DREAMS OF A LOST MOONCHILD

Posting this image on NC had me ranting about how people keep Bettas, sadly the text box is limited, so I decided to go here and type it up.

We have two Bettas, a male and a female. We had the male one in close to two years, and the female is brand new. Now why we got him and how we got him is sort of important here.

So my youngest daughter tried to keep hamsters and rats, none of it has been a success at the point in time where we found Manse (yeah the damn fish is named Manse, hard to translate but it’s like something you’d say to a little boy – so like sport or bud. So man means man, and the se makes it small or cute – so it’s like man-light). Oh well, I talked her into trying a fish, because we had fish in my childhood home and both the light and the sound of the tank is something I recall fondly. So we went to the petstore, and the pretty Bettas got her right away, she only wanted 1 fish, so it had to be a fish that would be able to live on it’s own.

So she chose Manse because he looks extra sad, and the petstore sold us a 10 liter tank, even named a ‘shrimp and betta tank’. So we brought home the beast, and after some time like weeks, he was basically just hiding inside a barrel at the bottom. I don’t think I ever saw him puff up like Bettas are supposed to. And no he is not sick.

So me and Storm decided to educate ourselves and found that what the petstore had said was complete bollocks, Bettas does not thrive alone, and they do not have a lifespan of around 2 years – actually it’s about 5. And they are prone to refusal to eat and depression when alone. So we studied some more and found that one single Betta need a tank of a minimun 30 liters, they need a heater and they definitly need a pump.

Bettas are lungfish, like Whales (I know they are not a fish but a mamal, but stay with me) they go to the surface once in a while to breathe. This means they don’t actually care about how oxygen filled the water is, like many other fish breeds. Which is why as some other petstore employee once said, ‘those fuckers can live in a rain puddle’ because he thought we were ridicolous for buying something he didn’t feel a Betta needed. Not only is his statement super offensive, and cruel – it’s also incorrect. Because yeah they CAN live in a puddle or a tea cup or those terrible contraptions I have seen the US market sells as Betta tanks – because they breathe on the surface. But what happens with stale water?

Yeah it will get that film on it, and if there is a film, they will inhale that – same goes for Goldfish I might add (I have Black Moors and they rock!) – anyways, they will actually suffocate because they can’t breach the film. This is why you need a pump, it doesn’t have to be all that, I mean Manse right now lives in a 60 liter tank, and have a pump for a 30 liters, but it’s not the oxygene, it’s the movement of the surface so it doesn’t settle. With that said, Bettas don’t like currents, they are actually not super adept swimmers, the males atleast, too much ruffle and nonsense. So you could get one of those pumps that is designed to just keep the surface moving. That is great for both Bettas, Goldfish and actually also Axolotls that are very much the same in that way (my other daughter has Axolotls and I have a fucking flaming zoo that I pay to keep alive for some reason)

Bettas lounge, they don’t keep swimming like some other fish, I mean most common fish for a tank, no matter if warm, cold or saltwater, they need to move kinda like sharks. But Bettas lounge. They need vegetation or those artificial leaves created for them to breed, so they can rest, they actually do that far more than swim – because of course they do. And before you think it’s just Manse whom is both old, almost blind and have torn finns – but no! the new girl is doing it too – and I knew it was normal for Betta males, but wasn’t aware that the females does it too – what the fuck is wrong with those fish?

They need a heater too because they actually need tempered water, somewhere between 24 to 28 degrees celcius. Your damn tapwater is not a steady temperature like that, if it’s too cold the Bettas will basically hug the damn heater, that is how you know to turn up the heat.

Bettas are not super efficient hunters, and need food that lingers on the surface, and often you have to feed them on their damn head for them to notice. in that way they are very Goldfish like. So get the right food for them. And because so much of their food will fall to the bottom, something like shrimps, snails or pleco fish are a must if you want a healthy tank. And unlike popular belief, then NO your betta fish will not attack them.

I don’t know why petstore owners sell Betta fish as solo fish, but then again they sell Goldfish as solo fish, and they are not at all, they need other fish to interact with – actually both breeds do – just maybe not with each other. Don’t know, haven’t tried. But then again my Goldfish are ten times the size of Manse so I am a little worried they’d damage him.

Bettas are not solo fish, nor are they collective fish like neon fish or gold fish that needs like 5 to 10 of their own kind to thrive. We bought some Guppys, and chose panda guppys because they don’t have a lot of tail like regular Guppy males, which could provoke Manse. They lived together in peace and harmony for a year, and we could see Manse moving around in his new tank with the guppys but never did he puf up or harm them. They died I think they might have been old or something, and then we got Poecilia (which are basically larger black Guppys) the neat thing with them is that they birth live young, they don’t lay eggs. And so they reproduce fast, and are good as live food for both Bettas, Goldfish and Axolotls. It’s nature, man – and I am of the belief that tank fish need things like that to keep them sane.

Lately I bought him a wife, and because Manse is both old and banged up, I made more than one Hugh Hefner joke. He doesn’t even care, and I think she thinks she is a Poecilia

When getting a pump, make sure it has a grill, or you can use a nylon stocking to cover it. See the reason Manse is all banged up is because he likes to lounge, and at some point the pump was submerged, and he had been lounging on it, getting stuck with his ridicolous extra. And once I accidently sucked him through the tube I clean the bottom with, cause Bettas are stupid curious. I have since that, had my hand around the mouth of the tube. But that is why he is blind on one eye – As my daughter says ‘rugged handsome’. True man, he got like a witcher’esque scar across his face from that trip through the tube.

So just to sum this up: It is not true that a betta fish tank should be 10 liters, and I did go check an American site that said a Betta could easily live in 1 gallon if cleaned often. WTF… 1 gallon. it’s like 4 liters… stop! I use more water when making soup.

Bettas need:

*heater to keep the tank a steady 24 to 28 degrees C (ours is 27)

*pump or surface shifter to keep the surface moving and not grow stale

*vegetation or artificial places to lounge

*no current (besides the moving of the surface) they origin from ponds

*Betta food, they need a lot of protein. Switch between something like insect/shrimp superfood and frozen larvae

*30 to 60 liter tank (or bigger) but 30 will work as a absolute minimum – anything else is cruel. (5 gallons or more)

*company – seriously. Even a Placo is company, but if left all alone it gets depressed and will die on you within those 2 years.

*Betta males are terrirorial so if you want two of those in one tank, you need a large tank, like 200 liters or bigger, but of course it can be done.

*Betta females are not territorial, they live in a shool, so don’t keep them alone.

*Male and Female Bettas can live together, they are actually not easy to get to breed, and if you got bottom feeder fish like Pleco, they eat the eggs.

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I will say that if you want to breed, make sure you have two tanks, one for her and one for him. Then make sure his tank has shallow water like 15 cm of water only – when they mate she will leave some eggs on a leaf, and he does his thing. The moment that is done. Take her away, he will attack her, and she will eat the eggs. Betta females are not maternal at all.

He will look after the eggs, and if you keep the tank shallow like 20 cm water, he doesn’t have to swim as much to catch the eggs and tiny babies that fall from the foam nest.

I have been told that if you want to have many babies you need to take him out as well as soon as the baby fish can swim. he will try and keep them in the nest and if there are too many, he will just eat the stragglers – as one does.

But you can just keep him there and lose some young, they do make quite a lot of them btw. The moment they are actual fish like, and you see him or them puff up, you remove them or him.

Some breeders sets the female into a breeding box, and when she changes color (they get some weird stripes, just as goldfish get gross bumps) then she is ready to mate and you can let her out into his tank, this is a sure way to know when they actually mated and you can take her away swiftly after. I am told that they will kill eachother in worst case.

Now mine live together, and Manse is like the bull Ferdinand and just want to sit there and smell the flowers (was that show even a thing outside Scandinavia?) I don’t think they will breed at all, but I still thought he would benefit of another betta in his twilight years.

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The short of it. Treat your Betta fish right! They are not ‘live in a cup’ fish by any stretch. If you don’t want to deal with fish tank cleaning and care, don’t get a fish.

They are victims of die hard stupid ideas that over the years have become the “truth” – think about this then. When I was a kid, cats and dogs were just fed leftovers, kibble existed, but I don’t recall anyone buying it, cause it was stupid, everyone knew that if it was good for you, it was good for them. You didn’t vaccinate or neuter pets as the norm. You kept parrots and small monkeys in cages the size of your damn water heater. I recall my friend’s mum had a carany bird that lived in a cage hanging from the wall in the kitchen, it was so small it could jump from a branch to another branch – that was it. Large dogs often wore those metal choke chains instead of a harness. We left milk out for the goddamn hedgehogs, and today we know it kills them – these practices; today it’s cruel, back then it was norm. So my point is – just because most people say so, doesn’t make it right.

PS: In regards to food, I have very good experience with the following (I just link to images) Dajana super insect food // Hikari Betta Bio-Gold // and of course frozen eggs and larvae. If you are broke, go get something like Tetra Betta Min // Tetra Betta – In my experience the stupid small pellets that many petstores have, are too small, they simply miss them when they try, they are taken by the current on the surface, and also they fall too quickly towards the bottom. So I will only get those if I am truly desperate and then I will have to feed the fuckers like with a pincher and a couple of pellets at a time. Word of warning tho, once your betta had Hikari, they never go back, and that shit’s expensive!!!