Mar 12, 2008

Sorority Tank





So, as I said, I have gotten the sorority tank going. Here are the pics I promised. The top one shows the whole tank - and I'm pretty sure you can see all the fish too, if you look hard enough. The slideshow is just the same as always - mouse over to see any of the pictures properly, click to see them full sized.

The girls (in pecking order):
Maddi (big red one, you've already met her)
Big Blue (the bigger of the two blues)
Runt (little reddish one... orange/dragon mix, I believe)
Little Blue (the smaller blue one)
Silk (a.k.a. that little white one)

Not very original names, I know... but often I start calling them something before coming up with a real name and it just sticks. That last image of Runt is my fave... she's so cute ^^

Anyways, they seem to be getting along. I tried adding in Specks and Iri, but they're too aggressive, which is strange because when I had my three original girls (Maddi, Specks and Iri) together, Maddi was the most aggressive. In some of those photos you can see them chasing each other... Maddi chasing Big Blue and Little Blue chasing Silk... but there hasn't been any damage yet. Silk has a bite taken out of her tail, but she was like that when I got her. She also spends a lot of time hiding - there's a pic of her hiding in that slideshow, too, see if you can find her. You might also have noticed that some of them look a little bloated... I haven't gotten the hang of how much to feed them yet.

One kind of pellets in my inventory are too big for any of them to eat all at once... and I love watching them eat them... they all grab one and dart off to their caves and then repeatedly let go of their pellet and attack it again until it's gone... so amusing...

Only other thing I wanted to talk about was how I decorated the tank. Went out and got some more gravel and buried an air stone in the front left corner. Then I went to Sears and found a whole bunch of mugs on sale for $1 each, so I bought six of them. That log ornament in the middle was on sale at WalMart for less than $10, and I got the plants mostly on ebay, though some were donated by other betta owners who didn't need them anymore.

So it really didn't cost me much to set up this tank. Got the tank, lid, light, gravel, filter and aerator along with a bunch of other useful stuff for under $50 from a friend and the decorations cost me around $30 all together. It may seem over planted, but female bettas like crowded tanks, they need places to hide from each other.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You did a great job with your tank. Runt is such a cutie. ^_^

ReBorn Again said...

Girl bettas are supposed to have a bulgy belly - that's eggs and all the females get them. If they don't then they are being underfed.