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[font color="#800080"]Well, I have found a trio of girls that seem to stand each other. They all flare at each other and chase each other around and but their colors are bright and they look healthy. It just is worse around feeding time. And as many times as I feed them in separate areas they just musthave what the others have. My question is they all have vertical red marks on their gills...It almost seems as if the scales have been stripped away. Is this just the biting and nipping that's going on between each other or is it a certain type of disease? [/font]

No need to worry.

All bettas have that. It is just a scaleless area that they have on their gill covers so it is easier for them to flare.

But just keep an eye on them... If they start to do actual damage to each other you will have to separate them.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

[font color="#800080"] Thanks. [/font]

it is a good idea to keep all bettas seperate.

[span class="edited"][Edited by bettachris 2004-08-13 19:39][/span]

I've kept a number of bettas in my 6 ft tank (course that's big) on numerous occasions and they were fine. Just once had one that didn't work, a male that was petrified of having that much room. Other than that, I kept up to 6 females and a male. With a variety of other community fish.

nope it isn't anything to worry about. when females show there colors and males to there gill plate will color up. this is another way to tell if your betta is splenden or imbellis. red=splenden and blue= imbellis.

Just keep an eye on things. I think it was Theresa_M who had betta girls together for a while, then left for half an hour to find they had ripped each other to shreds.

My betta girls rarely pick at each other (I'm terribly lucky, I guess) and coexist easily. They don't do the whole territory thing at all. On the other hand, I tried to introduce another girl (half the size of everyone else) and she ran amuck, leaving torn fins and ruffled tempers in her wake. After removing her, I noticed my girls picked on each other a bit before settling back into their comraderie.

So... moral of the story: keep an eye on those girls, make sure the nips and flaring don't turn into all-out fights.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~