EMERGENCY!!! Female has attacked male!

[anasfire23]

When I moved my CT female from out of the split I had her in with my VT female I put my Male CT in the split where she was. This morning I woke up to find the female over in the male's side and all his beautiful fins have been attacked and seeminly eaten!! He looks terrible! I immediatly removed her, the split (so he'd have more room) and added some sea salt to help heal the wounds and tried to feed him. He ate one pellet and ignored the rest. Will he be ok? He was such a proud and beautiful betta, flaring at his own reflection between his fry duty etc.

I really don't want him to die!!! Anyone got any other suggestions as to how to keep him alive? I think he might die from the stress of it all. Funny thing is too, the female doesn't have a scratch on her and is bloated with eggs and barring up! Looks like she just wanted to spawn again and was probably defending herself against him once she got over there and he was hassling her? I can't really say for sure.

[Matty]

well just isolate her and keep her isolated so that she can recover and try giving her Melafix or betta-remedy hope he gets better

[anasfire23]

your post doesn't make sense Matty! It's the male that's hurt badly, not the female! lol She attacked HIM. They are both isolated for now and I don't have Melafix or Betta-remedy but If I can afford it after I've done grocery shopping I'll get some. I've just added sea salt for now which should help as well. I wonder if he'll be scarred for life now and never want to breed again. Coz I was hoping to breed him with my CT female (that's the whole reason I got her) in a few months time.

[Matty]

sorry anas i misread it...so HE'S damaged! ok so whats the water temperature. try to
keep it higher anbd il lget back to u in half an hour..dinner

kk back...I personally have a betta with slightly damaged fins and i isolated him and hes beginning to heal..i use betta-remedy which is very inexpensive and works on containers up to 1g

PM me whenever you have personal questions

[(RC)]

Keep him in clean warm water and he should be fine. It should not effect his willingness to breed. I always used Bettamax in my containers when I had damaged fins.


RC

[Matty]

yeah i wanted bettamax but no LPS in my area has any

[anasfire23]

Originally Posted by (RC)

Keep him in clean warm water and he should be fine. It should not effect his willingness to breed. I always used Bettamax in my containers when I had damaged fins.


RC

I got something called Multi-cure which has (according to the ingrediants) 0.400mg/ml Malachite Green, 4.00mg/ml Methylene Blue and 2.00mg/ml Acriflavine whatever they are. I put just a few drops in there coz the dose is 5ml to 20litres of water and he's in a 2lt tank. It turns the water kinda greenish. He seems to have perked up a little now, swimming around more and what not. I think he's going to be ok but as we all know with fish they can go from good to bad really fast!
Wish me luck

Thanks for your replies

[Matty]

keep giving him that everyday untill full results+good luck

[anasfire23]

I bought him a small goldfish bowl sized under gravel filter today and a 3 valve splitter for my pump and set that up in his tank (which it fits nicely in) so he's now got filtered water, just not heated. I couldn't find any of those small 25W heaters at a decent price only 50W ones that would be too big for his tank.
He's really perked up today though, swam to the surface expecting food when I walked past and actually ate when I got around to feeding him. I think he's gonna be ok. I spent WAYYYY too much money at my LFS's (went to about 3 and spent money at each) so my fish are all now living in luxury. Well except the female that mauled him, she's been banished to one of those betta bowl kits with the litter absorbing gravel. I just left the tree ornament out and will be doing 100% water changes every day.

Thanks all!
Below are before and after pictures of him, the poor old guy.

[dolifisis]

Wow! She really did a good job on 'im. Poor thing.

[Christine]

Sorry he got beat up.

You can't really blame her tho. You knew that was a risk of dividers and you chose to take the chance knowing that ahead of time. Don't be too hard on her eh? She only did what was natural.

[anasfire23]

I understand that, I just don't know why she mauled him. They've spawned before and both come out of it without a scratch. I can only assume it was because there wasn't anywhere for her to hide and he was harrassing her to spawn so she defended herself. I'm not being that hard on her, like I'm not refusing to feed her or clean her tank etc. I just needed a new tank to put her in and couldn't afford anything bigger than those betta kit things for now. She won't be in it for too long. Just a few weeks until I can afford another 1g tank.

[Christine]

You know, at my place the females are pushier than the males. They often end up under the partial nest the male has started and start pushing at the male like.. "ok already, thats good enough". The males eventually get ticked and chase the female off because their masterpiece castle of a nest isn't finished yet. But with really persistant girlies, the males can get quite damaged at this point because (at my house anyway Ive noticed) they have a tendency to pay more attention to what they are doing than to the girl. The girls get bolder and bolder and eventually start ripping fins to get his attention.

That said, I've never had a female kill a male (it definitely does happen tho) but I have had males kill females. I have however had quite a few males come out of the spawn tank looking like your boy looks. One thing to realize about the girls... they are fast. The boys (unless its a pk), while they can be mean generally can't move as fast as the girls.

And as you know.. they have their moods. I used to have a boy that beat up all the girls. I eventually found out that tho he was sold to me as "never spawned" it wasn't due to lack of trying. He had a habit of beating up girls before he ever came to me. He did finally spawn with a girl and there was no fin damage... and they like... slept together??? as in side by side in the bottom corner of the tank the night before they spawned. It was bizarre! They really aren't predictable imo. The best you can do is look at possible outcomes and try to prevent the worst ones from happening. That is one of the reasons why I don't keep divided tanks. The risk is too high for my liking.

I hope he heals up nicely for you. He is such a pretty boy. Oh btw, about the betta max... the reason you can't find it Matty is that the company that makes it (Aquatronics) went out of business. You can sometimes find it on aquabid. I'm not sure how much of a shelf life it has.

[anasfire23]

Yeah well I don't think I'll be keeping that tank as a split anymore. They're more room in it as a single tank anyway and it looks nicer. He 100% better now thank god. He freaked out at his new filter though a little today, I've got it on very very low so it only lets out one bubble every 5-10 seconds and he keeps trying to sit above it and gets nailed by a bubble every so often, swims off but then comes back!! It must be fun. I'm sure the novilty will wear off sooner or later though.

[mayastarocker]

Well I also hope that he gets better. Maybe it was something he said? lol