# Fish Gills Red



## GrimThePanda (Jul 27, 2014)

My Betta's gills are showing these exposed red crescent-shapes. I just noticed them as I was giving him his nightly feeding. He lives in a 10 gallon filtered tank with a rabbit snail. His weekly 40% changes are on sunday but I'm doing one first thing in the morning now.










As you can see, there's this scary red strip where his gills should be  It's there on the other side too. He wasn't behaving abnormally when I was feeding him, but when I came back to take the picture he was laying on the bottom of the tank breathing heavily, and his head spazzed around for a few moments and air bubbles came out of his gills. I'm very worried about my poor fish now.


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## lilnaugrim (Mar 27, 2013)

Don't worry! It's all normal!

Betta's have a stripe at the edge of the gills (lol almost just spelled 'girls' instead haha) and another one where the gill plate folds out when they flare.

Here's a good picture where my boy Pierce, you can see the red at the edge of his gills and then you see another red stripe that is darker right behind is eye, that's where his gill plate folds out.


Not all Betta's have the red stripe though, some have different colors like Copper, Yellow, Blue, or even a purpl-ish color!
Here's my girl Silhouette that has Copper stripes, see the two on her cheeks there? She has breeding stripes too, those are the yellowish vertical lines on her body.


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