Death in the Family :(

A Sad Event

Remember flotsam, our betta? Remember how I was all jazzed about how the filtration system was going to prevent him from meeting the unfortunate end that most bettas in small fish tanks meet? *sigh*

Lately he hasn't been responding to our feeding and he has been hanging out just in one little place in the tank. We were worried about him so we looked up some common betta illnesses. Certain bacterial infections make their eyes pop out, fungus eats their fins, another fungus eats their face, something else makes all their scales stick out. Really scary. What's scarier is that within a few days he started exhibiting all these symptoms. He was attacked by several different fungi, parasites, and bacteria all at the same time. Every day he moved less and eventually spent all his time floating on his side. As the fungus on his head began to grow it was too much for him and we euthanized him in a ziplock bag of slushy cold water, which we then froze. We were near tears. Well, Ashley was...it was a pregnant moment.

I think at the end of the day, despite what anyone might say, fish are not meant to be kept in a little jar. They die. The betta I had as a kid in my 10 gallon tank with other fish and a real filter with activated charcoal and all that lived and lived with no health problems whatsoever. But every betta I see in a little bowl eventually stops eating and dies. No matter what kind of filtration, medication, and feeding you provide.

Hanging on to what we have left

You know what doesn't die, though? Frogs! Just like the little african dwarf frogs in my old aquarium that lived through accidents, pestilence and various forms of neglect without being any the worse for wear, our little froggy is going strong. So instead of buying a new fish of any kind, we got him two new little froggy tank mates and a snail to keep him company.

The good thing about frogs and snails is that the only have to eat once or twice a week, if that. And they don't cloud up the water as much as fish. Experts don't recommend any kind of filtration at all because the frogs don't really need it and the stirring of the water as a result of the filtration is likely to kind of annoy them. Further they are resistant to failing water conditions because they are just hanging around in the water, not breathing it. Want to keep a frog in some slimy mud? He'd probably like that...a lot.

Frogs are really gregarious in groups. They like hanging out on top of each other and they are amazingly cute. Our three frogs love chillin' together at that bottom of the tank. They are proving quite difficult to get a good picture of, but here are a couple of tries, including one of the snail.

Actually the tank seems much emptier now, although it has four inhabitants instead of two. The frogs are smaller and they hang out mostly at the bottom of the tank. The snail is, well, just a snail. We thought about getting a few guppies or a goldfish to provide a few more looks in the tank, but ultimately we are so sad at the loss of our betta that we don't want to put any more fish in our death trap. I wanted to put newts in there (I had them as a kid and they were awesome) but newts eat frogs. We'll probably get a live plant or something eventually. For now we changed the gravel to some red and white stuff that is much finer than the stuff we were using before. This means when and if we turn on the filter again, it will function better than it did before. Secretly I blame that big gravel for flotsam's death.

(edit: Actually they are much more mobile now after having been in the tank a few hours and feel like it's their territory. They are very active little guys and spend much less time at the bottom. We have fed them freeze dried blood worms and tubifex worms and they attacked them like a bunch of pirhanas.)

Consolation

We were sad, so we got ourselves some yummy chinese food. It's just the thing to munch on while we are doing some hard core kicking back on this, the first vacation we've had since I got a real job. Ahhhh.


And for Ashley, some prenatal vitamins...

Yum!