Sick betta

Poor Cyril. I'm sure whatever you decide (re getting more bettas or not) will be the right thing, as you seem very good at weighing up the pros and cons.

Cyril was gone when I got home from work last night, and I don't think he'd been gone long because the snails were just gathering up for clean-up duty. THAT is my least favorite thing about having fish, or maybe I should say, about having snails. I really like the snails and think they're interesting to watch, and I know they mean well with their clean-up crew, but ewwwww. It's so awful to come home and discover a fish has died some hours previous and the snails have already made serious inroads into disposing of the body. At least Cyril didn't suffer long. I had one betta who took weeks to die from dropsy, and he got more and more miserable and I didn't know what to do. I asked for advice on a fish forum and all their advice was horrifying. Freeze him to death. Chop off his head. REALLY! Then a Facebook friend, who I didn't even know had fish, told me to get toothache liquid at the drugstore, and even helpfully included a photo of the package, and put a few drops in a glass of water and gently lower the fish into it. He just goes to sleep and it only takes a minute or two, and if you do it right, he won't struggle or even realize what's happening. And it worked beautifully. With the second fish, I accidentally put too much in the water, and he did know what was happening, and that's why he struggled. It's hard to get the right amount with those tiny toothache medicine bottles. But I didn't want poor Cyril to suffer, either, and I'm glad he quietly passed on his own so I didn't have to face doing that again.

I've decided to get another betta, because my brother is right, and separating the guppies will just mean I have two crowded tanks instead of one. This way, the weaker ones aren't surviving, and it's crowded but not overcrowded, I don't think. I'm going to Petsmart after work and will let a betta choose me. I'm thinking maybe I'll get a female, because they're not as spectacular as the males and I don't think people are as apt to buy them, so they spend even longer trapped in tiny cups than the boys do. Generally, I just walk up the shelf with the cups and wait to see which fish zooms over to check me out, and that's the one I buy.

This toothache medicine is largely clove oil, that's why my friend suggested this particular brand. Cyril was only sick for about a week and didn't seem to feel really bad until the last couple of days. He was still eating until night before last, when he showed no interest in his supper and didn't want his breakfast yesterday morning. He was hanging in the water next to the heater, so I turned up the temperature to make him more comfortable. Unfortunately, I've seen this so many times that I knew he was sick and what it was as soon as the very first symptom appeared. Like all us bird parents are obsessed with poop and feather condition, fish parents know every detail of what is normal appearance and behavior and what is not. I can even tell when a guppy isn't feeling well. I have one little guy who is malformed, sort of the Hunchback of Notre Dame of the tank, and yet he keeps on eating and swimming and has even, apparently, fathered some of the babies because one of the babies has the exact same malformed body.

I picked up a little female betta yesterday and gave her Cyril's tank. She was pushed back on the shelf, sitting in the shadows, where she would have been ignored for who knows how long. When I put her in the tank, after making sure the water temps were roughly equal, she was very tentative and bewildered for a while. Then she started exploring, encountered a snail and was visibly startled (LOL). Encountered another and another, because there are lots of snails, and then got nosy and pushed a few of them around to see what they'd do. They did what snails do, which is ooze along and ignore everything. I'm hoping to teach her to go into the floating log for meals, as Cyril did, because that helps me keep track of exactly how much a fish is eating so I know immediately if her appetite flags, or if I'm not giving her enough. She's a tiny thing, probably very young, so I only gave her two pellets for breakfast. Cyril got three, but he was much bigger.

I do hope your big guy gets well soon. That can't be fun for either of you.

Her name is Nadine (chosen in consultation with Clyde, who insists on approving these things). She's long since adjusted and enjoys her little fiefdom very much. Still annoys the snails. And has learned to wait in her log for her breakfast and dinner. If she sees me coming and isn't in the log, she comes to it. Bettas are really pretty smart. And she has a sister now. A Facebook friend suggested, since the tank is 10 gallons, that I could put in a divider and get a second fish and thereby save two from a cup instead of only one. I bought a divider and it simply would not stay put, no matter how carefully I followed instructions. But because I assumed it would be simple to install, I had already bought a second female betta and there she was in her cup on top of the dryer, waiting, with nowhere to go. Fortunately, I had a five-gallon tank that was formerly home to a different betta, but that I had emptied and put away when he died several months ago, after I decided two tanks was enough work in addition to seven birds and two dogs and a full time job and playing in a band. LOL So I dug out the small tank and cleaned it up and set it up -- I have a friend who has a whole fish ROOM and he once told me "never throw away fish stuff," so I had a pump and heater and gravel and decorations stashed, too -- and put her in that. Her name is Wilma, suggested by a friend and approved by Clyde. I was going to then change Nadine's name to Betty (Flintstones, anyone?) but Clyde disapproved, so she has remained Nadine. Wilma is oddly shaped, which I didn't notice in the store, and at first I was afraid she had one of those awful betta sicknesses and wouldn't live long, but she's always interested in her food and she swims around without any problem and she also likes to bug her snails, so I've concluded she's just ... shaped oddly.

My fish room friend tells me it takes an entire day of hard labor just to do the water changes and cleaning in his fish room. Egad. AND he has a 'too!!!! I don't know how he gets anything else done. LOL However, he's a wealth of information any time I have a question or problem and he has, bless him, provided me with stuff like a replacement heater or pump when one of mine went bad. He gave me my first four snails and one of my tanks and a stand, too.

And after so much angst trying to get a guppy colony to thrive, and watching the poor things die, and getting new ones, and so on, finally my guppy tank is doing well. I was afraid they'd overpopulate, but like the snails, they seem to be self-regulating. And some of the babies are almost grown now and have turned out to be really gorgeous. Alpha Male, who is silver with a spectacular black fan tail, and Mama Fish, who is mostly silver with a hint of yellow-gold when the light hits her just right, produced babies who are silver, babies who are gold, babies with flecks of black in their tails, babies with fan tails and babies with regular tails. Quite a bewildering variety. I have nearly-grown babies, half-grown babies and small babies, but no brand new babies for a while now, so there won't be too many at a time.

Honestly, I worry over the fish just as much as the birds, though keeping their tanks clean isn't, of course, as much work as cleaning up after seven birds, and the fish don't require sitting on my lap and ordering me around. Still, every time I think I've had it and I'm going to give up on fish, I can't do it. I really like having them.

My brother insisted the guppies would not regulate -- he raised guppies when he was a teenager but that was a long time ago, LOL, and maybe he doesn't remember as clearly as he thinks he does. The most spectacular of the babies is as big as his daddy now and is probably providing some competition for the ladies' attention. Somebody, and it may have been him, bit a piece out of Alpha Male's tail. Of course, that might also have been Mama Fish, who was very tired of him bugging her all the time.