# My betta fish just died! What did I do wrong? Urgent - HELP



## jgiven22 (Nov 20, 2007)

My stepson got him and put him in a small bowl. I changed the water using room temp water (a mix of tap and bottled water). My wife checked it today and said the water was dirty and the fish was dead. What did we do wrong?

He's going to be so upset. We have to get another fish. I need to know what mistakes we made to prevent this from happening again.


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## MegK (Aug 23, 2007)

well she said the water was dirty? 

bettas like a temp of 75F and im going to assume the bowl was one gallon, which means daily-weekly water changes. you shouldnt really us tap water, the ph might be off or it might not be good,u should get a dechlor of some sort

and the betta will appreciate a filter and heater


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## Falina (Feb 25, 2007)

Being in a small bowl that hadn't cycled I'm not too surprised he died unfortunately.  My first suspicion would be that he died of ammonia poisoning due to the tank not being cycled.

Bowls are very bad living quarters for a betta They are anabantids so need surface area to breathe - the shape of a bowl does not really allow much for this.

They are tropical fish and need heated water. Between 22 and 28 degrees celcius is a good temperature for him. Was his bowl heated? Did you make sure the water was the correct temperature before ading the betta?

Your betta will also need a small filter. They get stressed with strong currents so a small weak filter will be fine but it is vital to cycling the tank and keeping the water a bit cleaner.

The smallest size of tank I would recommend for a betta is a 5g. This gives him room to swim and the bigger the tank, the more forgiving when it comes to water parameters.

Before adding the fish it is important to cycle the tank. There is a sticky at thwe top of the "Starting and Maintaining..." thread which gives a lot of good information on this that you should perhaps read.

Finally, unfortunately the way fish are kept in stores is not often the way they should be kept when they are brought home. Bettas will survive in small, unheated, unfiltered spaces for a very short time, butt hey won't be happy, and they won't survive very long. The only reason fish stores get away with keeping them this way is that they don't have them for very long, and that the vast majority of them care about profits only, and properly caring for the fish would cost them too much money.

Hope this helps, and that it wasn't too overwhelming.


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