I've been hankering after a siamese fighting fish for ages and finally bought one a few days ago. He's royal blue with red and purple highlights when he moves and he's called Frank.
In the last few days I have discovered how much joy these wonderful fish can bring. After a bit of posturing he settled in fine with the endlers and seems to really like his new home. He's got plenty of hiding places and I also put some indian almond leaves in for him, which I'll obviously replace every now and then. Its made the water a bit yellow but I actually don't mind that too much.
I didn't realise exactly how characterful bettas are. I swear he actually recognises me, is this even possible? When I walk by the tank or stop to look he comes right to the front but he doesn't seem to do the same with anybody else, maybe it's just chance but I'd like to think not.
This may sound silly but when I was doing a bit of research into bettas I found a u tube clip of a girl who had trained her betta to do tricks so I thought I'd give it a go. Whoever said fish have a short attention span and can't remember things are VERY wrong.
I feed Frank tiny amounts of food twice a day, one bit at a time and before I open the tank lid I gently tap on the sides twice and each time I present him food I tap twice too. I feed him in the top right corner and he swims over when I tap now and seems to have learned he can lie on the glass thermometer in the tank and be fed from there. A couple of times he's actually jumped out the water a short way to grab the food. I have to say he reminds me of a cat a bit. When I siphon out any dropped food he swims down to see what's going on and chases the little bits of gravel that rise and fall in the siphon. I think he's an amazing fish!!! I love my Frankie boy already, how daft is that?