I got a betta picta at Wal*Mart?

[AmberD]

This is Spirit, one of my females:



When I found her at Wal*Mart, she was pretty much gray, and she was pretty sick. I brought her home to some BettaMax. After a couple days of thinking she was going to die, she got better. But her stripes didn't go away. I couldn't figure out why she was so stressed out. I brought her out to "play" with Psych:



Vertical stripes, just like she's supposed to get around a male. But when I looked really close, the horizontal stripes were still present, though faint. Weird, I thought. And I waited for her stripes to go away, but they didn't. I wondered if they were natural, because the stripe continues through her eye!

Then I'm on aquabid today, and I stumble across an auction for a betta picta, which I've never heard of. I looked at it, and saw a fish that looked so similar to Spirit that it got my curiousity up. So I found this:

aquaworld.netfirms.com/Labyrinthfish/Betta/Betta_picta.htm

And it looks like Spirit! (except Spirit's got a beautiful blue irredescence that caused me to buy her - I thought the stipes would disappear, and I'd end up with a whitish betta with blue tint) She's not exactly beautiful, but she's cute and sweet, and she's tough. Hung on there for me, showing a bunch of spirit even when she couldn't stay upright. Hence the name

But, uh, how did something other than a betta splendens get to Wal*Mart?

Amber

Btw, this is the auction I found on Aquabid:
www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/auction.cgi?fwbettas&1055762894

[Jenny]

Wow, did you see what it said about temp on the care page. Either they are totally wrong, or these have much different requirements from splendens. It says 16-24 degrees, which is about 62-75. If any of my bettas get below 70 or so, they are noticibly stressed. They pale out, and are quite inactive. Have you done any more looking to see if this site is correct?

[AmberD]

"[Writing about the misnomer Betta pictum]…a small (5 cm - about the size of [B.] smaragdina) mouthbrooder. The color description is like that of [B.] brederi [B. pugnax]; however, [B.] pictum is from high mountain streams in Java, Singapore, and Sumatra, and can stand cooler temperatures."

from: IBC
www.ibc-smp.org/species/picta.html

[ana]

she's very pretty, and of course she slipped through to the walmart as a gift to you. thats how i'd look at it

[jedicat]

wow, she's gorgeous

and rare, to find at a store, at that!

the pictures on the IBC site of the mouthbrooding guys look really cool, too...i always wondered what the "cleft" on the chins of my boys is for (evolutionary, i mean), but if they're related to fish that need to expand their faces to hold eggs, that kinda makes sense now.

[Annette]

I visited the URL you mentioned and looked at the pics, then compared them to yours. I don't think yours is a betta picta. The pics are just too different.

I have known some bettas who are real stubborn to loose their fear stripes. For example, we have one female (who we're not sure, could be a young male) who was getting too aggressive in an all-female community tank. So we moved her to an end unit of a divided tank. She was dark blue in the community tank, but when we moved her, she fear-stripped and stayed that way for several days before gradually getting her colour back. So it is possible for fear stripes to last for many days. Your new betta may just be the timid type who will take days to settle in and completely loose her fear stripes. She may also stripe easy, so it may take a long while for her to appear as totally without stripes and stay that way for any length of time.

BTW, she's cute. Sometimes the light coloured ones develop subtle colouring on their fins as they mature. Should be beautiful to watch her grow.

Annette

[AmberD]

Yeah, who knows. I know it's completely unlikely that she is a picta (espeically from Wal*Mart). I was just amazed by the similarity to the female picta shown on that website. I know my pictures don't look like it, because she looks blue in those pictures, but in person she looks brown. She's a strange girl, lol.



Her with cute little SunniD minus flash, just an idea of what she looks like in person (she really will not hold still for a good picture), so it's easier to see why I brought the thing up. She doesn't look like the male pictas, but that female looks a lot like her. My mom was amazed, lol.

Anyway, it doesn't matter what she is or isn't. She's a pet and only a pet. I've had her for 2 weeks now, and the stripes are still very much there, even though she's quite a happy little fish, by all appearances. Oh well.

Thanks
Amber

[GypsyBetta]

She looks almost exactly like my female, Sapphire.

She's a blue that looksed very grey when I bought her and took weeks to lose her stripes (she still gets them when I change her water)

[texasprincess]

what a beautiful girl!

[AmberD]

Well, after over a month of having her, Spirit still sports stripes on a nearly regular basis. She loses them at feeding time, and sometimes when I play with her.

This is her most recent picture. It's not exactly true to life, because I think the flash picks up more color than what's seen by the naked eye. But either way, the girl I expected to turn out to be pale is rather dark, lol



Amber

[Betta MVP]

Perhaps she was just very young or very scared. My blue fry get horizontal stripes right about the time they are getting their color and they keep them for quite a while. Also, when really frightened, like adding them to a new tank with other tank mates, some will fade out their color and have the horizontal stripes until they feel safe.

When I added my 5 females together yesterday, one of my bright red females went so pale, she was a light brown and had her fear stripes. It happened right before my eyes, it was so fast.

[ickyfishywishy]

she verry cute i like her color!

[dyingagain1]

my female AmyII looks like that ut shes more maroon