural world, bettas swim around in stale little mud puddles. It's why they breathe so much through their mouths. They've evolved labyrinth organs similar to lungs.

Sometimes hobbyists use goldfish to break in their tank. I took the risk and failed fairly badly.

The plants were all cultivated in petri dishes from plant tissue. They're clones. In my aquarium they grew without the filter turned on. Dead, non-moving water. They became covered with a type of black algae that is coating their natural beauty. That happened quickly.  I'll probably pull them all out and start over now that I know what happens and now that I know how quickly they grow.

I'm surprised I sat there for 7.5 minutes videoing this. It didn't seem that long. I wanted to show the fish exploring its environment. It seems interested in every little thing. It wedges itself in among the plants, squeezing through them and resting from the current. It examines everything in there. Every inch. The fish is interesting to watch. But here I just fed them and it's chasing down the flakes. It doesn't like its betta pellets. It did taste a few but then spit them out. Maybe it will eventually turn on to its pellets, but for now it prefers the flakes. And it's very good at catching them.

The red dot is from the cell phone camera.

She seems like a great breeding fish, and actually ready to go. I thought they would send me a baby.

I'd hate to breed her because they so often die right after that. It's a fascinating process. Takes its own tank filled to half way. Male and female separated by glass. Or possibly the female in a jar. 

The male builds a bubble nest in still water. He literally wraps his body around her body and squeezes the eggs out. Then as the eggs sink to the bottom he releases her and swims down and scoops up the eggs in his mouth and places them in the bubble nest. 

He cares for the nest and the eggs until they hatch. He cares for the fry until he gets tired of the whole project and eats them all. So you have to manage them. First remove the female then later remove the male.

And you end up with a 100 little baby bettas and now what are you going to do with them? 

You cannot keep them all in little jars. It's a fun thing to watch, and educational too. But that's all. After that it's a gigantic pain in the butt.