# Sabina88's Journal



## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Ive wanted to make a journal for awhile now but I guess I never got around to it. But now's a good a time as any 

I guess ill start by writing about how I got into bettas. My first betta was a blue VT who never got a name and lived in a 1 gallon bowl (I think) with just gravel and a fake plant. My mom did all the cleaning, he passed on thanksgiving day :-(, I think he would of deffinitly lived longer if I new better but me being in elementary school, both me and my mom thought that they could live in bowls. I never got another fish after that until I got into fish keeping thanks to my Bio teacher sophomore year last year. We were doing a aquaponics project and she gave us each feeder goldfish. I named mine Kananie. He and a lot of others lived in soda bottles. Luckilly I know better and he lives in a 50 gallon with his best shubunkin goldfish friend Rivin and 4 rosy red minnows. 
I guess now ill show you my bettas  In the time ive gotton back into bettas ive lost 3 due to my own fault as I didn't know what they really needed, and currently have 13, 10 girls in a sorority and 3 male one of which is a baby betta.

This is Spartan who passed for unknown reasons, sparrow who contracted a really hard hitting case of ich from my 40 gallon (I have since dumbed and cleaned it) and Mars who passed im pretty sure due to the fact that the heaters I use let the tanks temp drop very late at night and I didn't relise'








This is Hale, ive had him for about 2 months and hes my favorite, theres just something about him








This is my baby betta who I got a week after Hale, he has grown so much since I got him two months ago








This is Adamantium who ive had for 4 weeks. When I got him he had SBD and after the first week I was getting a little frusterated that he wasn't getting any better and seemed to be getting worse. He is much better now on 4 pellets every other day, even though its not hard for him to get some sort of buoyancy issue. But now he loves to shove himself on or in any plant he can find and likes to visit me every once and awhile.








And then I have my sorority girls, I got the first 6 the same day, then Kasai and Rogue on a separate day, and Eft and Wyvern on another day. (sorry, some of these are the most recent photos of them)

Tauriel 








Arwen (I haven't taken any updated pics of her marbeling, right now shes mostly purplish iridescence with some color on her tail)








K








Bo








Kenzie








Tamsin 








Rogue








Kasai








Eft








Wyvern


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

OMG, your bettas are adorable! Especially love the baby, he looks like my little guy!!!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Aww thanks.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Out of bordom of finishing a test i felt like posting.
I think for this one ill just tell you about my plans for baby betta and Adamantuim. 

For awhile now my mom has wanted there tanks off the kitchen counter so i finally convinced my parents to let me keep them in my room following that discussion i had to convince my mom a 10 gallon would be esier to care for up stairs. So now all have to do is clean my room, do some rearanging and set up the tank. My plan is to split it into 3 sections one for baby betta and one for adamantium. The third section i was going ask to order my first fish (a mustard gas) for my birthday as my only present, but ive been thinking about it and im not yet if thats what i want to do. Even though MG's are my favorite. 
Anyways ill hopefully remember to add updates as things get set up. Also sorry about my typing i wrote this on my phone.


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## JDragon (Jan 28, 2014)

Oh I love me some MGs! Hahaha. Glad they're getting upgraded. How do you plan to divide?


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I think im going to go with simple mesh dividers. That way i need only one heater and one filter


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Awesome, how did you get the little baby? Was he bred or did you buy him?


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Hes from Petco


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Awwwww... Arn't babies just the cutest? I'm in love with the others too, absolutely stunning colours, all look very pretty and healthy!


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## MameJenny (Jun 11, 2012)

Love the girls! You're making me want a sorority. ;-)


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you both so much 

Im really happy I decided to go with a sorority tank  all my girls are relatively docile, while there is some fin nipping all they mostly care about is anything new in the tank and food lol


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## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

Beautiful bettas!


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## BettaLover4life (Feb 19, 2014)

You have awesome bettas!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you both


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Today will be my first journal, journal, hopefully it comes out ok.

Yesterday I did a water change on baby bettas tank and Adamantiums tank. I came home and already baby had a big bubble nest. He is surprisingly aggressive, he has been making tones of bubble nests and he flares at any female betta near him or any male. Though he is still really tiny, and only a fraction of the size of my full grown males and females. The fact that he is frequently making bubble nests makes me think he is a lot older then he is which was also mentioned to my by I think Lilnaugrim or Tree (sorry if I got that wrong). I hope hes not forever stunted as a tiny baby. Hopefully when I move him into the divided 10 gallon it will encourage him to grow. Fingers Crossed.
On the other hand, Adamantium is doing well. Though I think im going to fast him to days rather then skipping a day like I normally do for feeding. At this point since ive had him for about 5 weeks I think that his buoyancy problums is something he is going to have to live with for the rest of his life. Luckily its not to severe and doesn't inhibit his swimming to much. But I also think it might be why he likes plants so much so he can shove himself under or in between something so he can rest. On a happier/funnier not, Adamantium likes to stick at least and usually one fin out when he stops moving, whether its in between swimming or when he is sleeping/resting. Its funny when he ends up with his fin againts something, I looks like he is either doing fishy one fin press ups or being cool and doing the fish version of when guys put their arm on a wall and look cool (if you get what I mean (I have no idea how to explain it lol)
Today I did a water change on Hales tank, he is very happy now to be in his home. I also decided to take updated photos of my girls which I usually avoid and now I remember why :lol: When ever I went to take a photo they swam away and or got photo bombed by other fish :roll:. So it probably took me 30 mins to get a pic of the 10 girls. 
Sorry their not great, these were the best I got before I gave up  (sorry for the glare, and algea, the oto cats are still working on it)

Arwen- she looks like a completely different fish then when I first got her and even from the one I posted in my journal earlier. The first one is they day I got her the second one is from today















Rouge:








K: The first pic is the day I got her and the second one is from today















Bo:








Wyvern: 








Eft: (she looks better in person then the photo looks, he colorations doesn't look very good in photos lol)








Tauriel:








Kasai: (the same thing with Eft applies to her)








Kenzie:








Tamsin: (shes not quite that blue and has some red was and turquoise tint as well but my camera didn't want to focus on her well :roll









On a slightly dorkeir note:
About a week or two ago when I got my oto cats I also got some omega 1 veggie pellets for bottom feeders since my algea pellets are kinda old. I wasn't really thinking about it so now I try to have my goldfish eat some to supplement some extra vegies in their diet with their flakes. Anyways today while I was using a few pieces to get my girls attention to take photo I saw a weird piece of plastic so I pulled it out and discovered it was a little mini spoon. At least to me it was cute and kinda cool lol :lol: :roll: 








Something else ive also decided to do on my journal is do sort of like a song recommendation/what im listning to/song of the journal day of some sorts.
For my first song im going with 
Check Yes Juliet by We The Kings, it got stuck in my head and since I haven't listned to it in a long time I looked it up and have been listning to it a lot today 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j00fyFXJyi4


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Wow, how many bettas have you got? You seem really experienced! I'm a newbie when it comes to bettas, got my first one a couple of weeks ago and I love him to bits, he's bright red and very energetic! Bettas are such amazing pets, I'm becoming a bit obsessed, lol


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Haha i have 13 
10 girls and 3 boys. 
I actually on have almost a years exeriance im still learning a lot too
Congrates on your first betta, i wish you good luck with him


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Thank you, wow 13 bettas, guessing you have a sorority, I've got three tanks but tropical is actually new for me, i rescued my guy going to get a plant, luckily the tank was already cycled! Having 13 bettas doesn't sound easy... Lol :-D


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I just did the math lol. I have a years experience with goldfish and about 5 months of experience with bettas.
Yes I do have a sorority  It is a lot of work but its worth it 

Also your guy is lucky that you found him, he is a lucky fish


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Wow, thanks! As you can see with my signature I've got goldfish too! I Remember when I got them thinking, 75 gallons for these guys, what? Well now I've got 2 1 foot comets I think twice! Annoys me when I see goldfish in bowls and people saying: "oh they only live for a couple of weeks" my comets are going to a pond soon, as the tank is overstocked.  I've only had 2 weeks so far with my betta, enjoying it though,  :-D


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

That's awesome 
I also have a comet and a shubunkin in a 50 gallon. I wish I had a pond for them but the 50 was the next best thing. There so fun to have


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Wow! My comets are so destructive, their favourite hobby is digging and eating the roots of my amazon sword, lol, my comets were sold as babies as "algae eaters" me not knowing what they were bought them, they turned out to be goldfish. Complained before the others went to unsatisfactory homes. I love shubunkins, had a shubunkin cross once, however it was inbred and had fish TB it got at the store, suffered from SBD when I got him then became lethargic and got finrot, I cured it but had to put him down, he was my favourite goldfish but just succumbed to his illness.  BTW I'm really enjoying your journal, your a really dedicated owner


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Im sorry to hear about your goldie  

Also Thank you very much


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Your very welcome!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I also love the betta in your profile photo


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Journal #2

So my plan for this weekend other then watching more project runway and some other tv shows and movies is to clean my room finally. Then ill see if I want to use the desk in my room that I never use (it was my sisters before she moved out and we just kept it there after I moved into her room) to house my 10 gallon. Im tempted to just take it out of my room, more so because with a regular table ill have room underneath. But first things first is to sort my craft explosion that is currently covering half of my floor and desk. So If I don't procrastinate about it ill post updates as the cleaning and what not unfolds. 

So the other thing that sort of relates to the cleaning/set up is school work. I currently have a bunch of big projects that we got assigned. I have a big news paper project for earth science but im not to worried about that, the two big things that are kind of stressing me is writing a 5 page paper for psychology honers. I know its not that big but ive never done a paper that long that was a research paper and im not 100% interested in my topic to really get into and easily write the paper which is due at the end of this week. The other thing is that we got a big project assigned for English and this one we found out that we have to present in front of the class which I hate. I have really bad stage fright so I get really nervouse in front of people and end up getting really red and talk fast. So that's making me nervouse and a little stressed. 
Im not sure if I will work on my paper this weekend or clean. Im leaning twords cleaning and setting up. As that sounds more fun lol. I haven't set up a tank in a while and this will be my first divided tank so I am excited to do this. If only I didn't to clean my room..... hahaha 

Anyways I think this is were ill end this journal. Hopefully im getting a little better at writing them even though its only my second. 

Song of the day/journal: (this ones techniqly two but I couldn't decide) Give Me Love and I See Fire by Ed Sheeran


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Wow, nice end to the journal  also thank you  I like your profile pic too! Did you draw it?


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you very much 
All of the drawings on my profile are from drawings that other memebers did for me,
The wolves are by Bailmint and the drawing is by ZeesTyphoon


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Wow, they're good artists, I can barely draw a stick man XD


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Journal #3

I just relised I have a bunch of stuff to do today. I have my regular weekly cleaning of my 40 and 50 gallon tank. As well as cleaning my three 2 gallons. I wish I would have done that yesterday but I wasn't feeling all that great most of the day. I didn't sleep well so I was a bit over tired then I got a stomach ach so I didn't feel like doing much. I think depending on what happens they will be ok if I wait to clean them tomorrow. But hopefully I can get them in today. 
I also relised that next weekend is Easter is next weekend. And I wanted the boys in their new tank before then. Were having a bunch of people over for Easter and I can only imagine that with all of the people walking around and probably kids running around there tanks will reaseve a bunch of vibrations, plus I think it will be a little to chaotic for them. So I am cleaning my room today and finding a spot for the tank to go in. On top of that we are also going shopping. I asked to go to the petstore so I could get a filter so it would have at least a week to establish instead of just throughing them in. I plan of heavily adding established bacteria from my other filters. If the water perameters aren't good by then ill just dump the water and fill it with clean water and they can hang out there for the day then go back to their ogrigonal tanks until their new one is cycled. I also want to get a few plants from petco today as well for my 40 gallon. Some Egeria Densa and Brazilian pennywort. So hopefully they have some. 
My check list for today:
50 gallon water change
40 gallon water change 
Clean/water change the three 2 gallons
Clean my room and find a place for the tank
Go shopping and get a filter and hopefully some plants and maybe the dividers too
Set up the tank 

Fingers crossed that everything goes as planed today

Song of the day/journal: Do You Want To Know By The Artic Monkeys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB6mXBWrPXY


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

I like that song! Hope you get everything done today.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you 

So far I have cleaned my room or at least the area that leads to were the tank is. But I found out that we have to take the top of the desk since is to low and the tank site only a few inches under it. 
I also did a water change on my 50, instead of doing a water change on my 40 I topped it off so in case I have to wait until tomorrow to do I know that they got a little bit of clean water. 
Now were about to go shopping so when we get back ill try to remember to take a pic of the tank. I also plan on doing my three 2 gallons when I get back. If its dark out when I get home I think ill wait till tomorrow to do a water change on the 40. Since I have to open the door, id rather do that in the daylight.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

So i just went to petco. They didnt have the plants i was looking for so ill have to order them. Im also a bit annoyed, i saw this really pretty white dragon scale who had a few red spots on his fins. I really liked him but i wasnt alowed to get him. Hopefully by next weekend he will still be there


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

After finishing cleaning the rest of the desk off after I found out the shelf was to low. We took the top off and put it in the extra room. After that I put the tank on the table assembled the filter, filled the tank with water and plugged in the filter.

I got the aqueon 10 as a filter, it was between that and the tetra wisper filter which I didn't want even if it was on sale. Im relatively experienced with HOB filters since I have the 50 and 75 aquaclears for my big tanks. But what surprised me was that with my big filters the moters/air pump is relatively quite while the water falling into the tank noise as the lowdest (even though its not that loud). With the new one the water doesn't sound loud at all, granted the outflow is just above the water. And the moter is relatively lowed. Though I suppose any filter is going to have some noise and ill have to get used to it since it is were I sleep. 
Do you think I made a bad choice in getting the filter I did? do you have any experience with it? Should I get a new one, if so what kind?


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## summersea (Jul 26, 2013)

I have had the Aqueon 10 for about 6 months now and to be honest I wouldn't buy another one. It was fairly quite to start with but the motor has gotten louder with time. Plus the flow has been extremely strong. I have don everything to slow it down (stuffed every possible opening with sponge filters) and I struggle to find a happy medium between bettas flying across the tank to not enough flow to filter. 

I recently got a Marina S10 filter through amazon and absolutely LOVE it! I have it right next to my bed and it is pretty quiet. It has a level at te bottom of the filter to help make sure it is balanced to reduce noise. Plus, this filter comes with an adjustable flow. Best filter I have had with a basic sponge filter/air pump combo coming in second. 

Hope that helps!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

is it this one?
http://www.amazon.com/Marina-A285-S10-Power-Filter/dp/B0032G8TPW/ref=sr_1_2?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1397435898&sr=1-2&keywords=marina+filter

I can already tell that its going get louder. Theres not fish in the tank so I think I might have my mom return that one and order the filter, and the dividers. Then ill have them in the tank for the day then put them back in their original tanks until the filter cycles. 

Thanks so much for the help


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## summersea (Jul 26, 2013)

Yup that is the one!! If I didn't want to ruin the cycles on my other tanks I would replace all my filters with this one!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

haha  im glad it has good reviews,
In your opinion do you think it would be fine in a divided tank with 3 sections?


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## summersea (Jul 26, 2013)

Should be. I would put it in the center division. You can adjust the flow rate so that it is circulating the water well enough through all the divisions.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you so much for all the help, you've been really help full 

One last question just to make definitely sure, all 3 sections will most likly have a betta. Should it be ok in that compacity?


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## summersea (Jul 26, 2013)

Shouldn't be a problem! That really isn't that much bio load for a 10g


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thats good, we just orderd one last night i should get it between 3 and 5 days


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Journal #4

Im starting this one off on a non fish related note. I forget what I was looking for online but I came across this particular etsy shop, I really like their stuff, especially the Melancholy Goldfish necklace and the Glass Wing Butterfly necklace. Anyway I wanted to share the shop with you guys.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheSpangledMaker?ref=l2-shopheader-name

I finally took a picture of the finished product of the 10 gallon. Well sort of. The tank itself has a lot of work. Yesterday as I mentioned before I did a big cleaning, although it was only like a third of my room and only really a path to the desk but that's a lot for me :lol:. While cleaning I found a lot of dead ladybugs on the floor and a few dead spiders on the desk :-? Needless to say im afraid of spiders, and bees (I end up with a handful of hornets in my room every year during spring/summer) and since I found a spider web over in one corner, I carfully pocked and moved everything to make sure nothing would come crawling or flying at me :roll:. After cleaning everything off the floor and the desk, I employed the help of my mom to take the top off the desk since it wasn't high enough. It was interesting to find some of my old childhood stuff that I forgot about. I found a old letter that I wrote in elementary school when I was at a YMC camp to a friend I had met there. Lets just say my spelling wasn't very good at all..... I also found something else from when I was little... my hand writing was so bad I couldn't read more then a sentence of it :lol:.
Here it is (excuse the paper towl left from filling the tank): 








This is the shelfing top thingy (anyone else thinking more room for fish ) (also sorry about the mess of stuff around it, we put it and all the stuff on the shelf in the extra bedroom for now)








Other then that, I did a water change on the 40 gallon and the little tanks which are the ones I didn't get to yesterday. Speaking of, I was very proud of my self. Usually with my 2 gallons ill take mr. fishy out, take the decorations and plants out, dump the water, refill/put everything back in. Put it back then reaclimate the fish. Today I didn't really feel like lugging the tanks to the sink dumping and refilling even though I was going to have to do a water change anyway. Im not really sure why my mind jumped to it but I decided to try the sucking method (sounds weird but im not sure what its called) when you suck on the end of the tubing to syphon the water. It had been suggested to me to try this before but I never did mostly because knowing me I would most likely end up with a mouthful of fish water. But it went well. Though I did end up with a bunch of water on the floor the first 2 times I did it. But by the third time I had got it down lol. I like the method its much faster and easier then having to dump everything out. 

*Song of the day/journal: *Raphael Lake- We Are Golden 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Log9qrJh-z4

*Artist of the day/journal: *Gabrielle Aplin, I highly recommend her, theres a certain sound to her music that I can easily picture on a tv show. Youll probably know what I mean  if you've watched things like Hartland or Reign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FtC1aMnqRU


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I got the dividers for the 10 gallon today(I cant believe their $10 each), and the aqueon filter was returned to petco. My adventures with the dividers didn't go well. I took one out and put the support bar things on, and for some reason put it in the wrong way and thought I was doing it right and they didn't cut the dividers right.... So after I tried fitting it in the tank and it not fitting a measured it against the tank, and saw there was a good amount of material left, so I trimmed it.... Then I went upstairs with the one I didn't cut to try it again and finally released I had it the wrong way round and got it in finally. Next I brought up the one I cut to see how much damage I did and if I could still use it. Luckily I didn't cut to much off so it still fit although it was under the water level so I had to put the strip I cut in the bar things to give it enough height (if that makes any sense at all). So after a lot of frustration and a lot of water every were I finaly got both dividers in. Though the top support bar thing doesn't fit, and I don't want to fiddle any more with it for fear that ill break it. I think they should be fine with out it. 

Thus concludes my fish adventure for today.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Journal #5 

I got home today and moved Adamantiums and baby bettas tank upstairs to my room. Their still not in the 10 gallon since that has a long way to go, but their tanks will be their for a temporary visit. Ill be moving them back downstairs after easter, I wouldn't mind keeping them upstairs until their new tank is ready but it would be in the way and on of them is already on a chair for the time being. 

Pertaining to the 10 gallon the filter I ordered from amazon is "set" to arrive on the 19th. I hope it comes early or at least actually the 19th but I doubt that would happen. Fingers crossed.

Sorry there wasn't much to this one, ill be adding more once I start planting and setting up the 10 gallon.

*Song of the day/journal:* Ed Sheeran- Sing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scHS8YaYoRA

*Artist of the day./journal:* Jake Miller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxabdQDu4Ak&list=PLfUiFmo9kCYwMfDBkA4iaTH-kiyEyO6HP


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Journal #6

So I finally planted my tank.... kind of... 
I was planning on getting some Flora Max for my substrate, so I had my mom pick it up after work. Aperently they guy she asked about it said they had some and that was all they had. When she got home I looked at the bag and it wasn't even flora max brand. But I figured id use it any way. 
Its was a interesting experience trying to fill up three different sections evenly rather then being able to dump the whole thing in and spread it out.
As for live plants I added a piece of bamboo, a few amazon swords and some plant that I don't remember and the rock with java moss on it. My tank still has a long way to go plant wise. Next time I go to petco I want to look for water wisteria and hopefully find a good anubias. 
Ill post some photos later since every thing still needs to settle down. 

Song of the day/journal: Crystal Fighters - Follow 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4bPWdPWFq0

Artist of the day/journal: Teddy Geiger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlAK1_zfjZY


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Journal #6

Since im on vacation this week I figured I would go to petco and petsmart and see if I could find a betta to go in the third section of my 10 gallon. And of corse indstead of only one I ended up bringing home 2 lol. Luckily I now have a spare 2 gallon kritter keeper and heater for one of them and the other is going into the 10 gallon. So with out further ado here they are (sorry in advance that the photos aren't great, its been cloudy and rainy here all week so the lighting hasn't been that great):

This guy sold me on his colors. At the moment he doesn't have a name yet, im trying to choose between Natsu, Thorin, Aragorn and Castien. He looks a lot better today, his colors have deepend and he seems happier. Though I feel bad, since yesterday was a regular feeding day for everyone (I feed them every other day) I gave him three pellets, and he had one Tuesday to help him settle in. Unfortunetly it was a little to much for him and he was floaty for the rest of the day :-(. But hes fine and swimming around like nothing happened today. 
Here he is one the way home:








Yesterday: 








Today:















Heres my second boy Levy (Lev-E). He won me over for an option wiggling at the front of his cup. Personality wise he kind of reminds me of a puppy :lol:. If im looking at my other new guy (there temp. tanks are right next to each other) Levy will swim to side im at and just sit there watching. He deffinitly likes his attention and defitly likes it when I take the time to watch him lol. 
On the way home:








Yesterday:








Today:








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On a non betta related note
Yesterday I did a big cleaning on my 50 gallon goldfish tank. Ive admitidly been neglecting that big clean that the tank really needed for awhile. So since I had the whole day yesterday I took everything out, did a 70ish% water change scrubbed that sides, filed it back up and put everything and the fish back in. Im really happy how it looks now, 98% of the diatoms on the glass are gone, the water looks good, and the fish are happy. 
I also measured my goldies last night. Kananie (my orange comet) is aprox. 4 inches, and Riven (my shubunkin) is closer to 3, I only measured to the fork of Riven's tail but with the rest of the tail hes about 4 inches as well.


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## BlueLacee (Dec 8, 2013)

exiting, how are your new boys doing? I cannot wait for them to color up


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

There both doing well, thanks for asking 
Its still weird for me to have a VT, I haven't had one since my first betta when I was little. But im glad I found him, hes got a good personality. I cant wait to move him into his permanent home. Ive also narrowed his name options downs to , Aragorn, Castien and Thorin. 
As for Levy I have a feeling that hes going to be one of those bettas that curiosity killed the cat lol. Before I did a water change on his tank I gave him one of those little hikari frozen BBS since I have a lot left over from my baby betta, see if he would eat any. Well it seems that even if the BBS were in a tight corner Levy would still go for them and would try as best as he could to fit himself in the tight spot to get some, turns out hes a little piggy lol.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I figured id actually write a journal today since I actually have something to write about lol. 
As some of you may know from my other posts last weekend I purchased a molly from petco. Once home I relised I was impulsive and not really thinking when I bought her. So I was going to bring her back to the store even though it meant bringing her back to petco, it was the best option for my other fish and her. She wouldn't be happy in a betta sorority in fresh water even if they did for some reason get along.
So we were going to bring her back this weekend most likely sunday (tomorrow). Then on Thursday I came home and started taking off the plastic wrap as I usually do and I started with the molly's tank (shes in a 2 gallon kritter keeper until I can bring her back). I thought I was loosing my mind when I suddenly saw a lot of tiny fish swimming in the tank with her that defintetly weren't there this morning......
It seems only two days before I was going to bring her back she decided to have her fry. So after moving some fish around I took all the babies out into a large cup temporarily then moved mom and the Castien who I temporarily cupped back into their own tanks. Then I tapped a breeder net into the 2 gallon with mom and put the babies in. I was supprised how many fry I ended up with, I got 17 of them and considering it was only a 2 gallon with not much for cover I was supprised she had not eaten more of them, but she wasn't making that large of an effort to after them anyway. Other then the healthy 17, there were maybe 5 of what I think were eggs, 2 or 3 babies that were barely developed and probably died during birth . And the one that made me the sadest to deal with was a little another little under developed one. This one had gotten its back color and half of its egg sack was gone (more then the ones I mentioned earlier who still had almost all of theirs) and this little one was developed enough to wiggle its tail but that's it. Its tail fin wasn't formed and all it could do was lay there and move its tail. I unfortunetly had to euthanize that one, it wouldn't have lived much longer then that and as much as I wanted to let it live I knew that it wouldn't be fare. There was no way it would be able to get food for itself and it just wouldn't be a good quality of life.
Back to a happier ish note. All of the babies are doing well, though Thursday night I lost one and during the day Friday I lost another one so im down to 15. And happily all of them made it through the night. Ive been feeding them frozen BBS. I wish I could for sure see them eat but both them and the BBS are so tiny lol.

Ok so I just got back from the dentists office and found that I lost another fry. So I now have 14 and have lost 3. I think the ones that have passed on so far still had their egg sacs either that or its the brine shrimp in their tummies. Im pretty sure this was a premature birth if not it might have been that she was a first time mom and her first batch of fry was released to early. Odly enough though theres one fry whos smaller compared to most of the others and is for the most part as far as I can tell clear, you think that one was more undevelouped then the ones that passed away. Those ones were colored black like 99% of the fry and larger then the clear one. But who knows. 

So my plan now for all of the molly's. Im still going to bring the mom back, I wish I could keep her but I have no were for her and I now have her fry to care for. As for the fry I grabbed a possibly 5 gallon steralite container , I haven't checked to see how much it holds yet, for them. I plan to use that as a grow out tank, if I do need something bigger I have a 6-10 gallon steralite container. I would have used that originaly but I use it to hold my water syphon stuff and a couple of other things and I don't want to put those one the floor.
So I plan to set up their tank tonight. I would do it now but my sisters dogs are here for now and were im going to put their tank is on the floor so I don't want hair in their tank or something to get nocked over or unplugged or something like that.
I also have possible homes for the fry, my friend said she would ask her dad if they could take some, and my brother might take some. But these are very loose possibilities and I also have to keep in mind which are males an which are females. Even though I could sell them together to the same tank, I don't want them to inbreed or breed especialy if they go to either of the above since they don't have much experience with fish and ill most likely be guiding/helping them through most of the set up and what not.

Sorry for the long rambling journal


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Today the molly fry are 4 days old :-D. They seem to be doing well, all 14 made it through the night and while I was a at my brothers house with my parents for mothers day. Fingers crossed that these 14 will make it. I think whats helped to is that they went from a net breeder box in a 2 gallon shared with their mom to their own 7.5 steralite container. 
I think food wise, im going to continue feeding them BBS until there large enough to eat a tiny flake or something along those line. At least with the BBS I now that its small enough for the fry to eat and they seem to enjoy eating it. 
As for the mom I returned her today on the way to my brothers house. 
And as for homes for the fry, I still not have anything definite, just very loose possibilities. 
Other then that I finally took some photos of the babies and them in their new home.






















On a betta related note, every ones doing well. 
Though I have a lot of work to do tank wise, ive been busy this weekend and wicked tired from it so I don't want to do anything. I need to do a water change on Hales 2 gallon, Castiens 2 gallon, the divided 10 gallon upstairs, the 40 gallon and the 50 gallon. I did already do a water change on the fry tank though. Then I also have to do some homework. 
The only two bettas that I need to keep an eye on is Castien and Levy. It looks like Levy's rip in his tail is slowly starting to heal up. I would like to pull him out to help it heal faster with 100% daily water changes but my extra heater for my QT/hospital tank is being used to heat the molly frys tank.
As for Castien, I came back today after being at my brothers and looked at him and saw that theres a few chunks missing from his tail. I don't think its fin rot, it looks more like it got torn or he bit it. Hopefully he isn't a bitter. Fingers crossed on that. But other then that every body else is doing well.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I think im going to try and start doing journal entries every day or something close to that. Hopefully I actually remember to lol.

So ill start with a update on my molly fry. There doing well so far, fingers crossed. Today their a week and 4 days old . Though im down to 11 now. Hopefully I wont have any more die and these will be the ones that make it. So its seems I found homes for some if not all of them. My friend is going to take some and AmbiantNight will also be taking some. So this will be my first shipping experience with a live animal. Im nervouse about it but they need good homes and I suppose theirs a first time for everything.

On to the bettas:

Every body is doing well no injuries or sickness so that's good. I just did a quick photo shoot of almost every body since its been awhile for most of them. Though I couldn't get one of my baby betta. My camera wouldn't focus enough to get his colors so he looked more like a blob. Its weird to since hes the closest to the window.

Ill start with Hale who ive had for 15 weeks now. Excuse the dirty glass I have to clean the outside soon. lol it seems hes the only one who doesnt mind staying still for more then a minute. 








Adamantium-
I cant believe how much red/pink he has gotten in his fins since the 10 weeks ive had him.








Castien has been with me for just three weeks now but he is doing well. I cant wait to move him upstairs soon. Ive noticed that he does a lot better and seems a lot happier with company, but between all of my other tanks I haven't been spending as much time as I would like with him. Once he goes up stairs he will get to be entertained and be preoccupied by other fishies so hopefully that will help. Also excuse the glass on his tank.








Up next is my sorority girls, the've grown so much since December. This is what usually happens when I go to the tank. The come up en mass since they think I always have food for them with me :lol: silly fishies.















And finally my little ham Levy, who I got the same day as Castien. Luckily the rip in his tail is half way healed now, its taking long time to heal but its getting their.


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

All your fish are beautiful! I love their long fins.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you  
Im a sucker for long fins lol


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I just had a very long day lol :lol:
So on Saterday we went out to lunch for my birthday (which was on wensday) and for presents from my brother and sister I got 2 petco giftcards. Since we were planning on going out today anyway I decided I wanted to pick up some stuff with the giftcards. We went to petco first, I picked up the 10 gallon I wanted since they were sold out at walmart. I wouldn't have gotten another tank but I wanted to move Castien from downstairs on the kitchen counter and I don't really like having the kritter keepers any more. Plus it gave me an excuse to get more bettas :lol: :roll:. So while my mom went to grab a cart to put the tank in I decided to look at the bettas. There were 2 marbles I liked, one of which I think I saw a few weeks before which was the last time I went. Then as I was looking, I came across one that I new needed to come home. And home he did. 
We also made a quick stop at petsmart to grab a thermometer and a divider.

So at home I moved my other 10 gallon over and places my new 10 gallon next to it. After I whipped it down I filled a 3 gallon bucket and poured the water in. Then I went and filled up the bucket again. When I got back to the tank I noticed water on the table that wasn't from accidental splashing or spilling. Then I looked in the tank and noticed on one end that it looked like water was coming out :evil:  So I picked up the tank and walked as fast as I could to the tub and set it in so I wouldn't leek all over the floor. After that I now have an appreciation for how heavy water can be :lol:. 
After I went back into my room the start cleaning I realized how much water actually got out. There was a puddle in the corner in front of were the tank was and all the way to the other end of the desk and on the floor. After cleaning that up I moved my current 10 gallon to see if their was any water underneath, and unfortunetly their was. So I took the three boys out, got a good chunk on the water out, then started moving it at different angles to whip the table and the underside of the tank. I think I got most of it cleaned fingers crossed. Probably tomorrow ill have to drain it 90% and take it off the table so I can get rid of any left over water. Sigh
I also felt bad for my new betta since I was planning to switch around my bettas a bit since I had the new tank. But since I was cleaning he had to stay in the cup for an extra 2 hours or so. So for now since my extra heater is being used for my molly frys tank, im floating my other empty kritter kepper in the 40 gallon with the sorority. I moved Castien into that since it would be an easier adjustment for him then the new guy. And I put new guy into Castiens old tank. 

Sorry for rambling,
and with out further ado heres the new member to the family 

With flash:








Without flash:


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

So to add insult to injury:

I went upstairs to check on my 3 boys in my 10 gallon. I was supprised to Adamantium in Levy's section but I just thought that I might have put them in the wrong ones when I put them back in after cleaning. Then I noticed in the corner of the section was Levy. And unfortunetly I didn't get up early enough to stop any damage from fighting. But I suppose I do have to laugh a little since they got almost the exact same chunks missing from their fins. They both have the middle of their dorsal missing, and small chunks around the outside of their anal fins, but luckily nothing more then that. There both a little stressed and a little in sock still. Though once I moved adamantium back to his side Levy came up to front and started swimming around and saying hi as if nothing at all happend, silly fish. But Adamantium got a bit lethargic after a put him back in his side. Odly enough its almost the exact opposite behavior of when they were in the same section.

I feel bad for this one since it was mostly my fault. When I origionaly put the dividers in I thought I needed to cut it down some since I didn't relize I had it turned the wrong way, and unfortuently I already cut it before I realized that it didn't need to be. So I normally just stick place it the divider with the other piece. But it doesn't sit flush together so theirs a bit of a gap. I normaly don't fill it up enough for water to be able to go over it and if I do its just to the very edge. But I wasn't paying attention and Adamantium decided to venture over to the other side. 
Sigh, well hopefully their fins will grow back well.

Ill post some pics of them soon.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Today we returned the 10 gallon tank that was leaking and exchanged it for a new one. 
This time I did check to see if there were any leaks and thankfully their wasn't. So I got that set up in its permanent spot and start rearranging my fish. I put Castien on the smaller side and my 9 molly fry on the other. Both the mollies and Castien seem to like the new set up. Im not sure once the fry are gone what im going to do with the tank. Im either going to divide it into two or divide it into three. Probably 3 sections so I can get another betta  :roll:. 
The new set up:









Since I had the camera upstairs I thought I would take some pics of the damage from when Adamantium ventured over to Levy's side. Levy unfortunetly got the worse of it and from the pics you can see he doesn't have much of his dorsal left. But it defintly looks better then it did yesterday. Other then the middle of the dorsal missing , the have some small chunks missing from their anal fins, but you cant really tell from the photos. 
Levy:















Adamantium:















And just another pic of my new guy. Im not sure why his fins look so gray in this pic. He still doesn't have a name yet but so far I have 3 votes for Atlantis as his name. I do like that name but its not quite sticking when I look at him if you get what I mean. Its not quite one of those names that you now it fits when you see the betta. But if I cant think of anything else I think ill most likely go with Atlantis.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

This post isn't really fish related but I figured id share the photos I took outside yesterday.

A flower from a plant called Wandering Jew plant 








Our Japanese Mapple after it rained. I like how this came out but I don't like the background.








Lilac flowers from our Lilac tree
















2 of the 5 newts that I found yesterday
































The tree trunk to a plant that I don't remember the name of 









Oh and I finally got a photo of my new betta that actually shows him better


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I thought I would do a larger update on all of my fishies. The only ones I didn't get pictures of was Castien and my goldies and rosy red minnows.

Ill start of with my molly fry. They've been doing well, though im currently down to 8 out of my 17. But I have high hopes for these 8 left. They seem to be healthy and active. Yesterday I started to add some vegie bassed food into their diet so hopefully that will encourage them to grow.






















My sorority has been doing well. Every ones happy and always excited when some one comes to the tank thinking their getting food. 

Eft, Kasai, Wyvern, Bo and 2 of my zebra danios:








Wyvern, and Tauriel 








Tauriel, Arwen and K








Adamantium and Levy have been doing well since they crossed paths. It seems though that Levy is a perpetually slow grower when it comes to his fins. But their growing back so that's a good thing. Adamantium on the other has a large portion of his fins already grown back. 

Adamantium the day I got him:








After his run in with Levy:








Today:
















Levy the day I got him:








After his run in with Adamantium:








Today:








And some extras of him since he was being a ham:















I surprisingly got a good clear photo of my baby betta with my camera:








This the best one I could get of Hale at the moment, its not the best photo of him but I like the way his fins look:








And finally my new betta who ive had for about 2 weeks now. I have actually finally decided on a name for him. It not actually one of the names that I made a poll for, Kongo and Lagoon, but when I heard the name and looked at him I just new it was the name for him. So I now welcome to the family Dantalian:
The day I got him-








Today:


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Wow what lovely bettas! Really great journal so far  just out of interest, how many bettas do you have??? They're all stunning and totally gorgeous. :-D


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you very much 
how many bettas do I have hmm....
Unless I totally spaced on some one I have 16 bettas. But that's thanks to my sorority


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Wow 16 bettas! That's amazing! I'm a newbie with bettas so I've only one, he's my first and probably not my last  bettas are addictive fish


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

They are addicting 
Before I new it I ended up with just one more repetedly lol

Especialy when you find so many pretty ones at the stores.
Good luck with your boy


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Thanks, I'm recently upgrading him to a 7 gallon, massively planted tank! Your bettas are absolutely stunning, I especially love the baby! He just looks so adorable! Bettas are amazing fish, I've found them to be much smarter than my other fish  lol


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Your boy is gona love all the new space and plants. Is he the one in your avatar pic?

Thank you  My little babies actually a petco baby, unfortunetly he still very little even though ive had him for about 3ish months. Sigh petco lol. Well at least hes active.

I love how each and every betta has their own individual personality. No two are the same. Their like snowflakes


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Thank you! Unfortunately he isn't the one as my avatar pic, he's still recovering from a very severe case of finrot he got at the petshop, he came in with practically no tail, it's grown back amazingly well but it's still a tad ripped and I can't figure out how to upload pics lol! He's also really hard to photograph, he prefers to try and chase my finger or flare and dart at the camera than actually stay still for a minute. So I went with a look-a-like as my avatar until his fins heal. I find bettas so interesting, my little guy is very tame and enjoys jumping for food and chasing my finger, whenever I wake up in the morning he dashes out from his cave and waits for me at the front of the tank! I never knew you could find baby bettas at petco, but then again there isn't a petco around in my area so I wouldn't know anyway  how long have you been fishkeeping for?


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Not very long actually.
Not counting the betta I had in elementary school when I thought all they needed was a bowl without a heater or filter or anything else.
Hmm I think its around a bit of a year now since ive really gotten into fish. If I remember correctly it was around may-june that I got my aquaponics goldie for a bio project which really got me interested in fish.

Im glad your fishie is doing well. 
To upload photos:
Just under where you type to write a response there should be a button that says Go advanced. Click on that. To add photos to your text, scroll down the page just under the text box there should be a button that says Manage Atachments. Click on that. A new window should open up. Click Browse and choose a photo from your computer. Then click the Upload button. It may take a little bit. Once they are uploaded scroll back up to the text box. In the menue bar you should see a scroll down menue for fonts, sizes, colors and smilies. Next to the smilies there should be one labled Atachments. Click on that. You should see the name of your photo(s) in a list. Click the spot on your text that you want to put the photo. The click the Atachments scroll down menue and click the pic name you want. In the text your photo will show up as with numbers inbetween the


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I wanted to share my water color betta that I did for art class. Its not my favorite but its the one and only betta that ive drawn well :lol:. 

















I think I might share some of my other work from this year that isn't betta related. But ill have to find them and take photos, hopefully ill remember to do that tomorrow.

On a fish related note. Every one is doing well. Im planning on doing water changes for every tank in the house, which at the moment means 7 :roll: tomorrow and or Thursday. Though I might do one or 2 of the smaller tanks tonight, but that depends. 

The other fish thing that ive been really thinking about is adoptions. Not for my fishies but a rescue sort of summer project thing. Im not sure if I will do this for sure, and before hand I have to get every body settled in their proper homes. As much as I love having the little baby Molly's they displacing a few of my boys since im letting the fry have the 10 gallon. Which means I have no extra tanks at the moment. Anyways, if I do this, my plan is to take in bettas from the petstore, weather they need some TLC and maybe some other unique ones, and heal them up and or get them ready and adopt them out to you guys on bettafish.com. Though I think I would do this one betta at a time, maybe two depending on how it goes.


Other then that I just fell like sharing two songs that ive been a bit obsessed with lately. Oddly enough these songs aren't usually what I would normaly listn to but they have really interesting and unextpected sound and feel to them. 

Coyote Kisses - Six Shooter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wewjMEYTLZY

KONGOS Come With me Now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs3nH8bE1AE


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

Your painting looks great! I love the coloration on the fins and the details of his face.

That Kongo song keeps getting stuck in my head lately. Cool song. Another one I like is Hozier's Take Me to Church.


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Wow, that's an amazing drawing! Love the tone. Your obviously very good at art (unlike me lol) 7 fish tanks? Wow that's a lot of fish  good luck with the water changes!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you both , 
Yah 7 is a bit overwhelming. But once i ship my molly fry i can cut back my tanks to 5.

Ill have to look up that song DaytonBetta


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

First ill start of with a quick fish update. Theres not much for this one, other then tonight ive done 3 water changes of my 7 tanks that are running. I plan on also doing my 50 gallon goldfish tank tonight too. Other then that everybody is doing well. 

Now on to the main part of this post. As I said in a above I wanted to take some photos of my art that ive done in the past. Since I was feeling a bit nostalgic I decided to pick my favorites and take some photos. All of these are stuff that ive done for art classes through highschool so far. Unfortunetly my camera wasn't my friend and a lot of the pics arent great. Probably because yet again I decided to take photos when its dark out so the glare of the light caught on just about everything sigh  :roll:. Well hear goes..., hope you like it 

This is from my sophomore year in Graphic Arts 1. I do have a couple of other ones that I did but their not my favorite since I was still learning a lot in photo shop. This one is I think the first one I ever did that I really took my time on and did lots of layers. Its also my favorite poster that ive ever done.








And this is my basket I weaved sophomore year for Design And Product For The Artisan 








Next onto all of my stuff so far from junior year:
Ill start with Graphic Arts 2-

















Next up is 2-D Art-

I did this for our portrait drawing assignment of Ksenia Solo. Unfortunetly im horrible at shading so a lot of it looks the same color and the camera washed some of the color out so that didn't help :roll:, but I hope you like it anyways 








This is my finale that I drew for the class.








My stuff from Ceramics-

For our first real assignment we had to make whistles then decorate them to look like things. I did a jelly fish for my first one then since I had time I made another one and decided to make a calico telescope fancy goldfish. 








The next big project we had was to make something out of slabs. Since I couldn't come up with anything I decided to make a vase. Unfortuently the camera doesn't make it look great. It glared a lot of the brown color on to the blue and dulled a lot of the colors :evil:. But here's what it looks like








The second big assignment was to make something with coils. I chose to make a vase again since I couldn't think of anything else to do.








Just a close up of one of the roses








Our final big assignment for the class was to make a hollowed out form. Since I like dragons I decided to try to make one. 








And finally a couple of stuff from Drawing and Painting-

This one I did for our high contrast assignment. If you cant tell its Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow. Im not really sure why but the camera made it look like baby blue instead of the green Caribbeanish aquaish color that it actually is








And finally my last photo of art is my surrealism project, its actually one of my favorite things that ive made all year


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## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

Wow! You're very talented!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you very much BettaLover1313 :-D


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## myprince (Apr 2, 2014)

*Hey!!*

Hey Sabina88! Haven't spoken to you in a while. I updated Prince's journal. You should check out the new pictures I have put up of him! You'd be surprised how much of his colors are showing! I'm loving Adamantium, beautiful!
Anyways, was great catching up on your journal.
Hope everything is well!
- myprince


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

lol long time no see 
Ill deffinitly go check out the journal, im excited to see how he turned out.


Every thing is going well, thanks for asking. I cant wait for summer, 1 more day of school left then finals. 

Im really surprised at how much red Adamantium has gotten I thought he would just stay that white. Im kinda glad he didn't though, I think the red suits him


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Im a bit annoyed with petco. 
I went to petco today not looking for anything specific and decided to get some more mystery snails. I got a golden one since It was active and sliding? on the glass at the store. I also got a ivory one since it was one of the more whiter ones that ive seen of them. 
So after a bit more shopping I got home and opened up the bag to put them in a container to let them acclimate/float in a container instead of the bag. Even when the bag wasn't fully opened I could smell something bad. Having experience the not so lovely smell of a dead mystery snail I immediately assumed that one of them had died. Opening up the bag did not help the smell at all. I lifted up the ivory one since it was the most likely candidate since the other one was stuck to the bag and had been moving around. The ivory snail smelled horrible, my guess is that it had died at the store since it hadn't moved or opened its shell the entire time that we were out. The person who gave me the snail probably didn't know because it hadn't been dead enough to smell it easily from afar. But it was deffinitly dead long enough to foul up the water in the bag. I feel bad for the golden snail I bought but especialy for the other fish and snails in the tank the white one came from. If that one was dead im sure out of the 3(maybe more) snails in there at least a few other ones must be dead. That tank must be horrible to live in.


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## FishWhisperer (Apr 21, 2014)

Ouch. I like dragons too! Your rescue idea is amazing!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you very much  I really hope the rescue thing works, but its going to take a bit before I have room. Im still a bit nervous about shipping though, but ill get the experience before hand with shipping my molly babies so hopefully that works out well to.

We were thinking of returning the dead snail and getting a refund but I asked my mom and since it was only $2 it wasn't worth it.


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## BlueLacee (Dec 8, 2013)

They are all looking amazingly. If it was possible to have to many beautiful fish, you would have maxed out by now


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Haha Thank you BlueLacee :-D


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## myprince (Apr 2, 2014)

Sabina88 said:


> lol long time no see
> Ill deffinitly go check out the journal, im excited to see how he turned out.
> 
> 
> ...


 
I think I could agree. Prince, was completely white and now he has colors and I'm loving him with colors!


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## myprince (Apr 2, 2014)

Sabina88 said:


> Im a bit annoyed with petco.
> I went to petco today not looking for anything specific and decided to get some more mystery snails. I got a golden one since It was active and sliding? on the glass at the store. I also got a ivory one since it was one of the more whiter ones that ive seen of them.
> So after a bit more shopping I got home and opened up the bag to put them in a container to let them acclimate/float in a container instead of the bag. Even when the bag wasn't fully opened I could smell something bad. Having experience the not so lovely smell of a dead mystery snail I immediately assumed that one of them had died. Opening up the bag did not help the smell at all. I lifted up the ivory one since it was the most likely candidate since the other one was stuck to the bag and had been moving around. The ivory snail smelled horrible, my guess is that it had died at the store since it hadn't moved or opened its shell the entire time that we were out. The person who gave me the snail probably didn't know because it hadn't been dead enough to smell it easily from afar. But it was deffinitly dead long enough to foul up the water in the bag. I feel bad for the golden snail I bought but especialy for the other fish and snails in the tank the white one came from. If that one was dead im sure out of the 3(maybe more) snails in there at least a few other ones must be dead. That tank must be horrible to live in.


I hate petco, it's an over run store where some ceo makes a killing. They do not really care about the pets, because if they didn't most of the fish wouldn't be suffering (expecially their bettas). I bought Prince at a Petco out of my town and well you have read his story. Almost died at the store. I have one other shop I can go to, which is a mom and pop aquarium store. I tend to go there a lot to get my products. But again they are very small and sometimes are out of stock or do not supply certain things and then I'm off to petco to get pissed off and want to kurk out on the employees. They do not even know their information on ANYTHING. Maybe you find one out of the blue who knows there crap but most of them lead you on some wild chase of confusion and uneccessary crap.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I think ill start with my molly fry first for an update. 
All 8 of them are doing well. I finally got a filter for the 10 gallon that there in and got it set up on wensday. For now as a set up I have it on its lowest setting and I also have my spare divider between them and intake and outtake flow. So far the set up is working well, but I think im going to fiddle with the position of things soon. 
Here are some update photos of them, the largest one is 1/2 and inch.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I think ill start with my molly fry first for an update. 
All 8 of them are doing well. I finally got a filter for the 10 gallon that they are in and got it set up on wensday. For now as a set up I have it on its lowest setting and I also have my spare divider between them and intake and outtake flow. So far the set up is working well, but I think im going to fiddle with the position of things soon. Other then that I also whipped down the glass on the inside of the tank.
Here are some update photos of them, the largest one is 1/2 and inch.


















On Thursday I did a water change for my divided 10 gallon, and did much needed work on my pants. I got rid of the dead or dying leaved and moved a few of the plants around. I also relised today that I have what im pretty sure are nerite snail eggs, around 100. Unfortunetly 90% are in the hard to get to parts on the dividers. As well as being dispersed through all 3 sections instead of just one. 
As for the fishy inhabitants, there doing well. Both Levy and Adamantium have some growing left to do in their dorsal fins but tat least their both about half way grown back. 
And as per usual it took a while to get an ok photo of any of them. Levy doesn't like to sit still and always has to face me and Adamantium always faces away from when I try to take photos, silly fishies :roll:. As for my baby betta, my camera still isn't the biggest fan of focusing on him, sigh. 
Anyways without further ado, here they are:

Levy:
















Baby Betta, I don't think his fins will ever grow out properly. At least it doesn't inhibit his swimming at all. 








Adamantium:









As for today I did a water change on Hale's tank and Dantalian's temp. tank. Today at least I want to also do a water change on Castien's temp. tank which is still floating in the 40 gallon with the girls. 

Dantalian:
He didn't want to sit still for photos, sorry there a bit blurry 
















On the other hand Hale was relatively good about letting me get good photos of him.
I cant remember if I already did this or not but here's a before and after of hales tank:
Before-








After-








And Hale:
This is him in natural lighting, though he is a bit pale since it was right after a water change:








This is with the flash on, which I unfortunetly have to use a lot since the lighting is so dark in that room. But in nice bright sunlight this is what he usually looks like:

















My plan for tomorrow or possibly today is to do a water change and maybe a cleaning on my 40 and 50 gallon tanks. I also want to get some update photos of Castien and my goldfish and minnows and maybe the girls too.

I also wanted to share a few song related things that ive been listening to a lot. 
Coyote Kisses - Six Shooter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wewjMEYTLZY

And the band The Cab
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fql23dx9zpo


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I did my water change on Castiens tank, and just relised how long its been since ive really seen him. It been quite a few a weeks that hes been floating in the 40 gallon. Hes not right next to the front of the tank so although I could see him it was through the glass of the 40 gallon a few inches of water and the plastic of the kritter keeper. I had also decided earlier that I wanted to switch Castien and Dantalian so I figured why not do it now since I was doing a water change. So now Dantalian is floating in the 40 gallon with the girls, and Castien is now where Dantalian was. I figured that it would also be a good change of pass for the both of them, plus I missed Castien so that was a plus. 
And since the tank that I moved Cas to is neighbors to Hale's tank I really got to see a size comparison of the two, Cas is really small.... lol he makes Hale look like a giant. 
And since its been 4 and half weeks since the last photo I took of him, I thought a new one was way over due. Ill take some better ones in the morning when the sun is out and hopefully he will actually be nice and let me take his pic. Aperently hes a master of avoiding getting his pic taken :roll:

5/2/14-








Today-


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I went to the newer petco today to grab 3 more female Black Phantom Tetras to round out the school. Since I currently have 4 males to 1 female. Unfortunetly when I looked at the tank there located in I didn't see any females and one of the tetras was covered in what im pretty sure was ich, a few of the other fish in that tank also had it. I decided not to chance it of coarse went to look at the bettas. 
I was more looking to see if the betta I had seen for the past few weeks and really liked was still there. Im pretty sure I found him again in the back and he was paler then I rememberd him. I also saw some sad looking bettas with fin rot or fin melt. I also found a dead betta . But on a happier note I did find some really pretty vibrant ones. There was a deep red PK which if I had the room I would have loved to get, a pretty copper with deep red fins and interestingly patterned marble boy. And a adorable steel blue female betta, she was one of those that was in between the normal size that they sell females and what they sell for babies. So there was a chance that she could grow up to be a he. I would have taken some photos but I left my phone in my car and my moms phone doesn't have a very good camera. 
Other then betta looking I did end up buying 2 new sponge filter inserts for my aquaclear filters, and a small bag of Hikari brand algea wafers for my molly fry.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Since its been a couple days I thought I would do another update on my fishes. Every ones doing well. The only thing im keeping my eye on is Adamantiums fins, mostly his tail, it looks like there are little spots that were torn and the edges are a bit more ragged than usual. Im not to overly worried since I think it had to do with him being in the section of the 10 gallon that had the filter, and silk plant that did have a few pointy plastic parts. But I did move adamtium one section over so hes on the far left, he seems to be doing a bit better without the filter and Levy, who I switched in that section seems to be loving the water flow :roll:. 

On Sunday I did a big 80%-90% water change on my 50 gallon goldfish tank. I would have taken some new photos of my goldies and minnows but I need to scrub the glass, so ill try to do that soon so I can take photos. The only other new thing with them is ive switched there food from tetra goldfish flakes to Wardley Advanced Nutrition Perfect Protein Goldfish Flake Food. There eating it which is a good sign the only thing I don't like is the smell.

On to the bettas-
I did a 30%-50% water change on all three of the 2 gallon today, tomorrow I think im going to do a water change on the two 10 gallons upstairs and the 40 gallon sorority tank. That's about it for tank mantinance, so I guess now on to the pics.

Castien-
Ive really enjoyed having him as another "desk" buddy. Every time hes on one end of the tank and sees me looking at him from the other he comes charging over, then if I stick my finger in the water he flares at it and chases it around :roll:. He must deffitaly like being were he is, two days after I moved hes made a pretty sizable bubble nest almost every day.

















Hale-

















Dantalian-
I cant really get any photos of him because of where his tank is floating in the 40 gallon but I did manage to get this on of him peaking over a leaf 









One of my males and my female Black Phantom Tetra:

















Baby Betta-









Adamantium-

































And last but not lest Levy, who was being a camera ham :lol: :roll:-
(excuse the glass I need to clean it)

Levy being a wiggle worm and not staying still:
















Shoving himself into the plant:
















Army crawl?








Verry rare moment when he stopped moving:
















View from above:


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## myprince (Apr 2, 2014)

Wow they are all so beautiful!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you Myprince


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Our rose bushes have started to bloom, and since there one of my favorite flowers and they looked pretty so I thought I would share them :-D


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I did some tank and filter maintenance on my 50 gallon tank. Deffinitly not fun or appealing to do. 
First I did a 50% water change since its been about a week since my last water change on that tank, which was the easiest part. Then I took all the decorations out and scrubbed down the glass. Unfortunetly even though my tank is cycled and has been running for almost a year I got a diatiom problem that doesn't seem to feel like going away. Probably because its got into the parts of my filter I cant clean and covered most of the decoations even thought ive cleaned them. 
Then came the gross filter cleaning. For the past few weeks my filter for the tank (a aquaclear 75) has been giving me trouble. If its not one thing its another. Sometimes the intake tube would pop up, or the basket for the filter media would start to float up on one side, or the filter media itself wouldn't stay down. And recently the ends of the intake tubed have been getting clogged by this yucky algea gunk. Because of this it wasn't picking up the leftover food as good as it should and was running porly. 
So after I refilled the tank with water I started on the filter. First I took out the intake tube and ran clean water through them and whipped out all the yucky algea gunk from the ends. Once those were clean, I took out the basket and put that aside then took the filter off to clean the inside. I know your not suppose to 100% clean the inside of the filter but it really neaded it...... It had diotomes and more of the algea gunk. I discovered after I took off the part the coveres the moter that it was clogged with algea gunk so that's probably why it wasn't running well. After I finished cleaning out the filter i went on the to basket which wasn't to bad but it also had some of the gunk on it. Then I also replaced the sponge filter insert. And set the filter back up again.
Good news is that it seems to be running well, maybe a bit to strong but i think it will be ok. My plan for now is to most likely get new intake tubes and get rid of the ones with diotomes. Im also leaving the decorations out to let the filter pick up what was left after the water change which ill probably put back in tomorrow.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Today's been kind of fun and interesting. 
My mom woke me up because she wanted me to help her and my dad take our new wishing well off the truck. So I went out half asleep to go help them, and after trying to lift out it out and it not working, we decided to use ramps. Turns out they didn't need me after all..:roll:. Then me and my mom went to Lowes to buy some paint for the wishing well and some other stuff for my dad, we ended up with a blue and gray color since that's what they wanted. 
While we were at Lowes we went to the garden section to look around, and to my surprise I found that they were selling Venus Fly Traps and Pitcher Plants. Since we needed to get home I wasn't able to get one but next time we go ill probably grab a Venus Fly Trap . 
The rest of the day mostly consisited of me and my mom painting the well which was fun since I like to paint. But we ended up running out of the gray and decided to get a lighter color. So we'll probably end up going out to Lowes again tomorrow since we were going out anyways. 

Now on to the fish stuff:
I checked on my 2 10 gallons in my room when I got up and found that the runt of my molly fry had passed away over night :-(. I wasn't to suprissed since it seemed that his health was going downhill all last night, but since there was no obvious signs of sickness I wasn't really sure what was wrong. 
That leaves me with 7 fry, im not really worried about them at all since they're all active with big round full tummy's, and they've been growing so that's good.
I did do a 25% water change when I got back from shopping on there tank and gave them a half of a half a piece of a algea wafer for food. 

Other then then I feed everybody else, and am just about the put some of the decorations back into my goldfish tank.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

lol I just fed Hale a mosquito that tried to bite me :evil: 
Hes pretty pleased with himself :roll: Spoiled fishy


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## BlueLacee (Dec 8, 2013)

They are all spoiled


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I even caught him looking at me after with the "isn't there more, ive been good, can I have another one", then he attempted to eat a few bubbles :roll:


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I ended up having my 3rd betta dream last night but unfortunetly it was a completely good dream. Compared to my very first betta dream it was a lot different. In the first one my dream was about have I think it was a 40 gallon tank, with 4 male bettas the size of a goldfish all peacefully coexisting together. If only that were possible in real life :roll:. 
As for my second dream I don't really remember what happened in it, though I do remember having it if that makes any sense at all. 
My most recent one was kind of at the end of a couple of other dreams so it tied in part of the other ones. For this one, for some reason my divided 10 gallon was out side by the woods, though in the dream it seemed completely normal. Although my 10 gallon has 3 of my boys I only saw my betta Adamantium through the whole dream. For some reason he was acting very lethargic and somehow I knew that he wasn't going to last long. So I took him out of the water and put him down on the ground. Mind that he wasn't in any water when I took him out or put him down. Then for some reason I looked up, then when I looked back to where I had put Adamantium, he was gone. I became really worried and began searching for him looking around the entire area (which I think was a version of my front yard), I even got some one to help me. Oddly enough the person who I asked was a character from a tv show I watch. (one of my previous dreams last night had him and some other charecters from that show). We searched and searched, I remember it being a long time that we looked for him. Then finally he found Adamantium, who was under a outdoor pillow? I then quickly grabbed Adamantium and ran back to the tank and put him in. And not two moments after Adamantium was swimming around and energetic like nothing had ever happened.
Thus concludes my really weird betta dream.


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Lol what a random dream XD i swear dreams are either super weird or you just can't remember them. I always have dreams but most of the time I wake up and can't remember anything! Pretty weird


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

haha 
Im usually the same, its very rare that I remember a dream. Ive discovered that if I go to bed really really late then I remember my dreams and there really weird lol.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I managed to get some photos of a few of my sorority girls sleeping. I wish I had my camera erlier, I turned the light on in the room so I could see to get something and 4 of my girls were all snuggled one thing of leaves of one of the silk plants. 
Unfotunetly these are rather blurry and have bad lighting since its really dark out and I was trying to be quick so I didn't wake them up.

















Other then that, Castien and Hale were very happy fish, and got a late night snack. I had the fan in the window of the room I was in since it was hot out, and there was a whole in the screen so some tiny fly's and midges got in :evil:, I managed to kill some of them. But most are ended up and are currently on the clealing/upper wall next to the lamp :roll:. So they each got 5 flys and midges each. They were deffinitly very pleased with themselves and got all energetic and happy :lol:. What spoiled fishes they are lol, especialy since they already got feed their pellets today. 

On a non fish related not ive been kind of obsessed with the song Teddy Picker by Artic Monkeys and have been listening to that a lot. That and Gabrielle Aplin's album English rain, which ive been listening to when ive done water changes.
I think that's about it for this post. Ill take some new photos and do a update tomorrow when I do my water changes.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Todays just been kind of a long day. More because its been hot. I woke up and it was 78 degrees outside and it just kept getting hotter throughout the day. By 4:00 pm it had hit 89 degrees. Luckily its started to cool off a bit and its now 81 degrees :-D
Unfortunetly all the heat also means I need to keep a close eye on my tanks temperatures. Almost all of my tanks have gone up in temp. So im going to have to start finding ways to either cool off the tanks or prevent so much heat from going in. Sigh why does water have to be a good heat insulater during the summer :roll:.

Anyways, I did end up doing some water changes today. I got both of the 10 gallons, and the two 2 gallons. Ill probably do the other 3 tanks tomorrow. I really cant wait until I only have 5 tanks up and running instead of 7.

Ill start off with my molly fry. All seven are doing well. I don't remember if I mentioned it in this journal but I ended up loosing the runt of the fry. But the ones that are left are healthy and strong. The largest one is a little bit over 1/2 and inch and I think the others are at or almost at 1/2 an inch. It has been fun raising my first ever batch of fry, although unexpected. But because they were unexpected I had to give them the 10 gallon which was meant to be a three way divided tank for Castien, Dantalian and a new betta. Which displaces them and gives me 2 more tanks to care for. Oh and sorry for the green algea on the glass, the left over algea wafers and sun don't like me :roll:
































I also decided to take some photos of my 2 nerite snails who live in my divided 10 gallon. I ended up with a slight green algea problem in my first planted tank. But to the snails its like a giant buffet :roll:. They loved it so much one of them, I think my zebra nerite, layed a bunch of eggs and is still laying them. I just recently counted close to 100 eggs on just one divider and the eggs are throughout the tank.
Zebra-








Tire Tracks-








Tire Tracks Having Dinner-









Speaking of my first planted tank, other then the algea I think its going well. My other planted tank 2 gallon that I made after with the left over substrate is also doing well. Luckily no algea in that one. In my two gallon I have an amazon sword, a anubius and a few of a plant which I don't know what its called. In the 10 gallon I have 5 water wisteria, 2 amazon swords, some java fern and more recently that I put in I think its called Bleheri that I got at petco. Considering I don't add any fertilizer or anything im happy with the growth on the plants. The only on im having trouble with it the java fern. It's very slow growing. But the fact that's its growing is good. 
I think next time I go to petco I might pick up a banana plant or two, for both planted tanks.

Now on the photos.
Baby betta-








Levy-
















Castien-
















Hale- (sorry about the glass, I keep forgetting to clean it before I take photos :roll:
























And just because it looked cool, this is Hales tail close up


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## Rosebud975 (Mar 26, 2014)

Wow! The baby betta looks so grown up  sad to hear about the Molly fry runt :-( but glad to hear the others are doing well. This summer has been a nightmare for me, so much algae! Just out of interest what colour is Hale? He's absolutely stunning! Is he a double tail? Lol all of your bettas look lovely :-D I also always find nerite snails adorable!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you 
Its funny how much Babby Betta has grown up and ive had him for I think 6 months now, but he's still only a bit over an inch. 

As for Hale, im not really sure what color he is. I think when I asked a while ago some one said he's a fancy coloration since he doesn't quite fit within any color standerds. And yup he's a double tail boy.


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## Jennalyn (Jun 23, 2014)

Your fish are gorgeous, but I really admire your snail-shots above. xD I saw the different Nerite shell colorations in my local pet store and thought the tire tracks was utterly charming.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Today was kind of a 50-50 day. It started out good then just kind of went down hill (for warning this isn't fish related, so luckily nothing bad happened to my fishies. This is more of a vent/rant so you can skip it if you want).
Even though the weather was crappy and raining we went to my aunt and uncles house for our annual family 4th of July get together/barbeque thing and to launch fire works. Unfortunetly it rained all day and the weather didn't let up so it was a soggy day with no fireworks. At the beginning of the day most of those of us who were there already decided to watch a movie. Out of a selection we ended up watching Clue (it had to also be kid friendly movies). Which ive never seen before and I actually really enjoyed it, so that was fun. The other enjoyable thing was their 2 year old dog who cute and fluffy. I think he's a beagle, border coly, spaniel and possibly something else mix if I remember correctly.
Then my day just got bad from there. My brother came over and started hounding me and pestering me about the fact the I don't have a job yet (im in HS). He kept making comments about how I was being lazy and my mom was just giving me everything I want. It got so bad that I almost started crying. And for about 20 minutes I had to hold it in because we were with family and I wasn't home so it wasn't like I could go into my room for a bit. The worst part of it was that no one said anything to get him to stop. My mom was sitting right next to us and just let him continue. And he does this every time I see him and she never says a word. My sister does the same thing almost every time I see her to but not as bad or as frequent. 

I guess I might consider getting a job, but I feel like im personally not ready for it. I have a hard time dealing with people I don't know and feel very akward around them, even my family sometimes. Plus im naturally a quite person unless im with a friend and then I fell comfortable. So why would I work somewhere that I wont feel comfortable. Plus theres very few places that higher younger then 18. I know there are some resturants and retail stores but that's not somewhere were I would ever feel comfortable to work. If anything I would honestly only feel comfortable right now working at a petco or petsmart. Its a place I like to be and I enjoy animals. And because I know what im doing especialy with fish they will actually be cared for. But they don't hire anyone under 18 so I cant work there. But my brother and even my mom act like its requirement for me to have a job now and that im being lazy or being childish. Im only 17, I think its ok for me to wait a year before I work. Especaily if I can work somewhere that I will feel more comfortable and not nervuse or have some form of anxiety. 
So ya I think that's it for my rant/vent.


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

Sorry about your brother. Brothers can be a total pain. He probably knows he's making you upset and likes that. The calmer, less reactive you can be the better. Then he doesn't win. Maybe just say something like, "thanks for the advice," but say it with a blank face every time he says something. Then walk away. 

Could you work babysitting? That's something that doesn't take a whole lot of time (you can work when you want to, and you make pretty good money.) Maybe if you babysat a couple times a month your mom would be happy and everyone would be satisfied?


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thanks for the advice  Sad part is, is that he's in his 30's and still acts like that.


Im actually not really a kid/baby person so I wouldn't really do well with baby sitting. Im the kind of person that does well with animals because I fell most comfortable around them.


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

When you are 37 and he's in his 50's, he'll probably still act like that...

How about pet sitting?


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I don't doubt it, sigh :roll:

I actually have looked into that I but I live in a small town surrounded by small towns so theres not much in the way of people looking for a pet sitter that's close to where I live. Plus I think id rather wait to work at petco or petsmart because I would be caring for animals who really need it and possibly give people the correct information. And I could get a discount on fish stuff 
But thanks for all the helpful ideas. And you actually helped me feel a bit better


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Sorry about my spelling and gramer in this. I typed it on my phone

We went to bobs furniture store to buy a new recliner chair. Twords the end while my mom was paying for the chair, i noticed a large fountain/pond thing. Of coarse i went of to see what it looked like up close only to find about maybe 8-10 kio of varius sizes. They were really pretty but i wasnt impressed with there set up or care. All though the pond had tons of room to swim around there wasnt nearly enough water hight. If the large koi (close to a foot in length i think) was at the surface there was only about one inch of water between them and the bottom of the pond. On top of that 2 or 3 had extrmely small fins. It was clear they having a hard time swiming. I dont know if they were defformed or if the fins were bitten but still. And all of them had some form of raggedy tail.
Ill post the pics i took when i get home.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Pictures of the Koi

This was one of the ones with the stunted fins


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Other then going to Bobs furniture store, we also went to petco. I needed more API stress coat, and I was hopping that they had some female Black Phantom Tetras and to see if they had Omega One Shrimp Pellets. I found the stress coat and Shrimp Pellets, but they didn't have any Phantom Tetras. Well they had one but it was a male. 
This trip kind of turned bad while I was looking at the wall of tanks. In the tank where they had there larger (1-2 inches) goldfish, there were a big mass of them in the corner dead or dieing and a few others already dead in other parts of the tank. They were all piled on top of each other. It was gross and I felt really bad for those poor goldfish . I couldn't see any outright signs of anything like ick or fungus on the big mass so im not totally sure what happened. The girl I told and showed them to said she just checked on them a minute ago and they were swimming and breathing. Though im not really sure how true that is but she did seem conserned and got the manager to come look. So that was goodish.

Though the trip did have one good highlight of sorts. I bet no one will be surprised when I say that I got a new betta. I of coarse had to look at there selection of bettas to see what they had. Of coarse I saw some pretty ones but I was ok with walking out of the store with one. But then I saw this poor little EE. I usually tend to pass over EE's because there not one of my favorite kinds of betta splendens, but I think that more has to do with the fact that I don't really like the salamander coloration. But I couldn't help but go back to him. As far as I could tell he was completely or partaily blind. One eye was 90% white and the other was cloudy. I doubted that any one would buy him with his eyes looking like that and if they did I don't think they would really understand that he was blind and needed special care. So after a slightly heated conversation with my mom she agreed to let me get him. And home he came. I did have to do some betta rearranging though before I could put him anywhere. Out of the two tanks I could put him in, one is floating in my 40 gallon. And I now that would be way to stressfull for him. So I divided the 10 gallon that molly are in so I could Dantalian upstairs with them. That way my new boy could have the 2 gallon tank. Its in a quitter, lower lighting room where im in most of they day so I can keep an eye on him. And its only 2 gallon so I think that that will be easier to navigate since he cant see. I also tested his cup water when I got home and it turns out that its between 4.0-8.0 (I some how lost my color chart for my API master test kit so another member supplied me with the numbers). For now he seems to be doing ok. He is resting a lot and I think he might have a bit of SBD but nothing to bad. The only other think im keeping an eye on is that he's breathing heavily but that's probably from being moved to a new clean home. Ill post better pics of him tomorrow when my camera is charged. But if you want to see what he looks like now I made a thread about him in Pictures. 
http://www.bettafish.com/showthread.php?t=422210


I think thats it for this post. Fingers crossed that he will make it through the night


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Fish update:

Every ones doing well for the most part. There are 3 of my boys that im keeping my eye on. Adamanitum, Castien and my new boy. I accidentally gave Adamantium to much food and his stomach is rather large now and he is having some floating issues. But he is pooping so I think 3 to 4 days of fasting should solve that problem. As for Castien, he has a split in his anal and caudal fins :roll: hopefully those will heal fast. Other then that I think that's it for fishy stuff.
Now on to the pictures. 

Ill start with my new guy. I might name him either Congo/Kongo, Ibis, Amazon, Antillean, Wren, Sora, Kestral, or Oriole, or at least something like that. The reason that most of these names are birds is because, my first EE(PK) that I got probably 8 months ago I named Sparrow. So I think I might follow suit and name him my new EE a bird as well. Though im still having a hard time choosing. 
This was him on Saterday-















Then this is from today. 















Then I ended up catching him mid yawn :lol:









Then I got a couple of pics of Hale-


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

They both look great! I like Kestrel for the new boy.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you DaytonBetta 

Kestrel was actually one of the ones I was leaning towards 
1 vote for Kestrel


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

Hale is simply STUNNING.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you  
He's one of my only bettas that sits still and lets me get good pictures of him :roll:


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

Haha, they do seem to be camera shy, huh? Mine will pause just long enough for me to push the button, and then zip while the shutter is closing...


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I have a couple of boys who do that, one because there good at avoiding the camera and the other one because they cant sit still when I visit him lol


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Every things going well in the fishy world for me lately for the most part. Though I did just notice today that Hale has 3 blowouts in his dorsal :roll: Sigh why must he flare and go nuts any time he see's another live betta lol
The other thing I wanted to update on is my new guys name. I think ive decided on Kestrel, I like the sound of it and it think it suits him well  
Here are some new photos of him, unfortunetly I don't think he will every really flare especaily since for the most part he cant see. But on the bright side of that I think with they eye that was cloudy, he can see pretty well out of. Not 100% but not horrible either, I also noticed that he sort of favors that side when he come to visit me or looks at me, he doesn't use the right as often. I don't have high hopes for that eye and I don't really think it will heal that much if anything. After really looking at it, it almost looks a bit sunken and not quite the right shape especialy when you compare the shapes of both of his eyes.

Kestrel, I cant wait until his fins open up more and grow out-
















This ones not a great photo of him especaily because of the glare on the glass but I like the way his pectorals look. From this ive also decided to nickname him Batfish  :lol:. You can also compare his eye in this (the bad right one) to his better eye in the other two photos. You can see how they look a bit different


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

Hale is gorgeous as ever!

Aw, it sucks that your family's acting kind of pissy. Just tell them it's hard to find work when you're under 18, especially with the economy the way it is, and in a year you'll start trying to find a job. If they won't accept that, then that's their problem.

Working at PetSmart/PetCo has always been my "dream first job" too. 

When my tanks are overheating, I stick an ice cube in the filter if it has one where you can do that, or a sealed Ziploc bag of cold water in the main tank part if it doesn't. It does help and it seems to be gentle enough not to bother the fish.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Hmm thanks for the idea about the filter. Luckily its cooled off a bit recently but im sure it will heat up again at some point. Ill have to try the ice cube method 

Hale says thank you 

Thank you 
Somehow I doubt no mater what I say, my brother will still make comments about it. Gota love brothers ...... :roll:


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I just found this seashell that I painted awhile ago and I thought I would share it:

















And my water color horse that I did in drawing and painting since I had free time at the end of the year:


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

That's lovely. It's been a while since I've seen a watercolor so fine. Your use of color is exceptional.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you very much 
I was very surprised with my self since I usually don't like water color since im not very good at it


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

I like them!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Everything's going well fish wise as far as I cant tell. Nothing that would be a cause for concern so that's good. Todays just been a feeding and water change day. For now im still feeding my goldfish the shrimp pellets that I bought for my bettas. Unfortunetly its hard to tell if there actually eating anything since the pellets can be easily pushed under something. 
The reason why im feeding them shrimp pellets instead of something else that they really should be eating is because I wont feed them there food anymore. Last time I ran out of food for them I went to petco looking for something new and ended up leaving with Wardly goldfish flakes. Well come to find out after discussing it with people on another site, it seems that the flakes were causing gross algeaish gunk to build up in my filter. Because of that it wasn't working well at all and I don't think it was properly removing the ammonia. So I think it was last weekend or so I did a big cleaning on the filter and got everything out. Fingers crossed that and not feeding the flakes any more will help keep the filter running well. I think sometime time today-Monday ill be able to go to petco and hopefully grab some omega one goldfish pellets. The only problem is now that I have a ton of left overs of the flakes :roll:
Other then that today so far ive done a water change one Hales 2 gallon and Castien's temp tank. Im also going to a water change on the two 10 gallons upstairs. Then the 40 and 50 either tomorrow or Monday.
I also haven't really visited my sorority girls and tank mates for a quite a few days other then feeding since ive been occupied with my other tanks. So I decided to sit down and really look at them for a bit. 
Its funny, I realized that I didn't notice how big Eft has gotten. When I got her she was tiny, kind of in the middle of what they sell as babies and what they sell as females. Now shes just about the same size as my other girls and apparently has a bit of a spoon head. Though she looks almost exactly like Kasai, I think they were either part of the same spawn or had the same parents. I think im going to do a photo shoot of all 10 girls soon. I haven't taken photos of them individually in a long time since in the tank they all mass together assuming I have food :roll:
Other then that I have admittedly been considering disbanding my sorority and finding them new homes. But the more I watched them I realized that ive become to attached to them over the months to separate with any of them. And they all seem to be happy in their home so ill take that as a good sign


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I got around to do a photo shoot with my girls today, it actually went pretty well and I finally have a good photo for the most part of each of them. I cant believe that its already been 7 months since I first started the sorority. Though I did already post these in the picture thread but I figured I would put them hear too. Or maybe a time line of sorts of my sorority.
Ill start with the first 6 girls I got to start up my sorority. I got them the day after Christmas, from petsmart.

Tamsin, who's my largest girl. I cant believe how much she's grown in the time ive had her. I love the newer photo of her. Its one of if not the best photo ive ever taken of a betta.
1/4/14-








Today-









Tauriel, who's one of my favorite girls, just don't tell the others . Im not sure if she will ever marble. I thought she would for awhile but she never has. But who knows. Shes come a long way, in the beginning with the first 6 she got picked on but now she can take care of herself.
12/26/13-








Today- 









Bo who's my smallest girl, who's has a birth mark of sorts. She has a little brown/black spot on her back right next to her dorsal, though you cant see it in the most recent photo.
12/26/14








Today-









Kenzi, im pretty sure that she and Bo are siblings since the look almost exactly the same.
1/15/14








Today-









K, one of my marble girls
1/4/14








Today-









Arwen, the last of my original 6 girls who is my other marble girl. 
1/15/14-








Today-









Then on January 18/2014 I got 2 more girls to round out the aggression in the group and it seemed to help a lot.

Rogue, my wild type girl. I love how deep of a red her fins have gotten.
1/23/14








Today- 









Kasai was the other female I got. Her coloration is definitely different, shes both solid and see through.
1/18/14-








Today-









Then following a trip to petco, February 11, I ended up getting 2 more girls. Bringing my total up to 10 females, I most likely wont get any more, though we all know how well that mind set works :roll:. But at least the fact that I cant overstock because it is also a community tank help a bit.

Wyvern, I got because up until that point I hadn't really seen a steel blue betta and her color was really pretty so of coarse she was definitely coming home. Something interesting that I learned about her is that her breeding stripes are peach colored, which she never minds showing off :roll:
3/23/14-








Today-









Eft, last but not least. I got her because although there was another female that I really liked I wanted to bring home a girl that really needed it. So even though she looked exactly like Kasai, her tail was slightly shreeded. Oddly enough, there was another girl next to her that looked extactaly the same with the same tail injury. Its amazing how much shes grown, for a long time it almost felt like she was taking a long time to grow but now after looking at her shes just about the same size as the other girls. And apparently a bit spoon headed. As you can see for some reason her tail healed but never grew back to the right shape and just grew like that. I wonder if its genetic? 
3/23/14-








Today-


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

Beautiful photos.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you hrtan


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I just realized that its been close to 4 months since ive photographed my goldfish so I figured I would take some today. 
I cant believe how much they've grown in more then a year that ive had them. (sorry about the glass I need to give it a good scrubbing) 

11/18/13 (5'ish months since I first got them)









Riven, my shubunkin goldfish
















Top view of Riven









Kananie, my common goldfish
















Top view of Kananie 









I even managed to get a few pics of my rosy red minnows, who are very good at avoiding the camera


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## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

Your Goldfish are looking great! I eventually would like to have one, as I've always liked them.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you very much 
They are fun to have


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Not much to journal today, other then as some of you may know I lost one of my girl's Rogue last night to unknown causes. SIP Rogue, I know it was only 6 months that I had her for but it felt like a lot longer. In some ways it kind of made me appreciate the time I get to spend with my fish since they can pass in the blink of an eye. 
It was sad loosing her, but as expected the sorority seems fine in terms of ranking. Which wasn't that suprising because although Rogue was with the sorority she tended to be more independent and hang out by herself. The good new is the other girls and fish seem to be doing fine and I don't see any signs of illness. So I don't think it was a desies that took Rogue. 
I have come to the decision that although theres any empty space in the sorority and it would be better for another girl to live there then a cup, I don't think im going to add any more girls to the group, unless for some reason it causes a spike in aggression. I think this will be my first and only sorority.
So ya hopefully that made sense. It just kinda feels like its been a long day. Hopefully tomorrow will be better and the sun will come out.

Other then that ive been doing some water changes today. All the downstairs ones, so all 3 2 gallons, and the 40 and 50.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Bleh ever since Tuesday night I feel like ive just been having a bad week. Yesterday I woke up feeling sad and unhappy all day, and my eyes felt like I hadn't slept in 2 days. On top of that I just kind of felt like I was in a daze all day too.
And now today, Kestrel isn't doing well, and I don't know why. He's been eating well, and has for the most part been active. There are no outward signs of parasites. He's just pale and rather lethargic. Last night he was hiding a bit more then usual but I thought I was because his water got up to 84 because of the heat. So I did a water change last night. 
I don't have much for medicine other then 2 different ones for ick and Malafix. So ill add some Malafix to his tank and hopefully that helps. I feel so bad, he looks rather dejected and sad . He doesn't even respond to me tapping lightly on the tank which I taught him to find his food that way. Even with the Malafix, I don't know if he's going to last through the day.

On top of that theres a chance that Castien and Adamantium are sick. But they are eating well and for the most part active. So im going to do a few more frequent water changes on their tanks. Hopefully that helps.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Kestrel's kind of sort of doing better. He's lasted through the day so that's good. I added Malafix to his tank earlier, so only time will tell if he improves. 
He does swim around occasionally and did seem a bit interested in chasing my finger earlier in the day. But for the most part he's only had short burts of energy. There have been plenty of times today that ive thought ive lost him. Only to tap him to check and him start moving his fins or move off. 
But in the last hour or two he's just rested on top of the thermometer not moving. I think part of why he stays there is because he just has to stretch his head a bit to get air. He did that a few times earlier today, it was either that or being under or in the plants. Im worried he wont be with us by tomorrow, poor guy :-(
Here are some pics of him resting on the thermometer that I just took. As you can see his fins are pretty clamped. His fins were a bit clamped when I first got him and hadn't opened up yet, but now they just look horrible :-(

With the flash








Natural lighting









And just as a reference this is him when he was healthy and active (I haven't even had him for two weeks)


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Quick update on Kestrel. He's all better now and unclamped and actively swimming around.


Today's been pretty good and productive. The only down side was that I had to go to the doctors and got my finger pricked and got 2 shots. Which was horrible for me because im terrified of needles. I cant even look when they do it. And now I might have to get my blood drawn at a later date  :-(.
But my mom promised that we could go to the petstore after so that was fun and made my day a bit better.
Before we went to petco, we stopped at Lowes to look at their garden center to look at the plants. In the end we found some that we liked (well I liked :lol. And I little bit ago I just planted them. We got them to go in the bucket that goes on our new wishing well. It actually turned out really nice, and im happy with what we got. But we cant put it up yet since its to heavy with all the dirt.
Heres what it looks like. For the middle we got a mix bucket thing that has 3 flowering plants around some sort of grass I think. Then because I had the idea earlier to put a form of ivy to grow down from the bucket, we got 2 of those for the outside.

















Now on to the fish related stuff,
After we did a bit more shopping we went to both petco and petsmart. I decided that I wanted to go to the ones I haven't been to in a while. Since the petco I had been going to didn't have what I wanted and hasn't had it for 3 or 4 weeks. 
We went to petsmart first. There wasn't to much to look at there. I think they only had 15 bettas at most, and the all looked rather sad. I even saw one girl with SBD who was stuck on her side even though she kept trying to move :-(.
In the end I ended up leaving with just a container of Umbrella Plant (it had 2 pieces). Then we drove down the road to petco. Somehow I managed not to really look at any of the bettas. But that was probably because of my mom, she hates spending a long amount of time in the petstores since we go all the time. Anways, I ended up finding every thing I wanted. Ive been looking for almost a month for some female Black Female Tetras since when I first bought them I ended up with 4 males and one poor female. I ended up getting 3 so now for every male theres one female. Then they also had banana plants which the other petco didn't have last time we went. So I got two of those, one for Hales 2 gallon and one for the 10 gallon. The one thing I dislike about petco is that they never label their plants and the Fish person there has no idea which plants are which so that's not much help. And when I told him I wanted female black phantom tetras he asked what the difference was. So I had to tell him and then tell him he took out the right gender :roll:. 
After I got the tetras and banana plants I couldn't help but look at the bettas. But I only decided to look at the females and babies to see what they had. I wasn't planning on getting any, especaily since after Rogue passed I decided not to add to my sorority. As I was looking at the babies I came across a adorable cellophane baby. I couldn't help it and imidiatly picked up the cup, but upon closer inspection I realized that it was a male. His fins were already pretty long and it was clear he didn't have any overies. I was a bit dissapointed, I would have loved to have taken him home but I just don't have to room for another male. So I put him back and moved my gaze to the females. All of them were barley bigger then what they were selling as babies. Tinny and cute, but nothing that interested me. Until my eyes fell on one particular little girl. She was adorable, and almost certainly a marble. Even though I probably shouldn't have I pulled her out and convinced my mom to let me get her. Though she wasn't very happy about letting me get another fish, but my new girl was only $3 so that wasn't too bad. After bringing her home and looking at my other girls compared to her, ive realized that I seem to have a soft spot for iri marbles. 
For now I have her set up in a large cup with one of the pieces of the umbrella plant, which is serving as her QT. The three tetras got their own large cup and the other piece of umbrella plant. 
And now for some photos of my new little girl.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I just finished doing a water change on all of my downstairs tanks. So that's the two 2 gallon, the 50, the 40, and the QT cups. Which I suppose wasn't the smartest idea right now because its 94 degree's here and we don't have air conditioning. So im a bit over heated now. 
My plan for the rest of the day is to a water change on the two 10 gallons upstairs. But I might wait till it cools off since my room gets pretty warm espiacaly with this heat. 
The highlight of the day was that I got to see a hawk circle and glide around my front yard for a bit while I did a water change on my 40 gallon.

As for my molly fry, I just found out a few days ago that some of them are finally at one inch! It feels like it took forever for them to grow. I do plan on shipping them out but I have to wait for ambientnight to come back on since they offered to take them. Hopefully that's soon because I would like to try to ship them out in the next few weeks.
Ive also really been considering again adopting out some or all of my sorority females. I fell like I might want to move on to a regular community tank with a betta though . If I do decide to rehome my girls I think what I might do is keep Tauriel and K and split the 40 in half so they each get 20 gallons. Then do a community tank in each section with them. 
At this point ive realized that I have to many fish in the 40. Which is the biggest reason why im highly considering rehoming them. To start out depending on what I decide I think I might try rehoming 2 or three of them and see how the sorority is after that. Plus I would want to see how it goes finding them new homes.
But nothings definite yet.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

After I did water changes on the two 10 gallons I finally took some update photos of my boys upstairs.

The only pic I could get of baby betta. Im still a bit surprised at how well he's doing. Especaily considering he's stunted and only a inch long and ive already had him for 6-7 months.









Adamantium decide he finally didn't mind getting his photo taken :roll:
















I love this one of him, if only the glass wasn't dirty :evil:









And finally some pics of Levy


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

The past few days have been goodish. All of my fishy friends are doing well and of coarse hungry.

Yesterday I was told that I was finally aloud to get a dog. So that was good, I really missed having a fluffy friend around the house after we had to put my dog Sandy down last year. For me having a dog is really important to me and their not only family but I also consider them my best friend.
I was a little hesitant to completely believe that my mom was actually agreeing to let me get a dog since she would rather not get one.
I spent most of today when I got home looking through shelters and petfinder at dogs. After looking through just about all the shelters in my area and a large chunk on petfinder I finally found one that I really liked. He just had one of those faces. But his adoption fee is $425. Which my mom does not want to pay  (he's most likely a bit more because he's microchiped)
Im a bit annoyed about that since he's the first dog that ive looked at that's really caught my attention and I can see him in my home. 
I just did a little more looking around and found a couple more that I kind of like but there still something about the first boy I saw, sigh Plus my favorite dogs are Pit bull terriers/staffordshire terrier which im not allowed to get because my parents don't want one and they can raise your insurance.


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## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

Sabina88 said:


> The past few days have been goodish. All of my fishy friends are doing well and of coarse hungry.
> 
> Yesterday I was told that I was finally aloud to get a dog. So that was good, I really missed having a fluffy friend around the house after we had to put my dog Sandy down last year. For me having a dog is really important to me and their not only family but I also consider them my best friend.
> I was a little hesitant to completely believe that my mom was actually agreeing to let me get a dog since she would rather not get one.
> ...


It really is all about finding the right type of dog to fit your life style. Having owned two Pit Bull/Bully Breeds now, they are very good dogs to have. If you're really interested in getting one, I'd suggest reading up on them (if you haven't already) and also look into any laws in your state concerning Pit Bulls/Bully Breeds. I'd also check on the insurance, as some insurance companies will not raise the price just because you have a Pit Bull. They really are great dogs to have and there are a lot of them in need of good homes, but that being said, there are many other dogs that could also use a good home. 

Probably the best thing to do is keep an open mind. When my mom and I went out looking for possible dogs to adopt, we weren't thinking of getting a Pit Bull/Bully Breed since the breed itself tends to be more animal aggressive. Lucky, however, loves all animals and people. He turned out to be the best fit for us. Not the pretty farm dog or the hyperactive Beagle that we had originally liked based on photos. If you really have your heart set on a Pit Bull, try and go for a mix breed to perhaps "soften" your parents up towards the breed. Heck, my first Bully was a mix of Lab/Boxer/Pit but his personality was all Pit Bull-Nanny dog, goof-ball and cuddle bug.

Hopefully I'm not overstepping/sounding condescending, I'm not trying to come across that way. Just trying to give some (hopefully) helpful advice .


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you for the advice, and don't worry you weren't overstepping or anything.

Unfortunetly wether or not its a pure breed pitty or a mix im not allowed to get them. And what ever dog we pick everybody has to agree on. 
And unfortunetly I love the look of pit bulls and dogs like them (Staffordshire, American bulldog ext) which my mom isn't the biggest fan of.

Though the one I mentioned earlier that was $425 was a lab/weimeraner/pit mix. And had the look that I liked and even my mom liked him but unfortunetly his cost was too much.
https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/29633603/


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## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

Sabina88 said:


> Thank you for the advice, and don't worry you weren't overstepping or anything.
> 
> Unfortunetly wether or not its a pure breed pitty or a mix im not allowed to get them. And what ever dog we pick everybody has to agree on.
> And unfortunetly I love the look of pit bulls and dogs like them (Staffordshire, American bulldog ext) which my mom isn't the biggest fan of.
> ...


That's a shame that he is so expensive :-(. Weimeraner's are good dogs too. I got to work with one while I was volunteering at my local animal shelter. He was a sweetheart, but very high in demand in terms of exercise. 

I guess all I can suggest is visit your local animal shelters/animal controls and see if there are any dogs there that you like or just say "Take me home with you!" I found the beagle I mentioned earlier on Pet Finder, but Lucky wasn't on there, and when my mom asked to see him we were basically sold. He claimed us as his. Maybe try looking on weekends or whenever everyone in your family can go out and look at dogs.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thanks for the tips 
lol ive actually looked through almost every animal shelter in my state (the websites) and just haven't found anything that jumps at me and says s/he's the one. But for the past few days though weve been on Petfinder shearching through a bunch of dogs. (if only I could take them all lol) 
And apparently my mom is dead set on a puppy even though she was the one who doesn't want a dog in the first place and there a lot more work then a older dog.
She did find this one cute little puppy that came from India but as I was reading through the entire description it turns out she's going to need a lot of socialization training if we were to get her. Which we wouldn't really be able to provide or really give her the proper training she would need to feel comfortable. Which does suck a little because she kind of grew on my and I do really like her.
https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/28828661/


But while I was looking through the puppies I found him. So ill see what my mom thinks about him. Fingers crossed 
https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/29857868/


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## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

Sabina88 said:


> Thanks for the tips
> lol ive actually looked through almost every animal shelter in my state (the websites) and just haven't found anything that jumps at me and says s/he's the one. But for the past few days though weve been on Petfinder shearching through a bunch of dogs. (if only I could take them all lol)
> And apparently my mom is dead set on a puppy even though she was the one who doesn't want a dog in the first place and there a lot more work then a older dog.
> She did find this one cute little puppy that came from India but as I was reading through the entire description it turns out she's going to need a lot of socialization training if we were to get her. Which we wouldn't really be able to provide or really give her the proper training she would need to feel comfortable. Which does suck a little because she kind of grew on my and I do really like her.
> ...


Oh my goodness Ollie is so cute!!!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Bleh this week has been good and bad. The bad part is that I lost Castien this week and now suddenly Hale. I have no idea why hale passed. He seemed a little lethargic last night so I was going to do a water change today to see if that would help him out. I cam downstairs to find that he had passed away :-(.
I feel horrible, he was my first betta that I really knew what I was doing and how to really take care of him. He also got me hooked on bettas and was my favorite :-(
SIP Hale.


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## BambooTikiBettaGirl84 (Jun 29, 2014)

Awww Sabina88 I'm sorry to hear about Castien and Hale. Since you took such great care of them, they had a great long life. You can't blame yourself for them passing. Sometimes it's just their time to swim off into the big betta puddle in the sky. They would be proud of you and all your progress you have done for all your other pets too.

Btw, how's your sorority doing? Was Castien one of the girls or a boy? Hopefully, everything is going well for your other fish and pets.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you BambooTikiBettaGirl84. Unfortunetly I haven't had either Hale or Castien for even a year yet. 
Castien was my VT male.

The girls are doing well still piggy's as ever lol. 


I kind of have a bittersweet dream last night. Last year we had to put my dog Sandy down from old age (she was 14). In my dream I saw her again, but it wasn't one of those one that it like your dog was with you like normal. In my dream it never crossed my mind that she had passed away or was gone I was just happy to see her and couldn't stop hugging and petting her. It was nice to see her again but sad because she's no longer with me and I couldn't see her when I got up.

Other then the bad stuff this week, it just been really busy, were having my sister's baby shower tomorrow so me and my mom have been shopping every day this week. So far ive made center pieces, and today I have to clean/do water changes on all of my tanks and make chocolate pretzel pop things for party favors then tomorrow I have to make a stuffed tomato thingy appetizer. So lots to do which means I unfortunetly cant spend to much time being sad today.

Other then that I got my blood drawn on Tuesday which wasn't fun. I have really bad anxiety about needles. So I was terrified waiting for them to call my name then It happening. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would but it deffinitly wasn't pleasant. The person kept moving the needle around which hurt. And after my blood draw a good sized black and blue bruise formed that's still going away.

Oh and we might have found the dog were going to adopt. We just have to fill out some more stuff and what not I think.


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## BambooTikiBettaGirl84 (Jun 29, 2014)

Awe well even though they didn't live as long as they say bettas live, sometimes they just pass away early. Just like humans, you don't know when your time is up, you just have to live everyday to the fullest. You gave those lil guys the best time of their lives, much better than living in a pet store cup.

That story actually made me cry alil. I believe that when we have dreams of our loved ones we have lost, it's them sending you a message that they love you and are watching over you. 

I am the same way about needles, I can't stand them. I've had nightmeres before about swallowing them and I would wake up in a panic and cry for a good while. I realize then that it was only a dream and I have nothing to worry about. I remember having my blood drawn and I too had a nurse that kept moving it around inside my arm. It hurt so much and it was the first time I had it done before so I was freaking out.

Congrats on your sister having a baby! I love babysitting kids, I actually work part time at my old school watching kids. Seems like you guys have a lot planned for the party which will turn out great!

What kind of dog are you adopting? I used to have a Shiatsu for about 6 months until I had to give it away. I found out I was allergic to him and all furry animals so I couldn't even get another animal cept for reptiles, fish or birds. I got birds and fish now to make up for the loss of not having furry animals though.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

It was my first time getting blood drawn too, still never want to go again lol

Its not for definite but this is the dog were looking into
https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/29313908/


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## BambooTikiBettaGirl84 (Jun 29, 2014)

Oh that is such a cute dog! I love his colors and so playful. Do ya have a nice big yard for him to run and play in? I can see a dog like that running after squirrels. Lol.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Yupp luckily we have a pretty good size yard so he'll have lots of room to run


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## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

I'm very sorry to hear about Castien & Hale passing. S.I.P.

I had a similar dream about my first dog, Pebbles. I really didn't have the bittersweet feeling though, I was just happy to see her in my dreams.

He's so cute! I hope you can get him. It's good that you have a yard for him to run around in. I'm sure he'll love it if you do get it.


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

I'm sorry about your fish. That dog looks really cute and happy. I hope it works out!


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you guys,

ya its weird not seeing Hale in his tank anymore. 

I hope we get him too. I cant wait to have a dog again.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

So endevores at making chocolate pretzel pops aren't going as well as I thought they would lol. I decided to use pink and green for the details and dark chocolate for the main thing. Well it turns out im not very good at putting the chocolate in the small spots lol. And it doesn't help that the Candy Melts aren't all that liquidy when melted so they don't pour and settle into the shape well. 

Ill take some picks later once im all done.

I think today what I have left to do is, finish making the pretzel pop things, then clean my tanks.
And I have to get Hales old tank ready so I can move Kestrel into there. If we didn't have people coming I would give it a few days first but it will be better to have the QT tank out of the way especially since nothing will be in it and Hales tank is planted so I cant really take it apart and put it some were, plus it looks nicer .
Sigh I feel bad for already putting another fish in his tank :-(


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Well I feel like ive kind of just had a bad day. I felt really sick this morning (I fell better now).
Hale passed.
And when I tried to help set up the tables for tomorrows shower, my parents completely ignored me. I had a couple ideas on how to fit the tables and chairs in but they acted like I was being insistent and just did it how they wanted. 
I can tell this is how tomorrow is going to go when we decorate. For me I love decorating for parties and stuff, rather I love throughing them even though I don't really have many if at all. But when I try to do something with my parents or siblings that involves decorating (or anything) its always they know best and I get no imput.
Anyways sorry for the vent, I just feel like im in a bad mood.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Todays going to be a long day.. I already got snapped at for asking a simple question apparently "its not time to ask questions". And my mom's friend is trying to baby me and if I try to help decorate all they'll say is that im in the way.

Anyways as for fish stuff every one is doing well. I did a water change on the 50 and 40 and the 2 gallon. Ill do the 10 gallons tomorrow.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Sorry for all the complany unhappy stuff, just hasn't been the best week.

Anyways, every one seems to be doing well in the fish world. My goldfish are being glutons as usual lol. And as far as I know every one is healthy and doing well.

Something im looking forward to for the rest of this week is caring for my friends cats. Although only one comes out since the other one is shy, but she's really sweet and loves boxes. 

Oh and weve also decided to not get the dog we were looking at (Fabian). More so because he's in texas and if it didn't work out and he didn't click with us it wouldn't be fare to ship him all they way back. So now its back to looking, hopefully I can find one that's in my state that really catches my eye, im really looking forward to having a dog in my life again.


Ill try to get some new pictures of my fish up soon since I haven't taken any in awhile.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Today was just filled with bad luck lol
It rained all day without really any breaks. I had to take care of my friends cats but I wanted to wait and see if the rain would let up before I left. Unfortunetly it didn't and the latter it got the worse it got. Around 3:00 it started to pour and didn't let up. Eventually I gave up trying to wait it out and decided to leave around 4:00, it was still pouring but it wasn't bad... or so I thought.
Not even two minutes into the 15'ish minute drive it started to downpour and lowered visibility to 5-10% at some points I could barley even see the road. But luckily I made it in one piece to my friends house. Unfortunetly the rain still wasn't showing signs of stopping so I ended up getting pretty wet running from my car to her house then back again when I was done. 
Luckily when I started to drive home the rain was beginning to let up and the road was a lot more visable.... Then the lighting and thunder came. The first time freaked me out a bit because the flash of lighting was so close that I had to blink from the brightness and the thunder that followed sounded like it was next to me. Thankfully there wasn't a tun of thunder and lighting on the way home but enough to make me want to get home faster. So that was my first experience of driving in a down pour and in thunder and lighting.
Then when I got home my mom informed me that we had lost power. So I was a bit nervouse about my heated tanks since the temp was 61 out side and the tank temps were going to drop. A few hours later we decided to go to bed for lack of anything to do. Then finally around 9:00 we could hear the trucks, so they were finally working on the power. And eventually around 10:00 we finally got power back. 
Sigh its been a long day lol

Oh and on a sad note Kestrel passed away today  SIP Kestrel.


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

Goodness gracious. What a bad week.  SIP Kestrel...


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Thanks Hrutan, im just happy Kestrel isn't in pain any more 

And ya lol it was just on of those long bad weeks. But this week is definitely better, especially because I get the house to my self for most of the day  gota love summer vacation.


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

House...to...yourself...? What is this strange phenomenon?

Hey, you know...at the end of every bad day is a new beginning. New chances, new opportunities...and no matter how much it seems like a bad day lasts forever, time just keeps on going, and wipes the slate clean.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Having the house to your self is part of The Twilight Zone phenomenon 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRb88V8L8us


Thank you for the second part,


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Todays been kind of weird. I disinfected Hales old tank just in case and its really weird not having a tank there any more. Let alone not having a friendly fishy face to see every time I turn around. 
And as weird as it will be not having Hale in that tank any more, I think it would be nice to give another petco or petsmart betta a new home.
Unfortunettly my mother wasn't to pleased about the fact that I wanted another fish. As expected she got mad and said im not buying you any more fish, its either a fish or a dog. Then she started complaining that every one always says/gets what they want and no body ever cares about her..... 
I was also told because my two 10 gallons have a lot of algea due to to much sunlight, there discusting. And my 3 bettas in my divided 10 gallon don't have any room so I should take one from that tank and put it in Hales 2 gallon..... All 3 fish have around 3.333 ish gallons each give or take which is more then the 2 gallon. Besides its only a small tank and a small fish that's not costing $100.
Anyways that was my little rant.

Oh and I managed to have a brain fart today. I decided I wanted to drive my moms car to take care of my friends cats just for something different instead of taking my car. So I decided not to take my house key because my mom has a house key on her car key ring. So I drive there then I realize that I put the keys to get into my friends house on my house keys which I left at home... So I had to drive back home get the keys and drive back lol


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

Parents. :roll: Someday, you'll be able to move out.

As for the house key thing? Yeah, I've done that.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

I like your new profile pic Hrutan! its really pretty.


Haha isn't memory fun 
Did you have to drive all the way back to get it?


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

Thanks! litelboyblu made it on this thread. He's been making a lot of pretty avatars.

And yes, I did. I was going to my (lol) step grandmother in-law's house to feed her cats while she was on vacation, and forgot that I'd put her keys on my dresser.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Well today sucked, i got into a really bad fight with my mom. And acording to her im banned from fish period. Suddenly after a year of having tanks and getting new ones shes decided shes sick of fish and thinks getting a dog makes up for it. Oh and she also told me that i only care about what i want and that its her house and everything in it should be what she wants even if i pay for it. I love having my fish as much as i love having a dog. Both are verry important to me, and a this point because of all the crap she gives me about animals i almost dont want to get a dog any more.

So ya....

Im planing on doing a photo shoot of my fishes tovday. Sorry for the long delay in photos/updates.


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## Sabina88 (Aug 24, 2013)

Well.... I haven't been on in awhile lol. 
We recently got our new dog, a 5 month old Australian shepherd. Whom I named Sawyer. He's undersocialized so new people and loud noises make him nerveous and he tends to bark and or growl. So that's been a bit stressful working with him. That and trying to find a good rutine of sorts I guess, to take care of Sawyer and take care of my fish and do water changes. But im slowly getting back into it, and things have calmed down some.

I think that's about it for new stuff. Im going to try to take some new pics. Hopefully I don't keep procrastinating or keep forgetting this time lol

Oh I almost forgot, I did loose one fish, Levy . But luckily he was the only one fingers crossed.


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