redpanda wrote:Good news! My betta, we have decided to name her Niña, is losing her stress stripes! You can definitely tell that she is female, and her stress stripes are fading to a dull blue. She also is getting red spots on the tips of her fins. She's obviously a plakat (which cost 13.99$ at my local pet store, while she was only 1.99$ as a baby).
I don't think there is a way to know if a female betta is plakat or not. veil-tails, halfmoons, deltatails, and plakat females look identical, so there is no way without breeding her that you can tell(breeding is hard so I don't recommend trying).
and if she was a baby when you got her, the stripes were her "baby stripes" that all bettas have when young to help break up their body shape(and to show males that they are not ready to breed).
she should loose her horizontal baby stripes and soon after get her vertical bars(known as breeding bars) that say she is mature.
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on another note, I have bumped the amount of food I am feeding my bichir up from half a cube of frozen shrimp every two days(you give a day in between to allow digestion) to a full cube every other day. he also got a feeder goldfish a few days ago. the Oscar got 45 goldfish that were 3-4 inches long(took him half and hour to engulf all of them), and my little bichir got a one incher to hunt and kill.