Total jar cleaning & plakat bettas

Hey there, my fishies are doing well, they are a little bit stressed at the moment because I cleaned their jars this morning. I took everything out, fish in a little plastic jar, plants out, water out and also the clay substrate, so that I could rinse the whole jar from the inside just in case there are little algae which I cannot see. I noticed that the surface of Minki´s water got like oily, I don’t know why. The guy in the pet shop told me it could be because of going into the water with the fingers, but II don’t touch the water after I cleaned it, not when I feed them and not at any other time. 
Anyways, after I cleaned and rinsed the jar, I put black and white coloured marble chips (coloured marble chips or pepples are coloured stones with a size of approxomately 4-6 mm),which I rinsed with fresh tap water into the jar instead of the clay substrate, because in future it will be much easier to clean their jars through the fact that I bought a cleaning pump. This pump sucks up water and light stuff such as the fish´s waste and the clay substrate, but the stones are too heavy, so in future it’s much easier to remove their waste without cleaning the whole jar again. This time I used the plant food that we got from UWC because the plants don’t get any food through the stones, before that they got at least some from the clay substrate. So i positioned the food right under the plant and put the coloured pepples around until the roots of the plant were covered. I really hope that it wasn´t a mistake, because until now they were doing really well! 
Then i filled up the jar with slightly warm fresh tap water (between 24 and 26 degrees Celsius), because cold water could stress the fish (even more than he is through the cleaning process anyways) or the temperature shock could maybe cause death. I used 2 drops of water conditioner to neutralize the chlorine, which tined the water slightly blue. Usually the water is back to normal after latest one day. 
After all of that I released Minki, Gypsy and Jonah into their fresh cleaned and new decorated jars.


After the cleaning I observed them a little while, to see if they change in colour through the coloured marble chips, or if there is any new behavior etc. I couldn’t notice a change in Minki´s and Jonah´s colour, but Gypsy changed again a little bit to a greyish body, but her fins stayed in that beautiful redish-pink with bright blue highlights! I´m sure that the change in colour is a result of stress through the cleaning of the tank. I noticed that Gypsy also wasn´t that active, it looked like that she was trying to hide, but unfortunately I dont have a plant for her yet (petshops are out of real plants and i think that the plastic ones are too hard for them). Minki and Jonah have been a little bit more active but also here i could notice that they were hiding under the leafs a couple of times. To get Gypsy a little it exerciesed I put Jonah´s jar right next to her´s and as soon as they saw each other they started flaring at each other. I saw that behavior a couple of days ago already and noticed that her fins are quite big for a female, but definately not as big as Jonah´s or Sam´s fins.
Together with her whole behavior in the last weeks I was thinking if it could be maybe a young male. After I talked to Richard in our prac yesterday, we think it’s a "plakat betta". The plakat betta is a shortfinned male betta and with their fins they are the closest related to the wild ones. They are gaining more popularity in the betta world, because of their vital appearance, for example they are less prone to fin rot. We find basically three types of plakats, the traditional with an asymmetrical form, the asymmetrical show plakat and the symmetrical plakat.
A cross of a plakat and longfinned betta is the halfmoon plakat, which is a cross of a traditional plakat and a longfinned halfmoon betta and has also the asymmetrical form as the traditional one.
I think Gypsy could be a traditional asymmetrical plakat, but i can´t say it with 100% security.

I saw that Sir Mustard has symptoms of fin rot, what can be caused by a bacterial or fungal infection. As Aviwe and Nadine described the process, it seems to me like a bacterial infection. The disease usually starts at the fin´s edge (one syntom: becomes black/brown and then falls off), destroyes more and more of the fins until it gets to the base of the fin. If the disease got that far the fins usually cannot recover and the disease might attack the fish´s body. To treat this disease the water should be changed and the pH should be corrected if necessary. You can also use a salt bath or herbal remedies like "Melafix", but I dont have lots of informations on that so if Sir Mustard needs it, you should get some more infos.


So far so good, that´s it for today!!!
Cheers and a nice weekend to everybody!!