dragonlady7

Just spent a while browsing BettaTalk.com. It's written in a somewhat gushing, un-writerly style by a woman who I believe may not natively speak English, or alternately is Californian. Possibly both. Her prose contains a lot of the following:

:)))))))

And the such.

But, she knows what she's talking about. She is an obsessive breeder of betta fish. She's also crazy. That's just how it is when you're obsessive.
I must say, her bettas are stunning. I've learned a lot about pet store vs. breeder bettas-- most notably, the ones I was looking at today cost $2.50, while the ones she's selling are $60 for a breeding pair. Plus $35 for shipping.

But my lord, the lovelies... And the endless discussion of genotypes made me feel like I was back in bio class.

I did learn a few things.

#1: Bettas jump.
You need to cover their bowls.
Oh my.

#2: Bettas breathe air. They have gills, but their gills have shrunk. They also have what is called a "labyrinth", which is a system of capillaries that allows them to gulp air and derive oxygen from it.

Combine these two, and you end up with a betta, having jumped out of its tank, not dying and lying on your carpet for ever and ever getting increasingly crispy until it slowly dies of dehydration. Horrifying. So, I've learned that I must cover betta bowls.

So for the moment I am not keeping the fish in the martini glass, as that strikes me as supremely jump-out-of-able. I will make it a cover out of either a sheet of transparent plastic, or a metal screen. It will have to be artistic in some way, surely, but I know I'll think of something. I'm pondering either making the top invisible, making the top the support for an ornamental stirrer-stick-with-fake-olive-on-the-end, or making the top look like one of those metal strainers bartenders use.

In the meantime...

Yesterday I went shopping with Dave and we bought two funky-shaped bowls to put fish into. We went to A.C. Moore and went into the flower-arranging section, and bought a brandy snifter of about 100 ounces, and a hurricane glass (think of the last time you had a whiskey sour) of about 120 ounces.

For the moment, the fish is in the brandy snifter, though the blue fish with green rocks will be located in the martini glass once we are settled. The brandy glass will contain a red fish named Alexander and some red rocks at the bottom. The hurricane glass is still under debate-- possibly a whiskey sour (yellow rocks, yellow fish) or a tequila sunrise (pink, red, yellow rocks, fish of any of those colors).

The current solution to the top problem is twofold. First, I have an old battered pot lid that sits on top of the tank when nobody's home, or we're asleep. This prevents feline incursions and prevents jumping. (If the cat's in, I put the pot lid upside down and fill it with the glass ice cubes I bought yesterday to ornament the drinks. That makes it quite heavy. She's only a little cat. And if she shifts it off, it will make one hell of a lot of noise.)
Secondly, the snifter is only half-full, as a brandy snifter should be. I justify this by the fact that 1) I only had enough water filtered, treated, and at room temperature to fill it halfway, 2) it looks like a brandy snifter ought to, 3) the surface area exposed to the air is greater (and since bettas breathe from the air, that's better) 4) he cannot possibly jump far enough to get out of it, and 5) it's still far more water than he had in his old tank, and it's exceedingly easy to just add more if he needs a water change and I haven't got the time. I know this just dilutes down the waste products and dirt, and doesn't remove the bacteria and the such, but at least it dilutes them down, and when I do a change later he'll already be cleaner.

He seems to like his home-- he's been very active, rippling his fins, digging around in the rocks at the bottom, coming up to the top, swimming laps, watching movement in the room, responding to the sound of the house's door closing, and so on-- he seems alert and happy. I had a flashlight and was looking at him with it, as that's apparently what they do at betta shows to best see their colors, and he was responding to it amusingly-- turning his head to look at it, swimming towards it, etc. It was cute. He's a very pretty fish, with just a hint of red in his fins and an otherwise deep-blue color.
I have one worry, which is that he sometimes seems to be digging around in the rocks, which is possibly him trying to itch himself on them, which might mean he's in the early stages of a fungal or parasite infection (as I said, he appears very healthy). I know he was fine before, but he's had his bowl changed around a couple of times and I didn't really know about how to acclimate him, so he may have been stressed, which would make him susceptible to these sorts of things. (Almost all fish have parasites or fungus or the like in their water, and it doesn't really bother them, but if they are weakened by stress they can become ill. This goes for all kinds of animals.)
But I can't verify whether this is actually itching behavior, as I don't know bettas well enough.

So, I'm going to buy some aquarium salt and some Aquarisol and maybe some Bettamax and all sorts of other chemical things, and I am going to carefully, gradually, treat his water as the psychotic website people said I should. The descriptions of the conditions that would make him itch didn't sound too dire, and so I'm not really worried. (Several breeders explain that they just always lightly salt the aquarium water to keep fungus and parasites down, and the fish like it-- some really low concentration of the solution, like a tablespoon to ten gallons. Shrug.)

Anyhow. I am well on my way to having a little collection of fish to make the decor of my new house really interesting and cool, and also distracting. I fully intend to be a good mommy to them and all that. They're really pretty and I've always wanted one. But I will not be buying myself a $60 breeding pair, no matter how pretty I think the various fancy ones were. No. I will be getting myself a $4 (maximum) veiltail of totally unknown genotype, hopefully not ill, and that's all I really want.

I wanted to get a female one, because Dave thinks they're prettier (they're a great deal less ostentatious, to be sure, but they're also less raggedy-looking). I was thinking of getting several, as they're less aggressive, but my research indicates that while they're less aggressive than males, who will shred each other (or females) in a matter of seconds, they still can be territorial and aggressive, and if kept together must be carefully introduced and kept in a large tank with plenty of plants and other hidey-holes. Since a less-than-a-gallon bowl shaped like a hurricane glass is not 'large', we will not be buying several females, and that is that. Yow.
(Interesting tidbit about their spawning behavior: The male builds the nest and cares for the young. If the female is left in the tank after the eggs are fertilized, he may kill and eat her. Kind of the opposite of spiders.)

Anyhow. I doubt I will become a fish geek, but I would like to have my cute small collection of exotic fish in liquor glasses be a collection of healthy exotic fishes. That would be nice. I hate ill or dying pets, and the pictures of sick fish on the one site really creeped me out. I don't want sick fish! Icky! No!

Anyhow, in short, God Bless the Internet, because I would've had fish leaping out of that damn martini glass and I would've been blaming the cat...