Does anyone else find this strange Betta behavior?

[Puriti]

Okay, so when my male betta fish Phantom died, my female Sasha started to show her horizontal stripes for the next 2 days. She looked around like she was looking for something and was looking in places Phantom usually went. She doesn't do it anymore after like a week but I still found that REALLY weird that she just started to get horizontal stripes after he died and he wasn't in the tank anymore. She never had horizontal stripes unless I was trying to catch her or something like that. She often flaunted with Phantom a lot, so I'm thinking she might've been thrown off that he wasn't in the tank anymore?

 

[Guest]

horizontal means stressed, verticle means ready to spawn or really happy. And when i put my female in with my male to see if they'd spawn, she showed her verticle stripes and he flared at her, but then she just hid in the leaves and he didn't build a nest or anything, so i took her out.

 

[Puriti]

No,I know what they mean, but the fact she did it AFTER he died is confusing me.

 

[Guest]

i don't know, i thought you weren't supposed to house males and females together except during spawining? what else do you have in the tank with the female betta? maybe some other fish are stressing her out... or when was your last water change? maybe the nitrates are too high and that is stressing her.

 

[Puriti]

You're not but they never killed each other so I let them be like that. I dunno the baby mollies always like bombard her when it's feeding time but she's never shown them before. I did a water change the other day o.o