Flow rate too powerful

[Julie0228]

I have a 5.5 gallon that I just added a male betta to by himself. He seems very happy and is swimming around checking things out but whenever he swims in front of the filter it seems to blow him around a little bit. What can I do to make it less powerful?


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[aqua_holic]

Fish (not just bettas) get blown by the filter outflow when they swim in front of it - that's just what happens. Some fish seem to enjoy doing this. I wouldn't worry about it just yet.

 

[azmodan]

I have a 5.5 gallon that I just added a male betta to by himself. He seems very happy and is swimming around checking things out but whenever he swims in front of the filter it seems to blow him around a little bit. What can I do to make it less powerful?


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Is this an HOB? Raising the water level helps and you can looking into building a simple DIY filter baffle (just google it and you'll find plenty of easy examples). A prefilter sponge over the intake and polyfill in the filter will typically decrease flow too.

 

[trennamw]

Its true some fish like it, but a lot of bettas don't. Like Azmodan said there are lots of ways to baffle the filter.

Or the Whisper line of filters are especially gentle and fairly cheap online. You can transfer your existing filter media, even if that means cutting it up, to keep your beneficial bacteria. Some people customize the whisper to be like a canister ... Just lots of media stacked on top of each other.


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[Fishfur]

Check for water bottle baffle instructions. Dead easy to make, cost nothing more than an empty water bottle and work fairly well. Most Bettas don't much care for current at all. I've kept mine in 2.5 G tanks with no filtration at all, so the only real movement is when the fish swim. But they have loads of plants, and I've been experimenting with simply topping up and not doing WCs.

So far, 3 weeks in, so good. No ammonia or nitrite, nitrate less than 10, and the fish seem content and I don't have to annoy them twice a week with water changes as I used to. If it continues to work out I hope to be able to reduce WCs to monthly or every six weeks or so

In a 5G, you could likely do this also and not change water very often at all. I use DI for topups so the water doesn't keep getting harder with mineral buildup.