A friendly reminder for everyone who assumes there's nothing wrong with their tank just because the betta is swimming and eating
We woke up this morning to a dozen dead shrimp and almost all fish gasping at the surface. Guess who was seemingly unnaffected? The bettas. Both (separate tanks ofc) were still just happily swimming around, greeting us and begging for food while we ran around doing water changes and tests.
We don't know what happened, everything was fine hours before when we went to bed, I literally posted pics of them all last night. 20 and 25g tanks well established, understocked, planted. The 25g tested 0.25 nitrites (which isn't even that high tbh), so I'm assuming something much bigger must have happened overnight, the other tested 0 for everything. One bigger water change helped both go back to normal.
Basically, if it weren't for the dead shrimp on the ground and outside the tank, trying to get out, and all the fish up at the surface nearly on the dry, we never would have thought something was wrong. Luckily there don't appear to be any fish casualties so far 11 hours later.
This is what people mean when they say bettas are hardy. They were just fine swimming in whatever was wrong, but the other regular fish were not. This is why people ask you about your water parameters and suggest water changes when you post about fish problems. While our tests didnt really tell us exactly what happened and how, it obviously indicated there was a big spike at some point that affected the fish, and caused deaths.
If somethong is wrong, don't be lazy, test your water and do that water change even if the test results look fine.
Tilly and the gang attached for fish tax! This could have very easily become a very sad Christmas morning...
We woke up this morning to a dozen dead shrimp and almost all fish gasping at the surface. Guess who was seemingly unnaffected? The bettas. Both (separate tanks ofc) were still just happily swimming around, greeting us and begging for food while we ran around doing water changes and tests.
We don't know what happened, everything was fine hours before when we went to bed, I literally posted pics of them all last night. 20 and 25g tanks well established, understocked, planted. The 25g tested 0.25 nitrites (which isn't even that high tbh), so I'm assuming something much bigger must have happened overnight, the other tested 0 for everything. One bigger water change helped both go back to normal.
Basically, if it weren't for the dead shrimp on the ground and outside the tank, trying to get out, and all the fish up at the surface nearly on the dry, we never would have thought something was wrong. Luckily there don't appear to be any fish casualties so far 11 hours later.
This is what people mean when they say bettas are hardy. They were just fine swimming in whatever was wrong, but the other regular fish were not. This is why people ask you about your water parameters and suggest water changes when you post about fish problems. While our tests didnt really tell us exactly what happened and how, it obviously indicated there was a big spike at some point that affected the fish, and caused deaths.
If somethong is wrong, don't be lazy, test your water and do that water change even if the test results look fine.
Tilly and the gang attached for fish tax! This could have very easily become a very sad Christmas morning...