What's the latest in people's lives?

[Tyyr]

Yeah, he was my handsome boy. To top it off his pectoral fins were iridescent. He was a hell of a fish, even more so when you consider I paid 6 bucks for him.

[Reliant121]

Jeez. What a find.

[Tyyr]

The real killer is that I've only had him for 8 months, a betta can easily live 3+ years. Dropsy got him and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

[Reliant121]

We've had that with our Koi. We arent that bothered since we inherited them with the house, and are just a costly thing to run. but we dont have the money to get rid of them as yet.

[IanKennedy]

I'll find it, and try to get a good picture of it.

I'm not sure a panoramic picture will fit in a printer/scanner.

If need to put it in in parts and send it to me. I'll stitch it back together.

[Mikey]

My third betta (he was named "Gamma" - you figure it out) lived about 4 years. Great fish - he caught flies, and actually reacted when we walked into the room.

[IanKennedy]

I've never heard them referred to as that before. I know them as 'Siamese fighting fish' if you don't know why they're called that try putting two males into the same tank.

[Tyyr]

Their name is technically Betta splendens. They're great fish but horribly, horribly, horribly misunderstood in their care requirements.

[Mikey]

Their name is technically Betta splendens. They're great fish but horribly, horribly, horribly misunderstood in their care requirements.

Which is funny (in a sad way) because they are really very low-maintenance.

[Tyyr]

Anyways, they might be tough as nails and sold in rather squalid conditions but that doesn't mean that's the way they should be kept permanently. My boy, Shark (my son named him, to him every fish was a shark at that time) lived in a six gallon tank. I actually had people question why I was wasting such a big nice tank on a fish that can be kept in a vase.

[Mikey]

I keep mine in a 20-gal. freshwater aquarium with a handful of different types of tetras. Bettas are pretty tame towards anything that's not another male betta. He establishes the pecking order at feeding time, but that's about it. Other than that, he's content to just build his little bubble-nests in the corners.

[Tyyr]

So long as the other fish don't have long fins, aren't fin nippers, and tend to mid or lower levels you can keep a lot of different fish with bettas. Mine shared his tank with some harlequin rasboras and an ottocinclus catfish.

[IanKennedy]

Yes, we've kept all of those in the years. The biggest tank we had was six feet long and about two foot high. It stood on a stretch of angle iron embedded into two walls. It was one hell of a tank. Custom built. One bout of dropsy took the whole damn tank out one year. The only think that survived was a catfish. We also had a time when we got a bad bout of white spot, from a new fish brought into the tank. Individual treatment with potassium permanganate solved that one. After a while dad settled down to keep Cichilds mostly from Lake Malawi. They did really well in that tank, we even had a breeding pair. So cute, they keep their young in their mouths to stop other fish from eating them.

[IanKennedy]

Just remembered the last tank he had. In one room it was a fish tank on a stand (about 4 foot long) in the next room it was a flat sheet of glass with a picture frame around it with live fish swimming in it. That was so cool.

[Sionnach Glic]

Huh, one man loses a pet, another man gains a pet.

Turns out my five year old niece found an abandoned kitten at the side of the road, and brought it home. From the voice-mail message from which I heard this from her:
"What do I do with a baby kitten? Can you call me tomorrow to tell me? Bye."

Interesting to see what her father's going to do with the cat. I don't really consider him the cat type of person.