Betta Addicts Anonymous

So I was sitting in bed, folding laundry, and Illy was swimming along in his tank on my bedside table. It was getting late, so the spawn came in to get ready for bed.  I paused the laundry, we fed Illy and the rest of the fish, and then I read her a bedtime story.  I hugged her goodnight and went back to my room to finish laundry. I sat down on the bed, glanced over to Illy, and promptly had a mini heart attack. Why did I have a mini heart attack?  Well, I'll show you. You know what Illy looks like, right?  You've seen his picture. Here he is.  This is what he looked like when we fed him. And this is what he looked like when I came back, literally ten minutes later.  See if you can spot the difference. Didja catch that? I mean, it's subtle.  You might've missed it. Literally ten minutes.  I was gone for literally ten minutes.  I have no idea how he managed that in ten minutes. But now I've figured out why. ...

So I've talked about how good my spawn is with the pets.  And she really is, I'm proud of her. But today we took a step backward. We were getting ready to feed the fish their nighttime meal.  Illy is always first, just because that's the routine we got into. I wanted to go wash my hands, and she asked if she could get the food from the shelf and feed him. I agreed, because she's fed the fish before. But I forgot that I'd changed their routine since the last time she fed them unsupervised. I used to feed them all 5-7 pellets at night.  I've since started feeding them 2-3 times a day, 2-3 pellets at a feeding.  I started doing this when I started doing daily water changes for Grim, and I like doing it, and I'm going to start training Illy, so I've just continued doing it. Well, the spawn forgot about that.  I walked in the room, surprised to see her still dropping pellets in, one at a time. "How many did you put in?" I asked. ...

What's the deal with aquarium stands?  Do you need one?  Or are they just for the big massive aquariums? Well, the answer to that question depends on how big your aquarium is and where you're going to put it. Bettas don't need big aquariums, comparative to what's available out there.  Most people don't house single bettas in anything larger than a 20 gallon tank, and the vast majority stick with 10 gallons or less. So that's not too big, right?  Totally manageable. Except yeah, it's not. Let's look at that bookshelf in your house, or that end table, or that nightstand.  I've got Illy's tank on my nightstand.  That's cool, right? Take a look at the weight capacity of that bookshelf. Here's a perfect example, actually.  When I got the twins, I finally convinced the husband to dump the old desk in the living room and replaced it with one of those cube shelves.  Nothing fancy, just the Walmart brand.  Nice and stur...

So I got some beads and things for Illy.  I'm going to have to hold off on other toys for now, money is tight, but at least this is something new for him. I'll have to do another post on good toys for bettas, though.  They're predators and they're smart (for fish), so they really benefit from added stimulation. "What the hell is this?" "Meh, not my favorite color.  Try again, human food machine."

What the hell is this??? He's got a chunk taken out of his anal fin.  What the hell???? There's nothing in his tank he could've snagged it on.  I do the pantyhose test with everything I put in there.  The only other option is that he took a bite out of it. But why?  He's in a 2.5.  He's the one I socialize with the most, because he's right next to my bed.  I move all of my fish's plants around once a month.  How could he possibly be bored? Dammit, man. So I'm getting some nontoxic plastic beads, like the kind you find in those kids craft kits, and I'll drop them in there.  I'll also have to find some good fish toys to play with, to keep him from getting self destructive.  We'll see if that helps. Dammit....

So I rescued Illy about 7-ish months ago, from a woman who bought him at a pet store on an impulse, then decided a week later that he was too much work. And ever since I got him, he's had this weird red thing sticking out from inside his right gill.  It's not his coloring, it's very clearly something inside him.  And it pulses and throbs with his breathing and heart rate. The woman said he had it when she bought him at the store.  Given the short time she had him, I'm inclined to believe her. It doesn't seem to cause him pain, and it doesn't interfere with his life in any way, so I just keep an eye on it and leave it alone.  I'm assuming it's just a deformation of his gill. No one, no betta expert or breeder I've spoken to, knows what it is.  So I figure it's just a part of him, something that gives him character. Here, so you can see what it looks like.  It's weird, right?  Looks totally odd. But again, it doesn't seem to b...

So we loved the butterflies so much, we decided to get the ladybugs and praying mantis egg, too. The mantis egg case arrived unharmed, and we set it up in the proper enclosure, and waited. It was fantastic timing.  The day after we released the ladybugs, we woke up to this: Lots of tiny little mantises! We dropped in some bananas for them to eat as a snack until we could get the feeder insects. We were going to release all but one, and we set up a tank for it to live. He looks very happy!  We named him Spear. I never realized how little they were as nymphs.  And these are Chinese Mantises.  They're the biggest species in North America. Snack time! We released them, and put one on the spawn's strawberry plant, to guard against nasty insects. Time for another snack! He's got a voracious appetite, and loves to eat.  Right now he's eating little flightless fruit flies and growing fast. We won't know for sure...

We loved the butterfly kit so much, we decided to go back to the site and purchase both of the other kits the company sells: a ladybug kit and a praying mantis kit. We purchased them at the same time, because the ladybugs would be ready to observe right away, while the praying mantis eggs wouldn't hatch for a few weeks. So here's the ladybug land.  We got this and 13 ladybug larvae. Fun story, did you know this is what ladybug larvae look like?  Because I didn't.  Within just a few days, they had curled up and pupated.  It didn't take long at all. While we were waiting for them to emerge, we were thrilled to see a beautiful wild ladybug in our own backyard.  It was so much fun to observe it and let it crawl around, and then wave goodbye once it flew away. And only a couple days after that, we saw our very first ladybug!  The spawn named it Mercury. It turns out they have no spots at all when they first emerge. ...