Have you kept a Siamese fighting fish?
Mine lasted a couple of months
Any tips you can give on keeping them well? I want to get another but feel I need to improve things.
My water parameters are all 0, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.
Filtered 12 gallon tank. I didn't give it betta food, don't know if that would make a difference?

Can I ask what other fish you had it in with?

Make sure the air above the tank is warm at least by insulating the lid of the tank, these fish also breathe air but if it is cold they will die. This is a very common cause of death with gourami. Your water quality is not so important with SFF as they can live in stagnant pools of water but they do require higher than average temperature.

What ornaments do you have in there? I read that some of the fake plants can shread their fins as they tend to have long flowy fins.

Our last one lived about a year but we got another one which is doing well.

Do you have any idea why your one died? Did it look like it had been attacked or had any visible symptoms? If you kept it with other fish did any of them seem unusual or ill?

We have had them in the past but now stick with cold water fish.
From memory one of them we had in with Guppies which had a habit of attacking it's fins, so he didn't last too long.

There were 4 zebra danios with it, they just ignored each other.


Its heated, up to 79 degrees, seems to be the right temperature


Its fins seemed OK, I treated it for fin rot, with salt and it recovered well from that.
It was inactive for quite a while, a good 3 weeks, no signs of illness at all. I have lost a couple of zebra danios at the same time as the betta died. I do partial water changes every 2 weeks and it was the last time I did that that they croaked.
I wonder if it had something to do with fluctuating PH.
I'm at a loss
Thanks for your replies people.

Danios should not be kept with SSF as their water requirments and temperatures are very different. Your ph should not fluctuate unless you are using different types of water or have added a buffer such as tuffa rock or bog wood, I would suggest you clean your filters once every 4-6 weeks minimum making sure you use tank water and not tap water to clean the filter, also add some chemical filtration such as charcoal into the filter which removes ammonia or even put some pieces of washed household coal in the tank as it does the same job.

I started keeping fish a few years ago after a 30 year break (currently the tank is empty - I had to give the fish away cos we're moving soon and it was the easiest thing to do)
Anyway, I digress....
I don't remember it being so complicated all those years ago. None of this PH balance stuff and different fish needing different water. You just filled the tank up, heated to the right temp, bunged some fish in and changed the water every few weeks. I had guppies, neons sword tails etc, as well as SFF, when there were no guppies. I can't remember scooping dead fish out all that often, so why has it got so complicated?

My dad said exactly the same. He kept fish years ago and had no problems. This was before tap safe, ph, nitrogen levels etc. last year he decided to start up again and the first few months were dreadful.

One fish keeper said its partly because of inbreeding. Dad used to have guppies with no problem but now they were just dying. The people in the shop said a lot of popular traditional hardy fish like guppies are inbred so much that they are often born with either visible or non visible defects so often die.

We've got siamese fighters in the tank with zebra corydoras, neon tetras and plecostomus. My husband only does a partial (about a third of the tank) water change every couple of months and our fish seem to thrive.

Im not sure where the water guidelines come from.

We change about half a tank usually once a week. Our fish are generally ok, as are my dads who does his the same. My partners mum never does water changes, only tops up the tank when a lot has evaporated. She doesnt use tap safe and her fish were ok. Then she got the stupid idea in her head, despite being told not to, to get male and female guppies because she wanted pretty babies. Now she cant get rid of them because no serious fish keeper will take them (few generations of inbreeding). By the time they are old enough to be sexed the bigger ones are pregnant again.

Don't they just eat the babies? Thats what normally happens if they're not put in a breeding tank.

I know when my husband does a water change he treats the water he's putting in first and lets it sit for a few days (he has a nice plastic bin he does this in.

Admittedly we did have male and female guppies. They popped out so many babies. Most were eaten and only about 8 survived. We gave away the adult males to my dad, then as soon as we could sex the babies he had the males and we kept the females. I think we gave two females to ohs mum. Her tank is terrible now. Its small with lots of fake plants so not much clear water. She easily has over 100 tiny babies. She had quite a few adult guppies that she bought herself and two males. All the females have had at least 1 or 2 births. If you look closely you can see tiny babies, small babies, large babies and barely adults. Her idea of keeping down numbers is scooping a lot out and giving them to any kids who have fish tanks.

sworn enemy of the cat breed also from Thailand