Oh boy..not good!!

Wow..remember the pictures of my Betta's??..not so pretty at the moment.
I know it was basically my fault...but I was cleaning their (divided) tank yesterday & apparently I didn't put the dividers back in the slots very well.
Those little buggers figured a way to get to one another..even though the slit was VERY tiny!!
Well..you guessed it..I mean they tore one another's fins up real bad!! They ALL ( four of them) look terrible!! ..I take that back..there is ONE that still looks okay..but it's tail is a bit shredded.
I threw a bunch of AQ. salt in there. At first they all acted like they had been through the wringer
( which they HAD!!!)...but since I got it all FIXED..they are fine....swimming around like nothin' happened. But GEESH!!
Now I have the dividers "snuggly" in place..so hopefully that should keep them APART!!!

Maybe all that aggression is handy in the wild, but it's useless in the big city.

thats not good...i was trying to breed my bettas and the female jumped out of her divider and in with the male and i found him dead along with a guppy when i came back and he was my favorite T-T (i was at a cabin with a friend)

I've always liked fancy guppies. What kind do you have?

Add some Melafix too Diane, if the damage isn't too extensive they should heal up well.

That being said, a while ago I filled my betta tank too high after the wc and Arnie jumped over the divider in the night. Needless to say, he and Bart both were ripped up pretty badly. Both being combtails, many rays were irrepairably damaged and didn't grow back properly. I felt so guilty.

I just recently euthanized Bart as he never recovered fully. He also had a defective top lip, so he found it more and more difficult to eat properly as he got older. All combined, that contributed to him being quite sickly looking for a while, and I just couldn't stand seeing him suffer anymore.

I'm glad your little guys are behaving well, they should be just fine.

(Sheesh, what a bummer reply that ended up being...sorry. )

That's a good idea Leah..thanks!
With such a small tank..how much do you think I should use? ( the tank is only 5 gallons)
They aren't tore up super bad..but they DO have many tears in their finnage. Kinda funny ( well not really)..but only ONE seems to be without much damage...so he must be the winner, huh?
I don't know how I could of been so dumb as to not of checked to make sure the dividers were in place right. There were TWO of them not in there correctly. Sooo these little guys were able to slip right over!!
BTW..sorry to hear that you had to euthanize one of yours..that is never easy...and I feel for you.

Use half of a teaspoon daily for 7 days for 5 gallons. That should help.

My grandson has a blue betta, but thank heavens he only has one. At the end of pre-school his teacher gave it to him, because he took care of it over every holiday. He also had his mother set up their 55 gallon tank and he asked "Poppy" (Jimmy) for some angels. Now the gold veil is being mean, and he yells at the fish, you be nice and stop fighting or I will sell you to the Pet Store. To think this is one of his favorites, the names kids call their fish is so funny, Gold angel is Goldie, the mean gold veil is Johnathan, the clown angel is called clown girl, the black blusher is called nukkie bottom, the black/gold marble is Luke... and the blue betta (own bowl) is called Blue Fish! I just love when he comes over and wants to see all the new stuff, and stages of the angels, he knows that they lay eggs, then they are wigglers and then free swimmers and then babies etc... His bedroom at our house is done white nautical, and we have a real nice white cabinet and white hood tank in his room, and another 50 gallon tank, he loves them and wants to know when he is big can he have it...

Well enough chit chat or I will be called chatty Kathy..

Karen...If that wasn't some nostalgia....
some are probably too young to remember the " Chatty Cathy" doll. I wanted one so bad. I never got one..but most of my friends had one. Pull the string in her neck...and she'd chat all day...LOL.
Okay..sorry...totally off subject

Leah...thanks for the info. on the amount of Melafix.
I just added some!!

Oh dear, sorry to hear about the mishap Dizzee. I think I read once that bettas are not quite so aggressive in the wild. They are, but we bred them in such a way that they are even more aggressive.

Diane,
Do you remember "Tiny Tears" or Suzie Walker? Chatty Cathy... I always laugh at that one, because my twin sister is named Kathy and that is what she is Chatty Kathy!

One Christmas I got a talking Santa. The talking part was a long plastic strip with lots of ridges. When I ran my thumbnail over the ridges with just the right speed and pressure, it said something like HO HO HO.

Megan's comments about Betta aggression got me to thinking about the original reason they were put in aquariums: to fight with each other. Maybe the early fish keepers engineered most of the aggressiveness into them, as if there isn't enough violence in the world already.

My understanding of bettas is that their natural habitat is that of bogs and rice fields in Asia....if you've ever seen pictures of the rice fields, they are vast areas, not mud puddles like many are fooled into believing. In order to build a bubble nest to spawn and rear fry, the betta would need to feel pretty confident that he could protect his territory and brood, and so would have to be able to defend it. The more aggressive the fish, the better the turn out of fry. This is where that innate aggression originates, although it could be possible that captive breeding originally favored fish that were more fierce, for the barbaric practice of fighting the bettas.

Regardless, in the wild, an opponent would likely retreat before the battle got too heated, which is where the flaring and posturing comes in. In an aquarium, there is no where to go and fighting becomes the only option.