Betta Acts AFTER a Couple of Days

[Mushy]

So I recently purchased a 5gallon tank to help my sister's betta, it was living in a 1gallon box thingy.

With the tank, I gave the betta an ivory mystery snail tankmate, and 3 ghost shrimp.
It seemed to be perfectly fine and loved how it was living. It would occasionally follow the shrimp or snail just to snoop, but never showed much aggression.
After a couple of days, I decided to bump up the number of ghost shrimp to 7 because I thought they were so cute! Everything was even more happy in the tank with the shrimp bundling up and chilling together. Jeffrey, the betta, seemed to be perfectly fine with it also!

Now after a couple of more days, I ended up counting only 6 ghost shrimp after work... I was wondering if Jeffrey would all of a sudden decide eating one of them, or he's going insane with hiding...

 

[bloodlucky]

Hello. There could be many possibilities. I am sad to say you are nearly overstocking with 7 ghost shrimp. The more fish you want, the bigger tank you need, and stocking rules are really quite strict. Although it seems like there is plenty of room, ammonia plays a harmful role to your tank and builds up as you feed fish and introduce more fish (being fish waste.) Your shrimp may have died because the ammonia may have suddenly spiked. I will give you 3 simple possibilities of what happened to the shrimp:

1. The Betta got hungry. This is the great thing about ghost shrimp! They are worth less than a half dollar! Although it seems immoral, you have to remember that the Betta is still just a fish and it doesn't show sympathy.

2. Ammonia killed it off. Ghost shrimp are very delicate. If a sudden spike occurs, ghost shrimp (being much weaker than Bettas) are the first to feel the pain. Do weekly partial water changes to keep ammonia from spiking

3. It's molting or hiding. I have 2 ghost shrimp in my 10 gallon community and for about a week, they both vanished! I searched everywhere and there was no possible place where they could be besides underneath the gravel! Then a few days later they were back again like nothing happened.

I hope I helped. Fish keeping is very hard. Ask me anything. By the way I am only 14, believe it or not, so if I can do it you can do it too

 

[Mushy]

Thanks for the info, it sure helped a lot!
I understand that I'm overstocking the tank and plan on making changes very soon, plus my 50gallon~ tank I plan on cycling and setting up over time.
I'm just worried about the aggressive level of the betta, if it were to randomly attack a shrimp after just hanging out with all of them seems a little odd to me.
Maybe this little guy was too small compared to the others =/

I'll go ahead and look for dead bodies, not exoskeletons, to see if ammonia is what got to him. Or will check every now and then for the 7th little guy to reappear from hiding.

Thanks again!

 

[paytertot]

I disagree fish keeping is very easy if you do it correctly. And I also don't think the stocking would be that bad, as long as the tank is cycled, is it?
What kind of filtration does this tank have? What about maintenance? The problem with smaller tanks is that while totally doable, they are also a little more demanding and significantly limiting.
Do you have a test kit? You'll need one. A liquid master test kit.

 

[Brox]

Yeah I disagree also as long as the tank is cycled it doesn't really seem overstocked. Shrimp don't produce much waste. I think it was hiding personally but the betta can always get hungry too

 

[Samzter]

Hello. There could be many possibilities. I am sad to say you are nearly overstocking with 7 ghost shrimp. The more fish you want, the bigger tank you need, and stocking rules are really quite strict. Although it seems like there is plenty of room, ammonia plays a harmful role to your tank and builds up as you feed fish and introduce more fish (being fish waste.) Your shrimp may have died because the ammonia may have suddenly spiked. I will give you 3 simple possibilities of what happened to the shrimp:

1. The Betta got hungry. This is the great thing about ghost shrimp! They are worth less than a half dollar! Although it seems immoral, you have to remember that the Betta is still just a fish and it doesn't show sympathy.

2. Ammonia killed it off. Ghost shrimp are very delicate. If a sudden spike occurs, ghost shrimp (being much weaker than Bettas) are the first to feel the pain. Do weekly partial water changes to keep ammonia from spiking

3. It's molting or hiding. I have 2 ghost shrimp in my 10 gallon community and for about a week, they both vanished! I searched everywhere and there was no possible place where they could be besides underneath the gravel! Then a few days later they were back again like nothing happened.

I hope I helped. Fish keeping is very hard. Ask me anything. By the way I am only 14, believe it or not, so if I can do it you can do it too

Shrimp barely add anything to the bioload. There bioload is very minuscule compared to fish.

 

[bloodlucky]

Ok I forgot about that. AqAdvisor counts shrimp almost as much as fish so I assumed shrimp create waste as well. I don't know. I have a few ghost shrimps myself but as long as ammonia doesn't rise suddenly, I'm fine with the idea of adding more

 

[bloodlucky]

More to my tank, that is. I say OP's tank is full considering he has 7 shrimps and a Betta in a 5 gallon. He may not be overstocked but he's close to it

 

[Mushy]

Sadly, I definitely have 6 now =/ Been awhile and the seventh hasn't shown up.

I wouldn't be adding more though! Beginning my work on a 75 gallon soon

 

[paytertot]

AqAdvisor isn't much more than a very very rough guideline.

 

[Brandon K.A]

I lose ghost shrimp occasionally. They don't really last long. I started with 11 or so a few months ago and are now down to 2 or 3. In most lfs they are feeders, and so they are very cheap and their life span isn't like most other invertebrates.

 

[librarygirl]

Have you checked your filter? If you don't have a prefilter or sponge or something on the intake it's very easy for shrimp to get sucked up. I've even heard of them climing into the output and getting into the filter that way, so I'd check there first. It is possible your betta turned on him; I've heard of bettas being fine with tankmates and then suddenly turn on them. Adding more shrimp might have caused him to feel his territory was being invaded too much so he decided to correct it.

 

[animalzrok2]

i also don't think fish keeping is very hard. as long as you do what is necessary you will be fine. i also agree with librarygirl about the filter

 

[Mushy]

Ohgawd I hope he isn't in the filter...
I'll check after work to be sure, but it'd suck to see a dead shrimp in there =/

 

[Bettababe1011]

When you have bettas and shrimp together, it can go either way. The Betta might decide he feels like eating a fancy shrimp dinner. But shrimp can be good at hiding as well. So just keep an eye out for him, and watch the other shrimp.

 

[Mushy]

I honestly would have never expected this.
One of my females killed and began to eat this male... The Betta fish took NO PART IN IT, until afterwards, he decided to eat the dead shrimp and take it away from the other.

 

[Brox]

AqAdvisor isn't much more than a very very rough guideline.

I think it's pretty helpful