(no subject)

[geekchick]

Victor in his plants
Originally uploaded by catherine_s

My little old man is gone. I'm not surprised, really; he has been definitely showing his age lately and in particular today. He was somewhere between three and four years old (I've had him for just over three years and he was probably at least six months old when I got him at the pet store), which is a quite respectable old age for bettas. It seems like it was pretty peaceful, resting on his favorite leaf perch. RIP, little guy.


Note to cat: You are now the only remaining pet; stop trying to tangle with the mama raccoon who comes up on the deck and outweighs you by quite a lot!

Comments

[nixieq.livejournal.com]

i'm sorry. poor little guy.

[geekchick]

Thanks. Man, it's been an awesome day. =/

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

i'm sorry. *hughug*

[geekchick]

Thanks. *hug*

[laurel]

Aw, that's too bad. But that's a long life for a betta. We don't have any fish currently, but I'm getting the itch to set up one of the tanks again and go see what bettas they have at our local fish shop.

[geekchick]

I think I'm going to take a break from real fish for a while; I've instead set up a little aquarium full of plastic fish (with magnets that you can use to move them around) on my desk at work. =)

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

*hugs* He was lovely.

And because I'm irreverent, and just want to know, does he get a burial at sea?

[geekchick]

Nope, he's buried in the garden. Can't quite bring myself to flush a pet, and I didn't want to give him a send off in the lake behind the house because I don't actually know if it was simply old age or if he was sick.

[geekchick]

Thanks. *hug*

[just-the-ash.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. *hugs*

You scared me with your first sentence. I thought you were talking about Gateway and I was all "OMG NOOOO!"

[geekchick]

Thanks. *hug*

No, Gateway seems to be doing reasonably fine, for a middle-aged diabetic cat with a heart problem who likes to wrestle with adult raccoons. =)

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

Aww, sorry to hear that. Bettas really are quite charming, and your Victor looks like quite a spectacular fellow. I've recently (as in a couple of months ago) added a purple-and-red-and-turquoise betta to my big tank. I've named him Gerald, and he is quite a dashing chap in his lovely livery. His only flaw is that he tends to stalk my cherry shrimp. He rarely catches any since they seem to be brighter than he is *laugh* but that never stops him trying.

RIP Victor. It sounds like he had a long and contented life.

[geekchick]

Thanks. Gerald sounds gorgeous. What else do you have in the tank? I kept thinking about adding at least one of my guys to a larger tank with other fish, but never quite got around to it. (And then the filtered 5-gallons they were in both got hit by some kind of algae that just wouldn't clear up, and I decided that right, back to 3-gallon unfiltered tanks it was.)

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

The population of my big (200 litre) tank varies over time, but at present it contains the following:

- Gerald (the aforementioned siamese fighting fish)
- 7 rummy-nose tetras
- 11 ember tetras
- 4 siamese algae eaters
- 1 flying fox (aka false siamese algae eater)
- 2 honey blue-eyes
- 1 forktail blue-eye
- 7 cherry shrimp

At the present time the population's fairly small due to an unfortunate parasite infestation (camallanus worms) that knocked out most of my blue-eyes and a few of the rummy-nose tetras before it was identified (and is now being treated, yay!). I also had a big and ancient bristlenose catfish that finally died of old age a couple of months ago, and a group of large clown loaches that I sold since they had a passion for landscape design and their tastes in aquascaping were quite different to mine.

The big tank also contains a metric butt-tonne of plants, and a large variety of micrscopic flora and fauna (as I have discovered by putting samples of tankstuff under my new microscope!)

I currently have two small tanks as well. The smallest (12 litre) houses a pair of Triops australiensis (tadpole shrimp) that I hope will be a group of Triops in the next generation. The other tank (approx 30 litres) contains locally-caught critters from the River Torrens: a flat-headed gudgeon, a dozen or so glass shrimp and a collection of water beetles, caddis fly larvae, snails and the like. (It used to have a population of fairy shrimp, planarians and hydra as well, but the gudgeon ate them all.)

Re algae - pretty much any type of algae I can think of would not be benefited by filtration. Depending on the type of algae, it could possibly be being stimulated by too much light (e.g the lights on for too many hours per day, or the tank sitting in direct sunlight for some part of the day) or possibly an excess of nutrients with no larger plants competing for them (this can sometimes be helped by reducing the amount of fishfood tossed in each day, and/or increasing the frequency of water changes - I particularly recommend the latter as a fix for many aquaristic woes).

[macropixi.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. I know I was heartbroken when Dieter the German Blue Ram died... and we'd only had him three or four months.

[geekchick]

Thanks. It's funny how attached you can get to a fish, even without the whole "cute and cuddly" thing.

[geekchick]

Thanks.

Unrelatedly, how are you holding up? Need anything?

[chadu.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry: I know how much you loved him.

[geekchick]

Thanks, sweets.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, dear. (hug) Seems like you got him just a few months ago... he was a pretty little guy.

[geekchick]

Thanks, dear. Nah, I've had him for years, he was very old for a betta.