Betta - Goodbye Red!
When I came into office this morning, I realized that I'd just lost Red.
One of my adult fish, I originally bought him with an intention to start a crown tail line as he has this nice luminescent sheen showing thru his reds. Though he definitely wasn't showroom quality, his defects actually appealed to me when I saw him at the fish shop hanging with the rest of his species.
I tried to breed him with Blue but he didn't blow any nest and seemed to attack her furiously. So, I sent him to solitary confinement where he got his first round of swim bladder disease.
I thought he had been a goner and though I tried to treat him, I wasn't exactly optimistic of his recovery chances. To my amazement, he actually recovered.
However, after he recovered, he was never the same as he seemed to develop a slight tilt in his body whenever he swam and he had stopped flaring at other fish. No matter what I did, I could never make him flare again.
Last week, I saw him swimming rather poorly and tried feeding him some tubifex, which he ate greedily but it didn't seem to plump him up at all. He was also lying frequently at the bottom on his side and only came up on occasion for air.
Having been through swim bladder disease, I guess it took a toll on his little body and wasn't able to live past his prime (a colleague suspected that he wasn't ready for breeding yet).
Nevertheless, it was a good time having spent time with this little fella and wish him a fond farewell.
My New Hobbies - Betta aka Fighting Fish (Part 3)
If I had to use one sentence to describe my keeping of bettas/fighting fish, it'll probably be this:
"Never have I reared so many fish, in so many colours, using so many tanks; though it can be hard work, they give so much satisfaction."
After a brief encounter with bettas when I was very young, it was only recently that I was able to discover the "joy" of rearing fish again after I cleared a section of my cubicle (the part normally used to keep files). Since most of my work was "born digital", I didn't use that section much except to store spare folders, picture frames, stationery etc. As it was also not very well lit, the uses for that area were limited. And that was when I decided that I could set up an aquarium corner there.
And looking at it now, what a corner it has turned out to be :)
As mentioned in my previous post, I bought a red betta with the intention of teaching my children responsibility but due to the way they were treating it, I thought it was wiser to bring it to office where it could be a companion to my troops instead.
As I was totally inexperienced in taking care of fish, I started googling and joined several forums to learn more about fish rearing. With some confidence, I tried spawning with another two blue bettas that I bought and am now raising the fry to maturity.
Spawned in Nov 2013, the fry are approaching 3 months and are showing great progress. I have also given some away to friends, who unfortunately did not have the fortune to see them survive.
In the spirit of sharing, I will be writing in subsequent posts some of the experiences that I had in preparing the tanks, keeping and breeding adult bettas, feeding and raising fry as well as other stuff that I've picked up over the last few months.
Stay tuned!
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