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You are here: Experts > Animals/Pets > Pet Fish > Freshwater Aquarium > Setting up new tank
Expert: Michael Freynet - 10/30/2009
Question
Hello. I own several bettas but just lost 3 this past week, which I think is due to nitrite poisoning. I'm a novice when it comes to fish but due to what's happened I started looking up things about betta care (I bought them because I was told they were an easy pet but I'm finding out...not so much). At any rate, I want to take care of the rest of my fish & purchased a 1.5 gallon aquarium to test out on one of them. Right now I just have each one in a separate little 1/2 gallon tank that I bought at Wal-Mart.
So I need to know the best way to set this up so they won't die on me. I bought some water test strips & each tank was high in nitrites, has hard water & high PH level. To reduce the PH I'm going to slowly introduce R/O water instead of the tap. But for now I bought some Prime to rid the water of chlorine, ammonia, etc. instead of just the drops that rid the water only of chlorine. I'm also going to cut back how much I feed them; apparently I'm over-feeding them by doing so every day, twice a day. I was told to cut back to 2-3 times a week, which should help lower ammonia levels. But, I guess my biggest question is: what's all this I hear about needing to make sure you have "good" bacteria when starting a new tank? And how do I do that? And is it necessary? Any info you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.
Answer
Hi Melissa,
With a Betta bowl the entire biological cycle isn't too terribly important in all honesty as with a 1/2 gallon tank I would highly suggest 50% water changes TWICE a week. Remember small water volumes like that accumulate with toxicity very quickly. In given time two beneficial bacterias will bloom in your aquariums gravel bed and that will help break down the toxicity into less toxic substances(ammonia->nitrites->nitrates). Just keep up on your two partial water changes a week and only feed once a day every other day. They are not very active fish and have slow metabolisms.
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