# Sabrinah's Betta Journal



## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

So I decided to start a journal about my fish and whatever other interesting things go on. The first time I did this I was nearly done and my browser window closed, and I almost gave up on starting one. But alas, here we go again. 

As of yesterday I have 2 bettas, 6 pygmy cories, 3 shrimp, and 1 nerite snail. Spitfire is in a planted 10 gallon community tank with al l the other critters, while Spike (formerly Turbo) is in a fairly bare 5 gallon. 

About Spitfire:
I got Spitfire in December of 2014. He has been my first attempt at fish keeping (besides the goldfish many of us unknowingly torture as children) and I’ve learned a lot from my little buddy. We’ve gone through a lot together. He is a double veil tale, but his anal fin looks a bit like a crown tail. A few months after I got him he got stuck in a decoration I didn’t know he could even get in to begin with. I don’t know how long he was in there for, but when I got home I had to smack the bottom of the decoration against a rock in his tank a couple times to get him to pop out. He was nearly completely white and had lost most of his fins, and appeared to have done a pretty good job descaling himself. He had a nasty scrape on his head that has healed a different color than the rest of him. Once he was free he went belly up but was still breathing a little bit, so I spent an hour poking , pushing, and holding him until he could keep himself afloat and I could post on this amazing website to get help with his treatment. After a bit more poking and lifting he was stable enough for me to run to the store and grab some aquarium salt to give him baths with and add to his tank later. It was a long healing period, which was complicated by me having to move, but he pulled through. His fins have since grown out much longer, his color is a bit darker, and the ends of his fins are all curled because the place I’m living now has extremely hard water. 

Speaking of his color, it’s a bit special. His body was originally bright pink, then it was a purple with darker find, and now everything is lightening again. He started developing a purple band on his left side some number of months ago. It started as a dot and has grown quite large. Recently it has become black with some very iridescent/ metallic light coloring appearing underneath. The right side of his body is beginning to develop a purple spot at his fin line, pretty close to the same location his band in now. Some of the tips of his tail have also turned white and bright blue. Some number of months ago (around 6, maybe more) he started developing colored spots on his dorsal fin. They began as tiny white dots (making me think he had ich), then they turned extremely metallic green, and now they have grown into small yellow patches. Oddly enough, all his patches on his fins and such start on his left side before slowly developing on his right as well. The yellow patches are no longer starting as white or green, but rather as small yellow dots then growing suddenly, which gives me a countless number of velvet scares. The very iridescent gold is also developing along the bottom of his head again (more velvet scares), so he is a fairly interesting looking fish at the moment. Individual scales on his body are also changing color now, generally to a dark purple. Once again, they are only on the left side of his body. Maybe he has a marble gene?

About Spike:
I got Spike yesterday. All I was planning on buying from Petco was micro pellets for the pygmys, a master test kit, and the Gh and Kh liquid tests. Well, I didn’t end up getting the Gh and Kh tests. That money went towards Spike. Generally I avoid looking at bettas because of their deplorable conditions, but for some reason I felt the need to look. Eventually I found Spike, looking the most pitiful out of them all with fin rot and horribly red, inflamed gills. I wandered the rest of the store, but I had to go back and grab him before I left. He perked up very quickly after I put a drop of Prime in his cup while I got his tank ready. He’s in the old 5 gallon. I put a piece of filter foam from my established tank in the filter with some biomax, and a few pieces of anacharis and a java fern for him to hide around. He has no gravel to help with cleanliness, and the only thing I could give him in terms of decorations was an old purple flowery hut thing, a couple rocks, and a betta leaf that always falls down. But hey, warmth, and filtration are worth a boring tank, right? 

Today 3/17:
Spitfire thinks he’s a cory. He spends a lot of him hanging with them in the back corner and forages for any food they missed. He’s always liked to play around in all the plants or sit on them at the surface, but now he pretty much lives in the plants. Weird fish. He even goes to the bottom of the tank at dinner time to steal the pygmy’s food instead of coming up to the top like he used to. The pygmys will be getting fed after lights out now so he stops being such a pig. 

Spike is getting used to seeing his reflection in the tank. He’s been spending a lot of time chasing himself, but I think he’s starting to calm down. His colors are starting to show through. The top of his body, along his fin line, is showing blue as are a few strips of fin. The fin rot is looking a lot better already. The black line along his fins isn’t looking as harsh as it was, so it’s not as noticeable unless you look closely. The cup said he’s a butterfly but that’s about all I know. He looked like he could have a double tail but that could also just be the rot. We’ll just have to wait and see. I’m hoping to fatten this boy up with lots of frozen bloodworms, some frozen daphnia, and of course the betta pellets. 

By the way, how do you integrate pictures within the text? Attaching via the paper clip puts them all together at the end.


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## Carrot Nose (Dec 23, 2015)

Hmm, one of my goldfish got stuck twice in décor. The dorsal fin was abraded (but healed) and one side of his tail is permanently bent upwards. I remember the time we saw him inside the little barrel - we were thinking "how cute!" cuz his head was sticking out and his mouth was opening and closing. Then we realized, crap he's stuck! It's hard to imagine now that he was ever small enough to fit inside that barrel. He's gotten big. I'm glad your fish recovered too, it's surprising what they can fit into (one way, anyways).


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Time for an update! 3/18

Spike is doing great. He's always on the move and he eats like a pig. He now comes to the front of the tank to say hi when I come up to him, or he'll watch me do homework and stuff on the bed (the tanks are on either side of my bed). The black/gray on his fins is darkening, but the tiny hint of red doesn't seem to be doing anything yet. His face is getting more white and iridescent. I have yet to see him flare, but maybe he's too young or too sick? 

Today was the first water change on my 10 gallon with the pygmy cories in there. I was terrified I was going to suck one up, but all went well. The shrimp count is down from 3 to 2. I found my red rili shrimp dead on the underside of the largest moss ball. It appeared that his tail had gotten stuck under it. RIP little buddy. I promise to get a big group of red rilis someday and check under the moss balls multiple times a day for any trapped ones. You will be missed.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Every time I want to post a picture I have to crop it to make it post in the right direction, otherwise the picture shows up sideways. It's quite annoying because it distorts the picture a little bit. Oh well. Being able to post pictures of Spike's recovery here is so much better than keeping a folder on my laptop of them! On my computer the pictures are often not in the right order for some reason.

3/20
Spike is starting to get a hint of orange in his fins. It's quite interesting looking at the moment.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Well. This has been a fun week. On the bright side, I got A's on my Chemistry and Physics exams. Woot woot! On the downside Spitfire may have parasites. This ought to be fun. Treatment will be a large water change before my flight tomorrow with special attention towards cleaning the sand, API General Cure, and Epsom salt. Hopefully my shrimp and plants don't die. The only option is to put the shrimp in with Spike, but that tank is pretty bare and I don't know how much fight the little guy has in him. 

Speaking of Spike, he's doing great. His tail is black and grey with some of the translucent areas turning white. He's getting some dark blue patches and the red/orange is very slowly intensifying. So far he seems to be perfectly healthy now and should make a full recovery. I'm too lazy to post a picture, which I will be kicking myself for later when I come back to this to look at his progress. 

I ordered Osmocote Plus and gel caps off Amazon earlier this week. Hopefully it will be here when I get back and I can test it out after Spitfire is all healed up and treated. I'm expecting large, luscious plants.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

4/3
The only one doing well is Spike. He's becoming quite beautiful. It's for sure that he's a double tail. 

Spitfire is still massively bloated. I wouldn't be surprised if his stomach burst open. And he has one blue eye now. It's bizarre. I'm going to clean up the tank, do a water change, add more epsom salt, and fast him for however long it takes. 

Either the General Cure or epsom salt made the anacharis melt, so the tank is a mess. It also appears that the shrimp have died, but I'm not positive.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Spike is becoming quite pretty. Turns out he's not a piebald. Spitfire most definitely has dropsy. I gave him his first kanaplex treatment today, so hopefully it works. 

Using Osmocote plus as a fertilizer is going great. Because of all the Epsom salt I do have a ton of algae on the glass and some hair algae on my vals, most of which died during the Epsom salt/General Cure treatment. I think it's a combination of the Osmocote and the Epsom salt that's making my Amazon sword grow so fast. It's given me 4 leaves in a week.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Whelp I forgot about this thing. Recap time!

Spitfire does not have dropsy. Who the heck knows what's wrong with him. He can hardly swim to save his life and any physical activity seems to exhaust him. His bloat has gone down and his eye is almost completely healed. He's been ill for about 3 months now but he's still fighting. I'm pretty sure his will to live stems entirely from his love of food. He would flop across the Sahara for a bloodworm. I'm surprised he's still alive honestly. I wish he could swim around because he would love hunting the gammarus shrimp that have magically appeared in the tank. As long as the shrimp continue to eat fish poop and stay small they shall be allowed to stay. 

Spike is a very pretty betta. I'm not much a fan of red, but he pulls it off quite nicely. He still has a few small patches of cello in his fins but they're filling in with red slowly but surely. He has a touch of metallic blue on his body that's quite difficult to see. I recently got around to redoing his tank. Yay! I ordered a glass lid from Drs. Foster and Smith, and a Finnex Planted+ clip on light from Amazon. Let me just say that getting that plastic part on the lid was a b***h. I tried snapping it on but that was a no go. Then I tried sliding it on, and again it didn't work. I ended up sitting on the bathroom floor holding my hair dryer against the plastic while I shoved it against my stomach sliding it on. I gave myself a cut but hey, I got it on! I had to push so hard that one of the glass panels slid out of position slightly and would no longer fit on the tank, so back to the bathroom I went to heat it up and slide it back. Then I nearly killed Spike when I dropped then entire lid in the tank. Whoops! Not my best moment. Have I mentioned I'm horribly clumsy?
I got spider wood from Neptune Aquatics for both tanks. I poured boiling water on Spike's piece and let it soak multiple times, yet the fungus situation was still crazy. It covered the walls so thick I couldn't see into the tank and many of the plants were getting choked out. The MTS have refused to come out of their shells and the nerite wouldn't even go in the water. The sappy stuff in the wood formed an extremely thick film on the surface of the water, so thick I'm not sure how Spike was able to breathe. After days of removing it every morning it seems to be lessening finally. Yesterday I took out the wood and gave it and the plants glued to it a scrub down. All the free plants got a very thorough rinse and will be staying in the 10 gallon until this fungus has run its course. I'm doing partial WC every two or three days to keep the tank livable. Today the fungus is very long and stringy. It easily stretches from the back of the tank to the front and attaches to the front glass. It's even caught on Spike's fins. If it causes him any damage or illness I'm going to be pissed. 

In non-fish related news, Chem and Physics did not continue on their good streak. They went gradually downhill throughout the semester. On the bright side, I'm done with general Chem and get to move on to OChem. On the down side, I have to have the same horrible Physics prof next semester. She truly is 50 shades of awful.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Pictures of the fishies are going to have to come from the phone because I'm lazy. 

I can't believe I haven't mentioned my fur babies! Not that I have any interesting things I have to keep track of regarding them... 

I have a pretty kitty named Cookie. She turned 13 last month. I've had her forever. I had her mother when I was little and the litter was delivered under my bed in the middle of the night. It was quite an event! She had to have quite a few teeth removed about a year ago. It had been a long time since she'd been to the vet (my parents don't believe in taking cats to the vet aside from kitten vaccinations and getting fixed) but once I moved out and was finally settled I decided she needed to go. She also had (and still has) extremely enlarged lymph nodes or salivary glands (the vets aren't quite sure which) along her jaw. They went down slightly after the rotting teeth were removed but have since returned, although it's always worse on one side than the other. I think I'm going to try to get her back in to the vet to have her mouth checked out again just in case there's any teeth they missed that are causing the enlargement. 

I have a dog named Beast. He's a black lab/chihuahua/min pin/random other stuff mix. I did not choose his name. He came with it and my parents and I couldn't agree on a new name so I stuck with Beast. He was far from planned. I was visiting my mom here in Cali one summer and her boyfriend's family's dog had recently had her second litter of puppies. She's an old dog, chihuahua/min pin mix or something, and shouldn't be having any litters. The father was the lab. I'm not sure how the mother survived the mating. She'll never have to worry about having another litter again though because the lab ran away for the final time. Wherever he ended up is better than living with that family. They don't care about their animals at all. They lock them outside, only give them food and water when they remember, never clean up the poop, and let the children abuse the dogs for entertainment. But anyways, back on track. I went over to see the new puppies and saw a medium sized black dog jumping on the back door. I had no idea who he was or why he was there. Turns out he was the only one they couldn't get rid of from the first litter. The poor boy was desperate for attention. I went out in the back with my mom and was appalled. The backyard was covered in feces. I tried to pet the black dog but he was petrified. If I moved too fast he ran to a corner, cowering, and peed himself. Eventually he let me pet him and he crawled into my lap, whining, thankful for the attention. I learned his name was Beast. I came back the next day to see him and had my mom record him to send to my parents in Nevada. One of the children (not actually a child, an adult in his 20's) admitted, entirely unashamed, that he beat Beast to make him listen and train him. I knew I had to get the poor boy out of there. My dad had been wanting a dog, but he wanted a puppy, and definitely not one he'd never met. Eventually they said I could keep him if I met conditions they thought were completely impossible (my mom was dirt poor): give him 3 flea baths, get him his first round of shots, and get him to Nevada. Thanks to my mom's boyfriend (who is an overall awful person with random hints of kindness) and my brother, Beast got to Nevada 3 days before I was due to fly home. It was a truly horrible start and for months I severely regretted it. He had never been in a house before, never received the amount of love he was getting, wasn't good with my cat because my parents didn't introduce them properly, and absolutely refused to go in the backyard for fear of being locked out. The dog seemed untrainable and untameable. He was absolutely psycho, tearing everything apart, peeing on everything, and never sleeping. There was many times I wanted to rehome him but I didn't want to give up on him. My parents nearly got rid of him themselves when he tore up the carpet. Slowly but steadily I tamed the Beast and made him in to quite a good dog. He's still got more energy than the Energizer Bunny, but he's calmed down and we've learned how to work together. He didn't learn to coexist with my cat until I moved out (my parents didn't help with their situation. If anything they sabotaged it). He still has separation anxiety and is extremely reactive and aggressive towards dogs but I hope some day we can work through those. He's an excellent guard dog (especially because no one expects his cuteness to have a bark, much less a bite to back it up) and would gladly take a hand off any stranger that came in the house uninvited. I'm glad I never gave up on him and can't imagine what life would be like without him.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Spike is a drama queen. Even the slightest change to his tank freaks him out. I added salvinia minima in his tank last night and he rewarded me with a bitten tail. 
I don't think there's anything left I can do for Spitfire. I ordered clove oil and will be euthanizing him when it arrives. I'm pretty sure I'm going to bawl like a baby for at least a week. 
I don't think Spike can be moved in to Spitfire's tank when the time comes. Spike is quite aggressive and doesn't seem suitable for community life. So what will I do with the 10 gallon? It will only have 5 pygmy corydoras, MTS, and gammarus shrimp once all is said and done. Do I get another betta or do I venture into another species? If I do get another betta, where do I get it from? I would really rather not support Petco or PetSmart, but if I had to choose one I would pick Petco. They take slightly better care of their bettas, carry higher quality products in their store, and respond faster when confronted with the suppliers they use. PetSmart prefers to ignore the outrage over the suppliers for as long as possible before claiming to make a change, and then continue to use the supplier in secret until caught. I can't afford to buy a betta from aquabid or ebay. I would love to buy one from someone on this sight if I found one that speaks to me. How could I determine if a betta is docile enough to be in a community tank? Since I'm not doing a sorority I do prefer males over females. So many questions. I have plenty of time to mourn and decide though. I won't be able to even consider a new betta until August because I'll be away all July on vacation and the relative caring for my fish would not appreciate a new one.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I am extremely stressed about putting Spitfire down. I can hardly sleep. I already feel awful even though I know it's the right thing to do. He barely tries to eat anymore, and for him that's saying something. I've been doing whatever I can to distract myself. It's not working very well. The clove oil should come Monday, which means big bloodworm dinner Monday night and goodbye on Tuesday. I am not looking forward to this. 

The fungus in Spike's tank seem to be diminishing. I generally have to do a WC every two days or I won't be able to see more than an inch into the tank. I believe the last WC on it was Wednesday and while it is cloudy I can see some of the back branches of the spider wood. I'll be doing a WC today anyway because I usually do them on weekends. The 10 gallon is not getting one this weekend as I don't want to disturb Spitfire too much in his final days. I will do a large one the day of his passing. 

I still can't get rid of the hair algae in the 10. I've added a ton of plants, started dosing excel, cut back on the lighting and the ferts, but the damn stuff is still growing everywhere. WTF?


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## Autumncrossing (May 2, 2016)

I loved reading the story about beast, good for you for giving him a good home! Is that picture of him and all the dog treats photoshopped or did he really let you put treats all over him? Lol!! 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

He really let me cover him in treats! I took pictures of each stage just in case he decided to jump up and eat them all lol


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

The photo of Beast with the dog treats is so funny! He's like, "Hooman, you done yet? I eat yet??" 

I'm glad you saved him and got your kitty to the vet. I hope your kitty feels even better after the next visit. Plus 13 years old? Wow!!

I'm sorry about Spitfire. He's such an interesting fish to get to know in this journal and beautiful and unique one to look at. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

My dog and I enjoy training, and since he's still not the greatest with the cats I try to make sure he has good self control and a strong "leave it". 

Spitfire is gone. I have him a huge bloodworm feast last night just in case the clove oil was delivered relatively early today. It was delivered at 11. Just to be safe he's still sitting in the container with the oil and will be for a good bit longer even though he's no longer breathing. It true Spitfire fashion he did not make it easy, nor did he behave in the way others said he would. 

I followed these directions from another forum, I can't remember the name at the moment.



> One of the best methods of euthanasia available to most aquarists is the clove oil method.
> Move the fish to a small tank (about a gallon of water will do for most fish, though some very large fish may need more).
> Take a pint jar and fill with water from this container.
> Add three drops of clove oil.
> ...


He did not simply drop off to sleep once I put in the first mixed up drops. He struggled to get to the surface for a few minutes until he collapsed against the side. From there he continued to get up but couldn't. When he appeared to have fallen asleep I moved my finger by his good eye and he started struggling again. It took an additional couple drops to make him actually fall asleep. Because of the weight of his abdomen he didn't go belly up obviously. I just had to watch his gills and his responses to my finger to judge when he was sleeping. Then I added the additional six drops. They seemed to wake him up and he tried to get up a couple more times before collapsing. His gill movement finally slowed and stopped. 

Once I stop crying I'm going to give his body a full inspection for anything I could have missed and take pictures just in case anyone else notices anything.

If you're squeamish or faint of heart skip over the next post. 

Later today I'll make another post of his last pictures that I took yesterday.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

*SIP Spitfire*

He's buried in one of my favorite plants. It's a begonia rex shadow king cool white. The tops of the leaves are a gorgeous shiny silver while the undersides of the leaves are a blood red. It's an extremely strong plant. It was attacked by powdery mildew that I couldn't get rid of and I had to cut the plant down to nothing but a few stems and a couple budding leaves. It's grown back thick and beautiful. I think it was a fitting plant to put him with. 

Once Spitfire was gone I gave the body a full inspection. It began losing color almost immediately, which was fairly disturbing. I didn't discover much but I'll include pictures just in case anyone else can see something I missed. Here's what I found:

-he was not a double tail, which is what he was marked as and appeared to be when I purchased him. He also appeared to have two separate lobes when looking just before the start of the tail, but apparently that was a trick. He was simply a very full veil tail. 
-he was exactly an inch and a half long
-his spirally thing faded away (for more on that look at his journeyhttp://www.bettafish.com/99-betta-fish-diseases-emergencies/674362-early-stages-dropsy.html )
-there was a red dot in the center of where his spiral was (his right side, the one with the smaller patch of purple and a blind eye), which makes me think it may have burst had he been given a couple more weeks. 
-whatever filled his abdomen was squishy. I was not strong enough to perform a necropsy to discover what it was
-his blind eye may have been a cataract, not cloudy. It had started with the area around his eye turning metallic blue, then the pupil would develop a similar blue speck at the top that grew until it covered the eye and he was unable to see
-his good eye had begun developing the cataract. It had a blue speck at the top of the pupil
-despite his constant heavy breathing his gills were healthy

I had around 300 pictures of him from the day I got him. After lots of deleting it's down to just under 150. 

I am not going to fight with the pictures to get them to post properly oriented, so they may be upside down and such.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Seeing the 10 gallon empty is the worst. Technically it's not really empty because it has the nerite, MTS, and corys, but it is without a betta and it's awful. Even though Spitfire wasn't exactly swimming around he was still in there. I've briefly entertained getting something besides a betta for that tank, like maybe a dwarf gourami, some kind of tetras, or some guppies, but I know I won't truly be happy with that. It would be easier though because I won't have to worry as much about the fish being capable of living with others. And if I get another type of fish I won't feel the need to buy an ill one and nurse it back to health. I don't know what I want to do. I want to save a betta, but I don't want the stress of not being able to heal it. I can't simply buy a healthy one. That's not who I am. I could never choose a healthy betta over one that needs help. What on earth am I going to do? I have over a month to decide but time moves fast. 

Spike has a red spot on his head. Technically he has an entire dark red patch on his head that's part of his coloring, but this is a light red spot. I'm resisting the urge to freak out over it. It doesn't look dangerous and could easily be color change or something. The anubias in his tank are melting like mad. I thought it was from supergluing them to the spider wood, but it's pretty much just the leaves melting and rotting, not the rhizomes. Maybe the light is too strong. If that's the case there should be some improvement as the salvinia grows in. If I had put the entire bag in I wouldn't have to wait for it to grow in to have full coverage, but I had to share the love with the 10 gal. The subwassertang, which is glued to the spiderwood and sitting on the bottom, looks disgusting. The fungus loved that stuff. I wanted the 5.5 to have a beach theme, and now I have it. It's a dirty, stinky beach with gross sea weed, rotting plants, and sketchy brown goop. Obviously that's not what I had in mind. 

Beast got a bath today. How do dogs manage to get so stinky? It's really not natural. If you ask him if he wants to take a bath he gets really excited and jumps in the bathtub, but once the process begins he changes his mind and doesn't like it anymore. I'm trying to get him used to using the shower head instead of just pouring water on him because it's much faster. He has a fear of hoses, and thus of showers. Since before I brought him home he's had a habit of jumping on the backdoor. His previous owners would spray him with the hose full blast as punishment for it. Any spraying water, even a squirt bottle, terrifies him now. Now that he's with me he only jumps on the backdoor when everyone leaves and he' out outside. It's very very rare that he's ever stuck out there if I'm home.

Cookie is actually cooperating with finding new foods for her. It's amazing. For the past year and a half she's been eating 4Health by Tractor Supply but I want to upgrade her. The food still has to be relatively cheap ($1 for 5 oz can) and pate, but I've found a good number that are within my range when they're on sale. So far she likes Chicken Soup for the Cat's Soul and the Soulistic pate and shreds. I also have some Natural Balance, Nutro Max Cat, and Whole Earth Farms for her to try. In the dry food department (she demands a bit of dry with her wet) I got Merrick LID Chicken, no potatoes, for her to try. I hope she likes them!

Anyways, here's some pictures of Spitfire on Sunday, Beast being cute, and Spike's head.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

I hope overtime the decision of whether or not you'd like to have a new betta, whether a rescue or not, comes easier. I can imagine that if I were in your shoes, I'd be so glad to have this journal to just talk it out and eventually come to a decision! 

I wonder if your Anubias succumbed to the same disease that mine did? I'll go find that thread once I reply to you. Someone explained really well what it was. 

Oooooo cat food! One of my favourite topics HAHA!!! What are you looking for specifically in wet food? I'm so obsessed with cat nutrition. If my cat would eat it, I'd feed raw but alas, I have no patience to transition him. Plus, Ming is getting so picky nowadays. 


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Here it is: http://www.bettafish.com/147-planted-betta-tanks/668538-anubias-transparent-bubble.html


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Putting things into words makes everything so much easier. Just being able to see it helps me get over things and make decisions. I looked at bettas on aquabid and eBay today and realized I would never be able to buy one online. Personality is just too important! Whether I get a sick fish or not (which I will probably do) I have to connect on some level with it. I can't just buy one because it's pretty, especially without ever meeting it. 

It seems to be only the leaves that are rotting. The rhizomes are still healthy, which is odd. Either the fungus or the glue is to blame. Or maybe the light being too strong. I have part of the same anubias in each tank. One glued to spider wood (5.5 gal) and the other tied (10 gal). The one in the 10 is still perfectly healthy and sadly entirely unattached. The glued one lost absolutely all its leaves. It was so gross I pulled it off the driftwood and rinsed it just to see if there was any solid plant left. I'm thinking the fungus is more to blame because I also glued Java fern and it's as healthy as can be. It seemed a little more resistant to the fungus for whatever reason. The Java fern leaves didn't get coated quite as thick. The anubias and subwassertang were absolutely covered in it, as was the rest of the tank. 

I'm pretty much looking for a healthy, inexpensive pate that my picky old lady will eat. Preferably with lower phosphorus levels, no grains/corn/wheat/soy, no potatoes, limited amounts of fish, no by-products or unidentified meats (I don't want to feed my cat euthanized pets). The problem is finding ones in the budget! 4Health was ok but once I moved Tractor Supply was no longer close by and it would be an hour or more to get to one. I have a good number of options as long as I shop online and during sales. Most will be ordered online because it's so much cheaper. Soulistic, which is made by Weruva, is definitely a winner. My aunt's cats eat Weruva. That stuff is expensive! I introduced her to chewy.com though so now she gets it cheaper. Soulistic can only be purchased from Petco and Drs Foster and Smith. When it's on sale the "pate & shreds" flavors are just under a dollar a can.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

That fungus is like what covered the entire dang tank! The problem with my anubias doesn't look like that though. The leaves start getting super dark in spots and floppy, then eventually the entire stem darkens until it's wilted and can be easily plucked off the rhizome.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Ahh right right! The anubias was in the fungus tank lol! That darn fungus is a pain... 
It's from the spiderwood, right? Is it a normal thing for spider wood or you don't know why? 

I sat for a few minutes thinking about what kinds of pate foods that would fit for Cookie. Most of the "good" foods I could think of are chunks or shredded and/or more than $1. Nature's Variety Instincts is always my first choice but it's definitely way too expensive and I only buy it if there's a sale. But it's got no mystery meats, wheat/corn/soy and is pate. It does have peas and carrots but I can usually pick those things out. Not sure about phosphorus though! Downside is, aside from the turkey flavour, they all have pork in it. Hounds and Gatos is another brand but I think it's over budget. I've only bought it when I travelled to the states because Canada doesn't sell it. 

I'm no help! XD 

I wonder if Canada sells Soulistic. I haven't seen it but I've heard of it. Might go hunting for that next time! 




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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

It's normal for any kind of wood to produce fungus once it's put in the tank. Sometimes it's there for a couple months before the fungus blooms. I know certain types of fish have low enough standards to eat it, but they're all too big for my tiny tanks. The fungus is so gross the MTS closed up shop. They refuse to come out of their shells. When ever I uncover some I move them into a clean bowl of water and all the live ones immediately come right out. They get put in the 10 until the fungus is completely over with. I think we've almost reached the end of it. 

My aunt feeds Instinct sometimes, the rabbit flavor, and she let my cat try it. Nope. She wouldn't touch it. I'm sure she would eat the other flavors if I could afford them. Hounds & Gatos is at the top of my wish list! Maybe some day I'll find an amazing sale and buy a ton. 

As long as there's a Petco I don't see why there wouldn't be Soulistic! I know most of their shreds have some kind of fish or another in with them, which many people aren't fond of.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Oh I see! That's good to know if that ever happens to me. I guess there was fungus on my driftwood but I didn't notice! That's probably what the slime is right? 

My cat is on and off with the rabbit flavour. At first, he loved it. Now, it depends on his mood and time of day. Lord... I mean, humans are just as finicky but it's much more difficult with a pet because they can't TELL you in advance before you open the can or bag that they don't like the food! Maybe dogs though. They're so smart  

He likes the chicken instincts though. But for how long... No one knows! 

Canada doesn't have Petco  Only PetSmart. And I know US PetSmart sells Sheba but Canada PetSmart doesn't. You'd think we'd sell it too since we're so close to each other... Blergh. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Yep the slime is fungus! Whatever you do DO NOT SNIFF IT. It's so disgusting. So unbelievably disgusting. 

No Petco??? That sucks! Petco seems to carry slightly higher quality stuff than PetSmart. At PetSmart, at least at the one here anyway, most of the fish food is tetra and Wardly. There's hardly any Omega One, sometimes there's Hikari sinking wafers. They even stopped carrying the API master kit (when they were clearing them out they were on sale for $13.99! I got 2!) Petco has Omega One, NLS, Ocean Nutrition, and a wide variety of Hikari along with all the lower quality foods. They also have both the freshwater and saltwater master kits. Even the pet food brands at Petco seem to be more of the better ones. And the Petco here takes better care of their bettas. At least they have a display so all the bettas can be seen. PetSmart just keeps them on rows on a shelf so the ones in the back are impossible to see. 

If dogs can tell us when they don't want a food I will never find out. My dog will eat anything and everything! Even if it's something gross, like a lemon, he'll try to eat it and make faces the entire time until I take it away.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

I've been to Petco once when on the hunt for Tiki cat food. I didn't look around AT ALL lol!! Just headed straight to the cat aisle. Of course, that was when I wasn't into fish keeping. I'll put Petco on my list of places to visit next time I go to the states (we live like an hour and a half from a Petco/border anyway haha) 

Yeah, I've seen Petco betta cups in YouTube videos and they seem much bigger than PetSmart cups which is good-ish! Thankfully, my PetSmart sells ok stuff. No Wardley brands or NLS or Hikari. There's omega one but none for bettas. Just Aqueon and Nat Geo from what I remember. Even the pet store I work at doesn't have the better brand food for bettas. >_> 

Oh man... I get so depressed looking at PetSmart bettas sometimes (even my store's bettas because the extra bettas have to go into cups/jars - the others go into the heated and divided wall tank). Although, the one near my house seems to have healthier bettas than the PetSmart near the mall. I wonder why there's such a difference. 

Not selling master test kits??? Wow... But what a deal! 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Have you ever heard of Pet Food Express? They carry only high quality foods, including Weruva, Hounds & Gatos, Tiki, Instinct, etc. They wouldn't be caught dead carrying Friskies or Facncy Feast and their stock regularly changes if a company makes an ingredient change they don't approve of. 

I've never seen one of the betta wall tanks in person. Are they nice? Is it more roomy? How many bettas does it hold? Sorry I'm curious!


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

WHOA!!!!!! Pet Food Express sounds like heaven!!! I wonder if any are near me??

Each betta fish are still in small about a gallon divided spaces but AT LEAST it's filtered and heated. We have 7 rows. One row holds 20 bettas: 10 spaces back to back. Each row is filtered on the end and the main system heats the water. I don't really know how it works, honestly LOL. I just know there's a power thing at the back where my manager adjusts the temperature. Then we throw in Java moss or moss balls in the each space. 

Once we put females in a sorority tank for the first time but found, of course, some were nipped at and became unattractive to customers so we didn't do that again ahha!!! Trial and error, I guess. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Oh and Pet Food Express has a buy 3 cans get the 4th free thing they do. 

That set up is still so much better than those pathetic tiny cups! At least the bettas aren't freezing to death and they won't forget what a plant looks like! 

This is what my anubias leaves are looking like btw


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Since I'll be leaving at the end of next week the pressure is on to get the 5.5 as fungus free as possible. I may have gotten a wee bit carried away today. I took out Spike and let him float in a container in the 10. I put the spider wood in a tub and wiped off as many of the plants and branches as possible, and pulled off some of the subwassertang. Two rotted anubias rhizomes had to be scraped off. For about half an hour I used a turkey baster to suck up the fungus clumps on and in the sand, but then I realized I had to scrape it off the sides of the tank. There was sooooooooo much of it. I siphoned out all but a gallon of water trying to get it all out! While I refilled the tank (planning on sucking out more gunk once there was enough water to do so) I remembered I had bought a BBS net to use when I was feeding live mosquito larvae. Turns out the net can catch even the tiniest pieces of fungus nastiness. 15 minutes of netting and stirring up the sand and the tank is clearer than it's been in a long time! The sand even looks almost white again! The water is still a bit cloudy, but I think that may be from the sand. I figured it would be safe to put in a few pieces of rotala, two tiny pieces of wisteria, and part of my red tiger lotus. I am in love with the red tiger lotus! I bought it decently sized still growing out of the bulb. An employee (they're actually quite knowledgeable) told me it looked like it would grow apart into two separate plants. It's actually growing apart into 3 separate plants, the largest of which is sending off a runner. That means 4 plants! Yay! It's not possible to ever have enough plants


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

*Pygmy Cory Egg!!!!*

Guess what I found today???? AN EGG!!!! If the gammarus shrimp eat it I swear I will KILL them. I hope there's a few more laying around. How awesome would it be to have itty bitty babies swimming around???


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I just found another one on the glass!!! My tank is pretty damn covered in nerite eggs that I haven't been removing because I didn't want to disturb Spitfire, and I noticed an egg on the front of the glass that wasn't as white as the others. So I looked in from the top of the tank to confirm and it's a perfectly circular opaque little Cory egg! That's TWO! I did threaten the shrimp. I told the one that was out that I would murder his entire family and take away his precious driftwood home if he dared touch the eggs. In reality I wouldn't murder him, I would just throw them in with Spike which is pretty much the same thing.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Well I found 3 eggs total. They appear to have hatched today but I haven't seen any fry. From what I've read the fry make sand look big so I guess I probably won't see them until I come back from vacation at the end of July. That is if any survive. I really hope they do! 

Since the vast majority of my anubias melted/rotted I was hoping to get a good amount of that and some java fern during the SNE tonight but so far there's hardly any. It's making me horribly grumpy. I did get two types of buce and some other stuff though. I keep refreshing the page ever 5 minutes waiting for someone to post what I want. I don't really want to get more anubias from Neptune Aquatics since it's pretty far away and the one I did get lost every damn leaf. Neptune also never has any decent java fern. I'll probably have to get anubias from ebay or something, but I was hoping to cut down on cost, and shipping doesn't exactly make that easy. Sigh.


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

Found my way over here ~ I read through Spitfire's last day and saw the images and I can't see anything either. It was probably all just internal but the way you described the blindness on him it sounded like the blindness that is genetic in betta that have the metallic gene. In which case the cataracts may have been unrelated to the illness and just an age thing. His resting place sounds beautiful. My mom keeps an angel wing begonia and those plants are amazing. Never seen it flower but the leaves are so pretty and huge. C: we have similar taste, I bury my fish in the lavender pot I planted to attract butterflies. 

I read through the journal and... 


sabrinah said:


> I ordered a glass lid from Drs. Foster and Smith, and a Finnex Planted+ clip on light from Amazon. Let me just say that getting that plastic part on the lid was a b***h.


I just want to say congratulations :welldone:!! Because my 10 gallon is currently sporting that glass lid with taped on cut up sandwich baggies to cover the back end because I didn't have the patience to put in the plastic lol.



sabrinah said:


> The anubias in his tank are melting like mad... as the salvinia grows in. If I had put the entire bag in I wouldn't have to wait for it to grow in to have full coverage, but I had to share the love with the 10 gal.


If the anubias was purchased in, say, the last 2-5 months or so, it might just be acclimating. I purchased emersed grown anubias before and it literally took 3 months and about 2 weeks for it to finally start acclimating and shedding its emersed leaves because they're such slow growers. It's taken 2 years for me to get my A. petite to grow to a size that I could get three-four clippings from it if I wanted to propagate. If this is the tank that's getting dosed with excel, that may be another thing. I don't think they like excel much either... Actually, coming back to this after reading your last two pages, it definitely looks like they're melting from acclimation.
Aw and if I'd known, I'd have sent more salvinia! I wasn't sure if I was being generous or just selfish dumping my overgrowth on you because the 10 gallon is right back to not giving my poor betta any more breathing holes x_x.

Also, all your pets are adorable :surprise:!! Beast is such a cutie! And congratulations on the cory eggs! My surviving rummy started breeding too about a week after I introduced them in to the 29, it's so exciting right?! I'm definitely not going to save the eggs because I don't have the time but I hope your pygmy fry survive to adulthood!!



mingking said:


> Each betta fish are still in small about a gallon divided spaces but AT LEAST it's filtered and heated. We have 7 rows. One row holds 20 bettas: 10 spaces back to back. Each row is filtered on the end and the main system heats the water. I don't really know how it works, honestly LOL. I just know there's a power thing at the back where my manager adjusts the temperature.


Normally pet stores and similar large scale operations utilize what saltwater setups typically have where you connect the main tank (or in this case, tanks) to a secondary tank, or sump, which contains the filtration and heating and then water is pumped back into the tank with the stock through the other end. It's one of the more common ways of filtering multiple tanks anyways. Quick tip if you ever want to do a hang on grow box: using a pump to bring in the water into the grow box and then letting the water overflow into the tank is a cheap and easy way of making a hydroponics system ^^~


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Long time no talk! It may be a little mean but another reason I chose to plant in the begonia is because they're toxic to animals so nothing would try to dig him up... The plant attracts bugs like mad though. I don't mind that much right now because birds decided to make a nest on the corner of the house and I'm all for the babies having enough food!

I'm sure some is just regular melting, but 3 or 4 rhizomes also turned to absolute mush. It was pretty nasty. The melting anubias is in the 5.5, which doesn't get any excel. I also have some anubias nana that I got from the little snail free bags at PetSmart in the 10, which has been getting excel, and it's doing wonderfully. If PetSmart didn't piss me off so much I would go buy a few more bags. I have some more plants coming that I bought during the SNE last night from JDAquatics. I got mermaid weed (I wanted the 5.5 to be ocean themed so how could I not put that in?), anubias nana petite, two varieties of buce, and something else that I can't quite remember. Oh! A banana plant! All of it is going in the 10 until after I get back from vacation. I also ordered golden anubias and narrow lead Java fern from eBay. The Java fern is coming from Malaysia, and after I purchased it I was told it's sent illegally and could be taken by customs. Lovely. Just fricken lovely. Grrrrr. 

I still haven't seen a single Pygmy fry so I don't think any are going to make it. Apparently the damn scuds like to eat their yoke sacs and leave the poor babies to starve to death. Regardless, I'll make sure the pygmys are fed daily instead of every other day just in case, and have the food ground up even smaller. I really do hope some survive.

Is it possibly for the rummy fry to survive without your help? I'm sure infusoria and other tiny critters could keep them fed for a while. I don't know about you but when I stare at my tanks for long enough I see all kinds of little things swimming and crawling around. I'm pretty sure the 5.5 has cyclops in it. 

I do think my pets are quite cute myself! All of July this will pretty much be a Beast journal since he'll be the only one with me. 

I may try that hydroponics thing.


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

^^ indeed :wave:! Been busy with work, they put me in extra training classes sheesh slave-drivers.

lol, I planted lettuce in my backyard because we have a lot of wild baby bunnies this year, more than usual. Unfortunately birds are not a common visitor though because we have so many squirrels!

Oh whoah, that doesn't sound like acclimation. Might be rhizome rot but usually that affects all things with rhizomes as far as I heard..?? Not sure. Have you tried Petco last time you were near it? I bought one package of anubias there and it's grown really nicely. Ooh, banana plants are adorable! I always consider getting one but then I stare at them and I end up not buying because I can't imagine where I'd place it in my tank lol, which is pretty anal of me but whatever... Let me know how the mermaid weed goes? I find it so pretty and I've been considering it for the 29 as a background but haven't done a lot of research on it except for basic requirements. 

Ah, I see. I wouldn't worry about food because chances are whatever you're feeding is still going to be too big unless you use like fry powder but either way, since your tank is already established there will be plenty of micro life to sustain them. The bigger problem it seems is the micro life will also be going after them ^^''. XD and I see them too. The little white spots and stuff. We had a chance to look at pond water under a microscope once and you'd be amazed how much life there was under the lens!! I mean, I knew it was a lot but not as much as I expected! My favorite is watching the detritus worms ... until the tetra or my betta also find them and then it just becomes the circle of life.

Ah and unfortunately rummy eggs are highly photosensitive and the 29 gallon isn't anywhere near planted enough for there to be enough shade to save them. I also can't do a blackout because there are 16 Crypts in there and I'd likely lose them all with a 4 day blackout :/. I'll have to wait until the left half of the tank is fully planted and the crypt grow in before there is even a chance of the eggs hatching. I'm covering the left with ferns and a single lily plant eventually, I've got a small pvc cave in there with fern plantlets from the 10 attached already but I won't be buying larger ferns for a while since my focus now is getting my tetra and cory shoal back up. So for now the cory have extra food ^^'.

XD That's fine with me, he's adorable and dogs are still my favorite (don't tell my fish !)~ He's such a lucky pup to have been rescued by you, it makes me so sad to hear stories about people who have no idea how to teach and understand animals so they just lose their patience and get violent. There are people in this world that should not have the right to be near another innocent animal.

I highly recommend it! Lettuce do great in hydroponics if you want edible.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Please post pictures of bunnies! Please! Pretty please with a cherry on top! 

I thought rhizome rot was the cause but I still have a few healthy, although leafless, anubias rhizomes and a couple small Java ferns doing fine. My Petco just recently started carrying packaged plants and the selection is tiny. I'll probably be going there once I get back to pick out a sick betta. I hope they have some anubias so I can pick one up to put in the hospital tank I'll float in the 10 for the new guy. I had to throw out the old container because I couldn't get the clove oil off it. I'll be more than happy to provide updates on the mermaid weed! I'm leaving on Saturday morning so hopefully it gets here before then. I'll ask my aunt to send me pictures of everything weekly. 

I found detritus worms in my tank for the first time. Freaked me out because it was swimming through the water and with everything going on with Spitfire my mind immediately jumped to parasite. 

I've been debating on getting fry food. I'm just worried about there not actually being any fry and it all just rotting on the bottom or encouraging the damn scud population to explode. The adult pygmys should be able to eat fry food too, right? If the Scuds keep reproducing this fast I'll be sending people scuds for free. They're great live food for just about everything. The adults are a bit big for Spike but a betta with a larger mouth or some giants shoiuld have no problem. The juveniles are just the right size to fit in Spike's mouth. Whenever I see one I take it out and feed it to him. 

Darn it sucks that the rummy babies won't make it. At least they'll be able to serve a purpose still. 

Some day I'll write about the poor girl who's taken Beast's place. It's truly awful. 

Hydroponic lettuce is now on my to do list. Is there a certain type that does best?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Ok I need to think through some things, which for me means write them out and re-read them until I make up my mind. 

Possible new additions to the 10. Ones that don't rule out a betta being added at some point in time. Part of me doesn't want another betta because the industry is so f***ed up. The other part has fallen in love with bettas and wants to help the poor things. Yet they can't be saved from stupid stores without supporting the stupid industry at the same time. Ugh. I'm angry. Rawr. 

*Habrosus Cory*
Pros: Cute as can be. Won't add to the bioload too much. Stay at the bottom and won't bother the betta. I don't have to buy any new food. Extra chance of babies!
Cons: They hide a lot. I may not be able to see them. The bottom of the tank may get crowded. 
*African Dwarf Frogs*
Pros: Adorable. Not a big impact on bioload. I have all the frozen food required but would buy some frog & tadpole pellets. 
Cons: Require special feeding. They can't see well enough to see the food coming and thus can starve. They may bite betta tails. Betta may bite frog eyes and toes. Salmonella risk. 
*Ember Tetra*
Pros: fast enough to stay away from betta. Easy to feed. Won't bite betta fins. Interesting to look at. 
Cons: betta may hate them. 
*Otos*
Pros: Cute. Little. Eat algae, which is fricken covering the leaves of my plants still. Algae wafers are easy to feed. 
Cons: Competing for algae with the nerite. May eat the meaty cory food which is bad for them. Corys may eat the algae wafers which aren't good for them. 
*Male Endler's Livebearers*
Pros: Gorgeous. Easy food requirements. No babies. Fast.
Cons: Flowing fins. Colorful. Possible betta chew toy. 
*Celestial Pearl Danio*
Pros: Pretty. Little. Shy. 
Cons: Possibly nippy. Possibly nipped. Shy. Prefer cooler water (we don't have air conditioning so tanks in the summer are 83-85). 
*Neon Tetras*
Pros: Classically cute. Easy to find. Faster than bettas. 
Cons: Nippy. Poorly bred. 

Making this list just made me more indecisive. And moths keep running into my window screen! It's very annoying. I'm pretty sure some are probably june bugs. I HATE june bugs. I hate them more than I hate spiders. That's a truly impressive amount of hatred. I'm pretty sure they can smell how much I hate them because they flock to this house like mad. When I come home from walking my dog just as it's getting dark, my lawn is the only one with a ton of june bugs flying around. Eek now I just feel like things are crawling on me. 

Why can't I be rich? I would totally buy healthy, well bred bettas online. There would be no moral dilemma if that was possible! What to do, what to do...


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

I attached a mama bunny and two of the babies I managed to snap a pic of last week . I'll try to get a clearer shot next time, they're always around!

Hmm, that is weird then, never heard an anubias do that before. Oh really?? My local Petco has tons of plants regularly. The older gentleman who works there is actually quite knowledgeable and most of the people there actually give decent advice and if it weren't for the fact that Petco as a whole is not very fish-friendly, it'd be my go to place for fish stuff. 



sabrinah said:


> I'll be more than happy to provide updates on the mermaid weed! I'm leaving on Saturday morning so hopefully it gets here before then. I'll ask my aunt to send me pictures of everything weekly.


Thank you ^^!! You don't have to do weekly updates, I don't want to be any kind of burden on you though!

I doubt the adults would eat significant amounts of the fry food, it's basically powder. XD your scud population sounds like it could feed an entire army of fish lol. I caught a few of them before in my local river, they're such cute little things but yeah, very hard to manage once they inhabit a tank ;~;! Be careful if you're feeding them into the tank with shrimp or if they're in the tank with shrimp because they'll eat vulnerable shrimp that just molted.

:3 yeah. Eventually I'll probably consider using a net or mop to save the eggs and hatch them outside of the main tank. That way I can also treat the eggs for fungus and make sure the fry don't become cory snacks ^^;.

._. I don't want to overstep my boundaries but why are they getting more dogs?! They're clearly not dog people..

I've only grown butter/bibb lettuce just because I hate lettuce in general (I find it distressing that it has no taste ..) and the only way I'll eat it is if I wrap spicy meat in it and that's that best kind to do that with. It's also the most expensive kind of lettuce so that helps too . But lettuce in general needs a lot of moisture and drying out of the soil will make it susceptible to disease so all lettuce would do well in hydroponics. Basil will grow fully in hydroponics too if you like that... XD I'm a big fan of herb gardens so feel free to ask more!

Also, about your ideas... Celestial Pearl Danios need lower temperatures but they live in shallow water and in the summer their natural habit heats the water up significantly so if you're not planning on keeping them in 80+ degree water constantly, it's quite alright to get them! You'll actually be simulating their natural environment!

I get june bugs in my room regularly too. I find the green ones so pretty but of course the only ones that grace me with their presence are the dull reddish brown kind. I wouldn't mind them too much if the pc/laptop/cell screen didn't attract them and prompt them to headbutt my forehead all the time, urgh. I've tossed out like 20 of them this month.

Edit: Also, I would be wary adding oto to a 10 gallon. They're very active fish and like to have a lot of horizontal space to swim and may get stressed in a 10. I personally think a tank with the length of a 20 long would be a better minimum size for the species.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Oh my goodness such cute bunnies! There used to be someone that lived on my aunt's street that would release bunnies every Spring. Apparently they didn't care to keep the males and females separated. Thankfully they moved before I moved in, or else I would hunt them down and yell at them. 

My Petco is more fish friendly than PetSmart. PetSmart has more variety of freshwater fish but they aren't well taken care of and they only carry low quality foods. And I had a very unpleasant experience regarding PetSmart and bettas. I posted it on Diary of a Petstore Bystander. 

Those people aren't animal people at all. It's quite a story, and I'll probably go into some back story, so I'll save that for when I'm bored on vacation. It'll be a looooonnnggg post. 

I love lettuce! I love most green things actually. Except bell pepper. That's nasty. In August I'll have to explore the hydroponics options. 

80+ is totally just a summer thing! I have zero control over it! The rest of the year the temp is whatever I want it to be. 

I have no shrimp in my tank besides the scuds. I tried shrimp, but then Spitfire got sick and they died when I treated the whole tank with general cure and Epsom salt. 

I have an extreme fear of bugs. If there's a moth or a June bug (we only have the brown ones) in a room with me I will lose it. I will cry and scream and swing pillows around while trying to spray it with hair spray. I. Hate. Bugs. Now imagine me trying to catch and pin ~70 insects for a class. It was not a pretty sight. When we were on a trail in the mountains trying to catch some a couple guys stopped their trek on their bicycles to catch and jar stuff for me. Apparently screaming while swinging a net around is a good way to get help. 

Otos are out of the running then!


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

It's been 3 days since the eggs hatched. The yolk sacs should be just about used up and they should start free swimming if there is any fry. I bought Hikari First Bites just in case. Turns out the adult pygmys will eat the fry food, and it seems to give them a burst of energy. I'll make sure a little fry food is mixed in with each feeding. The other tiny miscellaneous critters in the tank also seemed to enjoy the fry food. They all came out and snagged up a couple pieces. I looked at pictures of how tiny cory fry can be and there's definitely no way I'll be seeing them any time soon! 

The fungus fight isn't quite over yet. The white snot stage is over, but now there's brown nastiness that covers everything in small chunks, including the plants. My oldest piece of filter foam is black. The giant newer chunk of foam I added is completely brown. The biomax is completely brown. It's not a good look. If you ever want to kill snails without actively smushing them, this fungus is the way to go. They'll starve themselves to death. My cat doesn't think the fungus tastes as gross as the snails do. She's taken to drinking from the filter. The tank is covered and the main portion of the filter is covered, but the output that the water flows down shows. She has a bowl but she suddenly decided she wants her water flowing and fish flavored. I guess I'll be investing in a cat water fountain!

I'm going to have a go at stimulating the pygmys to spawn. Apparently doing a water change with water up to 10 degrees cooler than the tank water simulates rain and makes them spawn. Can you tell I want babies? I don't want to actively breed, but I want a larger shoal. 

My aquabid order from JDAquatics should be arriving tomorrow! Knowing my mailmen it probably won't be delivered until Thursday. I'll post pictures of the packaging just in case anyone is curious.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I FOUND TWO MORE EGGS TODAY!!! 

The scud numbers are KILLING me. And there's a ton of adults which are too big to feed to Spike. He can't fit them in his mouth! I'm definitely getting some kind of carnivorous fish or another to eat these damn things. Maybe a king or giant betta is in my future. Bigger betta does mean bigger mouth, right?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

*Whoops...*

I tried feeding Spike an ant today. He was confused and stared at it, then swam away. After releasing the any back outside I went hunting in the 10 for a small scud. They're seriously fast. While trying to get one, I knocked down an egg I wasn't aware of. If it's on the ground it'll surely get eaten, so I improvised. I dug out a clean filter media bag and put the egg in it, then used a blunt toothpick to keep the base of the bag held open. It's now tied shut and hanging in the front of my tank. 

Saturday morning, hatched or not, I have to dump the contents of the bag back in the tank. I would love to see a fry so I know what they look like. 

On a lighter note my cat has decided I look at my tank too much. If I try to look at it at night she sits in front of it.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I got the plants!!! Is it possible to have a plant addiction? I just keep thinking "there's a bare spot. I could plant something there."

I have some pictures of the packaging and the plants. I'll update with how they grow in of course. 

The other pictures will be my makeshift breeders net the egg is in for now and some cute ones I got of Spike today. I also found one of my pygmys with a piece of sand stuck in his mouth or whisker, I couldn't quite tell. 

Shoot I just realized I didn't take pictures of the banana plant or anubias nana petite. I was so excited about the buce and mermaid weed that I forgot! The banana plant has 3 leaves and only one banana fell off during shipping. The anubias is fabulous of course. The mermaid weed has hints of red on the edges of the bottom leaves. I'm not sure if that will show in the pictures. I read that buce likes good water flow so I tied it to the spiderwood in the 10 that's fairly high and close to the filter. I have high hopes for these plants!

I can't get the pictures to post straight! ugh!


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

Wait, are you breeding Pygmies?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I'm not intentionally breeding them. They just decided one day they were feeling a little frisky and have yet to satiate their appetites. I may start breeding them in August if no fry survive this event. I want a bigger shoal and my mom, who has horrible depression, is interested in a tank with them if they make enough babies.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I get up this morning and go check my makeshift net like every morning, and guess what? IT'S EMPTY. No egg, no fry, nada. It didn't have a hole, it wasn't open, so wtf? The mesh is extremely fine so I highly doubt anything got in or out. Later I'm going to dig up a white plate or bowl or something to turn the bag out into and hopefully something will fall from some little nook or cranny. I am very unhappy. Like Hitler failing the entrance exams for art school level unhappy. I didn't know I wanted baby pygmys until they started laying eggs! I wanted more of them but I figured I would just buy them next time I ended up at Neptune Aquatics since they're always in stock. Can I cry now? I want to cry. In August I think I might get myself a breeders net and give some simple breeding a go. At least making sure the eggs have the chance to hatch before the babies are sent off to fend for themselves. 

I ordered golden anubias from eBay that got there yesterday. I'm pleasantly surprised because it was predicted to arrive on Tuesday next week. It's quite nice. I like it. Now all that's left is the sketchy narrow leaf java fern from Malaysia. Cross your fingers, folks. Hopefully the fungus hell Spike is living in will be over when I'm back and I can spruce his tank up. So far no more anubias rhizomes have melted. The mermaid weed perked up nicely and the red on the bottom leaves seems to be growing. The banana plant is doing fine, the new leaves are uncurling. The buce is beautiful of course. I could see myself getting really in to buce if I could afford all the different varieties. Some people sell that stuff for crazy amounts of money! Mine from JDAquatics was $4.50, and I've seen other people sell pieces that look roughly the same size for double the price. Hopefully I'll remember to post pictures of the tanks tonight so I can track the progress of the new plants. 

Have I ever mentioned that Beast loves coffee? I do not give my dog coffee, he takes it whenever he has the chance. If I leave the room for 2 seconds I come back to him chugging my coffee. If I have Starbucks, he pops the lid, drinks it, then licks it clean. He really likes caramel frappuccinos. As someone who is extremely anal about what my dog eats it bothers me to no end when he snags something that's extremely unhealthy for him. He's yet to steal soda from anyone thankfully. The last thing that dog needs anything to make him burp or hiccup. The first time he ever got hiccups was pretty bad. He had them for a good 2 hours and he was freaking out, whining, pawing at his face, shoving his head in my lap. I couldn't help but laugh and he got back at me for it. He hiccuped so hard he threw up in my bedroom doorway. Twice. I never laugh when he hiccups now. Cleaning up dog puke is awful. 


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## Autumncrossing (May 2, 2016)

Lol there definitely is such a thing as plant addiction!!!! Golden Anubias are so pretty . Lol that's hilarious that beast loves coffee, my cat is the same way. She waits until my mom leaves the kitchen every morning and sneaks up on the counter to drink her cup. I keep telling her to stop leaving her coffee out, I think at this point the crazy cat is addicted  lol. It's supposed to be super toxic for them I don't know why they're attracted to the stuff!! Hope your little guys turn up somewhere, that's awful I wonder where they went!


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

My cat has a thing for pizza. It's odd because she never used to like human food but she's developed a taste for it in her old age. If you have pizza, she'll fight you for it. Animals seem to love everything they shouldn't eat! I'm trying to put off shaking the net out in a bowl because I'll be really upset if nothing turns up. How can an egg and a fry disappear from a bag? And I KNOW a fry was in that egg because you could see it change position.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Omg Beast is a hoot! The hiccup story is so funny, too! 

I hope you find your fry and egg. That's too bad. On the bright side, this is almost like finding nemo and everyone found each other so I hope your "story" ends the same way too


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

*Holy $&@!&@*

I FOUND IT!!!! I filled a small mason jar with tank water, turned the bet inside out, and shook. Then I put the jar on a towel, shined a flashlight in there, and stared. OMG IT'S SO TINY! I can't even think of anything to compare it to! I couldn't even get a picture of it! It was like the smallest white planarian you could ever find, minus the visible eyespots, trachea, and gastrovascular cavity. It was just the itty bitty white line swimming around. It's entirely impossible to ever find one of those in the tank. Completely and totally 110% impossible. OMG I'M SO EXCITED!!!! I did dump it in the tank because I don't really have a choice. If I saw one of those floating or swimming in the water I wouldn't think twice about it. It would just look like debris. 

I tried to get a picture of it but my phone is no match for its size. See that little white spec? That's it.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

For the next month this won't really be a betta journal since my fish are in another state. This will be more of a dog and life event journal. I apologize in advance for the number of rants I'll be going on!

The drive from Cali to Vegas was about 10 hours. My dad likes making stops and walking around a bit which is very important for Beast. We stopped at Casa de Fruta. Beast has seen peacocks before but he's never seen one walking around until now. We were walking down the railroad track to a shaded area and there was a peacock in front of us. He watched it intently as it went around rocks and under a trailer, and he tried lunging at it when it was walking away and turned to look at him. He then insisted on going to sniff where the peacock had walked but he was so freaked out. He got really low to the ground, sniffed a little bit at a rock, and then jumped back like the rock was going to attack him. When he went to sniff the tree the peacock had walked around he crept around it really slowly, staying low to the ground and trying to stretch himself as far forward as possible without moving his back legs, then he jumped back again. It was hilarious. 

Everyone loves Beast so much. He makes everyone smile. He's probably going to gain weight while we're here because it's too hot to play outside or take walks as long as we normally do, and everyone likes feeding him. In the mornings when my stepmom is making lunches she feeds him tons of fruits and veggies. Granted, they're healthy, but all that adds up. Beast really missed the stairs and his laser pointer. He's well aware of who controls the red dot and where it's kept. When he wants to play with it he'll either sit in front of the tray it's kept in or walk in circles in front of the stairs and stare at us. He doesn't even really chase the dot anymore, he just uses it as an excuses to run up and down the stairs. All you have to do is move it a tiny bit and he'll take off up and down the stairs. He only goes where he wants to go. If you shine it in the living room and he doesn't want to play in the living room he'll either run up and down the stairs or stare at you until you move it somewhere he wants to play. If he doesn't like how you're playing with it he'll stand there until you fix it. When he loses the light he looks at your hand and follow the direction the laser pointer is facing until he finds the light. 

My dad is giving me his car. It's an older Mitsubishi. I could have had it years ago but I HATE driving. I didn't get my license until I was 18 and I will do whatever possible to avoid driving. I need a car though so I can get a job or volunteer somewhere. All animal-related places are too far away to take the bus, and since I'm majoring in Zoology I need an animal related job. While I'm here I have to drive somewhere nearly everyday. Thankfully I don't have to drive with someone. I was so reluctant to get my license while I was living in Vegas because driving with my dad is awful. It's so stressful. Even my stepmom hates driving if my dad is in the car. I would drive with my stepmom but she gets too nervous. Yesterday I had to follow my dad down to an executive airport so he could return the rental car we used to drive here. Today I drove to the dogsupplies.com outlet store. I love that place. They're mainly online and only have two stores. I got Beast some chicken sticks, a peanut butter thing, a squeaky Kong ball, and maple bacon doggy ice cream mix. I'm excited for the ice cream! All you do is mix hot water with the powder and put it in the freezer for 5 hours. At some point this week I have to drive to the 99 cent store to get two cutting boards because my dad and I are going to make me a tofu press. He loves making stuff.

My body isn't used to the weather here anymore. My skin is dry, I'm getting bloody noses, and I'm sweating so much it should be illegal. By the time I leave I'll have sweat off 5 pounds! I helped my dad clean the backyard yesterday and it was miserable. It was over 110 degrees. The backyard is nothing but dirty and cement. I pulled weeds while he vacuumed up leaves with the shop vac. We don't even have a tree! The trees in other yards blow crap into the yard. The cement was stained in a few areas by the pollen of one tree. Every spring it gets these big long pollen clumps that fall into the yard. I sprayed bleach on the stained spot until my hand cramped. We got to play with my dad's new power washer. He got it so he could spray off the bottom of the car so I don't get too dirty when he teaches me how to work on the car. Like most guys, he didn't read the directions and couldn't get it to work right until I read them. Sigh. We thought the power washer would use a lot of water but it really doesn't. He sprayed off his shoes with it then sprayed me with it! I was expecting a hard stream of water but it was mist! It felt really nice. It uses more air than water. When my grandpa came out to smoke a cigarette I soaked him with it. He says it's war now. I ruined one of his cigarettes. I see getting hit with a water balloon in my future. 

I have pictures I'll post later. Probably tonight or tomorrow some time.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Picture time! Beast, the peacock, Cookie, the homemade tofu press, the new eggs, and the tanks. 

Feeding him the ice cream was anti climatic. He licked it and then swallowed the entire scoop in one bite. Pig. 

I need to come up with something to make my dad as a late father's day breakfast. Thoughts? I was thinking biscuits and gravy, peanut butter chocolate chip pancakes, or a tater tot breakfast pizza. Any other ideas?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I got an update from my aunt on all my animals. Cookie is lonely but not lonely enough to make friends with my aunt's male cat, Ricky (she has two cats). Ricky is a lovable boy and horribly stubborn. Cookie made it very clear she wants nothing to do with him, but he still sits in the doorway and stares at her or climbs up on my windowsill when the window is open. She doesn't like it very much. My aunt rescued Ricky a while ago. He was hit by a car and had to have his tail amputated and part of the bone in one of his back legs removed. His old owners couldn't ensure proper care, which included not allowing him to set foot outside ever again, so he was put up for adoption. My aunt found him and couldn't resist even though she wasn't looking for a new cat. He's lllooooonnnngggg and tall. He likes to be picked up under his arm pits so he can stretch. At full stretch I believe we measured him to be around 3 feet. 

Spike is Spike. He's fine. In the 10 gallon the snails are beginning to steal the corys food so their feeding spot is getting moved. The buce is starting to have a harder time but isn't dead or melting. The banana plant is getting some red or brown on it and I'm not sure what that means. I've never had a banana plant before.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

*Rain, rain, go away....*

I've only lived away from Las Vegas for two years and I've already forgotten just how sucky the weather can be. The day began sunny and hot as hell. Suddenly it got windy, then cloudy, then the entire contents of the ocean began pouring down. For a city with frequent flash floods, the houses aren't really built for flooding. As it does every July, our backyard began to flood. My grandpa and I had to dig a path down the side of the house so the water could drain under the fence and down the little incline. The water on that side is up to our ankles and another inch or two would risk water getting in the house. Rain like this means multiple major roads will be flooded. Sometimes the water only reaches half way up a tire, other times it's going up the door. My dad is an alarm technician so he drives from place to place aaaaallllll day. Even though he's familiar with this city and knows which roads flood it's still worrying. When everyone is stopped at an intersection because of the flooding he waits for someone to try driving through the water to see how deep it is before he does it himself. Sometimes people make it through, other times their cars stall. My stepmom should also be getting off work soon. She's not as good with the city as my dad. I love the rain but it can be seriously stressful sometimes. 

Turns out some parts of the valley also got hail. That would explain why it sounded like rocks were hitting the house.


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## Eduielil (Jun 29, 2016)

Your tank is simply gorgeous, sabrinah. I'm so jealous! You definitely have a knack for aquatic plants. I would love my tanks to look like yours do. And your fishy Spike is a real beauty. You've posted some great pics of him. I just adore his coloring. Love your dog too. I'm an insane dog lover, aren't they the absolute best?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

*Fireworks and dogs do not go together*

I know I mentioned vacation to visit my parents, but I don't know if I mentioned where. Las Vegas, Nevada. I lived in Vegas for 10 or 11 years and only moved away 2 years ago for college. Vegas likes to go big for things since it's a tourist destination. On the 4th, this is a very bad thing. Vegas likes fireworks. Starting a few days before July 1st people go a little coo-coo for cocopuffs with the fireworks. Starting at 7 pm-ish, maybe half an hour later, people start letting them off. It continues hardcore for about a week after the 4th before tapering off. As you can imagine, tonight sounds like a warzone. I s**t you not, you can smell the gunpowder in the air if you step outside your house. Casinos are shooting fireworks off their roofs, The Strip is having a display, and people are setting them off in their neighborhoods and in the countless near empty dirt lots. I happen to live in an area with large dirt lots on all sides that haven't been fully developed. The street in front of my neighborhood is long, straight, and without heavy traffic so people like setting things off there. 

Fireworks started around 6:30. My dog is terrified, just like every year. He paces, pants, drools, shakes cowers. I tried making make-shift earmuffs but they kept slipping off. He didn't try to shake them off or anything, his head is just damn small. He's a very tolerant boy so if mommy says he's wearing these weird things on his head he listens to me. Bribery may or may not be included. I also tried Quiet Moments calming chews plus melatonin, and geez that was a huge waste of money. They don't work worth anything. I've been giving the appropriate dose, 2 chews, to him every night about an hour before noise starts for the past couple days to get him used to it. He's had 8 tonight and there is absolutely NO calming effect. He's currently hiding in the coat closet that's situated in the laundry room under the stairs. I have calming doggy music playing on my phone, which is hooked up to my stepmom's mini portable speaker. I'm currently sitting on the laundry room floor to keep him company while he borders on a heart attack. I don't think I'll be sleeping tonight. As long as he's awake, I shall be too. If he falls asleep in the closet I'll sneak upstairs to grab a pillow and a blanket and sleep in the laundry room with him. Next year I probably won't be able to spend a month here visiting but I'm still going to try to find new ways to help him cope with the fireworks. I'm thinking a thundershirt, doggy earmuffs, and straight up melatonin. Maybe I'll try to soundproof his crate. There's a new prescription calming doggy med that inhibits norepinephrine release. It calmed 3/4 of dogs very well, but caused vomiting in 4.5%. And it's expensive. It's a gel that's administered on the inside of the cheek and soaks in in about half an hour. Each single dose is kept in a syringe, and each syringe is $30. It sounds like you're supposed to give additional doses every couple hours to keep the dog calm. 

In other news, I'm having withdrawls from my tanks and frequent nightmares about them deteriorating into mush. Two pretty beetles have been found in the backyard in the last two days. Yesterday my dad found one while he and I were cleaning the backyard (for the 3rd dang time this week) and it managed to wiggle itself under my dog's kitty pool. My grandpa found one today while my dad, stepmom, and I were at the outlets. He caught it in a pill container so I could look it up and tell him what type it is. I tried, and I failed. I don't know what it is. Oh well. Have any of you gotten legit road rage while walking through crowded places? I'm an introvert so I'm not much for crowds anyways, but add to that impatience, sore feet, general grouchiness, getting bumped into countless times, and having people suddenly stop or slow to a crawl in front of me and I was damn near ready to shove people out of my way. 

My dog just drank water! Yay! That's a huge thing because he rarely drinks while he stressed. I may have also put a little doggy ice cream in the water as an extra incentive to drink...I let him lick out of his ice cream container earlier but never got the chance to clean his face so he has dried ice cream on his nose. It's pretty cute. 

Sorry for rambling but I'm bbbooooorrrrreeeeeddddd and extremely tired. And my butt hurts from sitting on the dang tile. I should go get a pillow. And make myself some coffee. I have a few more hours before the fireworks begin to die down, and they'll continue on and off until the morning. I don't think I'll be getting sleep tonight, folks. Maybe I'll write about Beast's sister tonight. Or I'll rant about other personal things that I probably shouldn't write about. Or I'll pass out here on the floor and wake up in immense pain from the discomfort. At least the dog is laying on carpet. Maybe I can squeeze myself in the closet too.

Oh goodness I almost forgot pictures! I'm glad I didn't miss the editing period. Well, all that's changed in the last 10 minutes is a failed attempt to convince my dog to go outside and go potty and me acquiring a pillow for my aching tush. I hope you enjoy the pictures of my dog's favorite balls, his sleeping positions, his fashion statements, and the backyard beetles. Oh I also have to post my earmuff attempts, but those are on my phone and that's playing his doggy music. Tomorrow for those then. I'm still bored.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I'm still bored. My dog still hasn't come out of the closet (lol). Shocking right? So ya'll are going to suffer right along with me. 

You know what time it is now? FUN FACTS TIME!!!!!!
Disclaimer: These facts have been taken off a variety of slightly sketchy sights and I do not guarantee any truth to them. Except the first one. That one is true. Why won't it let me change the font size? I wanted the disclaimer super tiny. Grrrrrrrrrrr. 

"Put a Pillow on Your Fridge Day" is on May 29th. Yep, it's real. Go check yourself if you don't believe me. 

Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water. Some one please test this one out. Please? Pretty please? I dare you.

Billy goats urinate on their own heads to smell more attractive to females. Can someone please explain to me how this works? Do they just stick their head in between their legs and have a go at it?

During your lifetime you will produce enough saliva to fill two swimming pools. You know what you could do with that much saliva? Boil it. 

An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it. Part of me wants to call BS on this one, but the other part of me has seen pictures of some crazy tiny baby deer. Maybe they ought to specify the eagle species. 

If you consistently fart for 6 years and 9 months enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb. Also, you will have no friends. 

An average person's yearly fast food intake will contain 12 pubic hairs. Just think about that for a second. Think about how those hairs could get into your food. Now never eat fast food again. I just saved your waistline. You're welcome. 

You cannot snore and dream at the same time. Really? I think we need to get into the science of this one. I also think laundry rooms should be equipped with ceiling fans because it is HOT in here. Very basics about snoring and dreaming: Snoring=obstructive sleep apnea=reduced REM= no dreams. So. If you dream bunches of hardcore dreams, odds are you aren't snoring. Woot woot! Looks like I don't snore! 

My dog will come out of the closet if he smells chips. They're even healthy chips! Only 3 ingredients: potatoes, avocado oil, sea salt. 

A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it's born. Awwwww.

The mating ritual of flatworms is called "Penis Fencing." They try to stab eachother with their penises, and whoever gets stabbed loses and must face the hardships of childbirth. Also, if you show a video of this in high school Zoology or AP Biology courses, the male students will giggle like prepubescent girls because they've never gotten as much action as the flatworms and it makes them uncomfortable.

Hitler's mother considered abortion but the doctor persuaded her to keep the baby. More support for pro choice folks! 

Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will relieve the itching and swelling. Again, someone please try this. You will have my undying gratitude. 

Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an odd number of whiskers. Excuse me while I pull up a picture of only of my pygmys and count his whiskers. I counted 4. I'm skeptical on this one. 

Nearly three percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine. Who figured this out and may I thank them for doing so?

A crocodile can't poke it's tongue out. I find this one very sad.

I'm really unsure about what is considered inappropriate with fun facts on this forum. They are facts after all, so they should be ok, right? If you want to know what Kellogg Corn Flakes, Apes, and Ithyphallophobia have in common, I suppose you'll just have to ask. Or look up what that phobia is and make your own conclusion.


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## Autumncrossing (May 2, 2016)

Have you tried rescue remedy for your boy during fireworks? My shepherd is terrified of the fireworks too, he refuses to go outside and pee (which could be days as my neighbors think Fourth of July is a week long celebration lol) the past few years we've used rescue remedy and it's done the trick . Benedryl could also work, just check the dosing. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I've never heard of rescue remedy. How does it work? I'll try anything at this point. I highly doubt benedryl will work because when we got my dog neutered the vet gave us a couple high dose meds to knock his hyper butt out if he's in danger of tearing out his stitches (it actually got infected because of the type of suture they used and he had to get new stitches and I had to pin his but down and clean it 3 times a day. He was wearing the cone of shame for 2 months and he no joke took chunks out of the walls with it. It was horrid. I do not recommend it) and the pills didn't work. At all. Not even a little bit.


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## Autumncrossing (May 2, 2016)

Rescue remedy comes in a little dropper, we just drop it on a treat or a little piece of cheese and he eats it. It's all natural and holistic stuff . Benedryl is different than the typical knock out meds so it's still worth a shot. Oh poor baby . I'm trying to think of what else could work here. Maybe before the thing that bothers him occurs wear his butt out, take him for a huge run? Does he get bothered by thunderstorms too? 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I'll have to look into that stuff. 

It is entirely impossible to wear that dog out. He could be constantly running all day and then go on a bike rid and be sprinting his little butt off, and he'll still come home and grab a ball or want to run up and down the stairs chasing the laser pointer. He cannot be worn out. It's horrid. He's a lab/chihuahua/miniature pinscher mix with some other stuff in there, so to say he's high energy is a drastic understatement. 

He doesn't care about thunderstorms at all. He'll gladly go romp in the rain and get muddy.


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## Autumncrossing (May 2, 2016)

Haha I hear you!! Mine is tough to tire out too, he's finally getting older and slowing down a bit  I'm welcoming it lol. So strange that he enjoys thunderstorms but the fireworks scare him! I wonder what's going on in his head? 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

*The Story of Beast*

Hopefully I'll be able to finish this before my dad or stepmom comes home, but if not I'll post what I have and finish later tonight or tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I wrote some if not most of this in Beast's intro, but this is a more detailed version. 

Every summer I would spend a month visiting my mom. She lives with her boyfriend (complete and total ass, alcoholic, horrible person, abusive) who has a pretty horrible family. He has two sisters. One sister has 5 sons (one hers, two her husbands, two from both of them. I'll refer to them by numbers, 1 being the oldest son and 5 being the youngest. She kicked both of her husband's kids, numbers 1 and 3, out of the house when they were in high school and left them to be homeless). They have one little dog named Bella. She is presumed to be a chihuahua/min pin/other stuff mix. She followed son 3 home and wouldn't leave, so they kept her. She was never trained in any means and has many behavioral problems including fears and aggression. She's not even fully potty trained. My mom's boyfriend paid for some of her initial shots but she was never spayed. Son 4 acquired a male black lab puppy named Trigger. I'm not quite sure how. He promised to take care of it but (shockingly) didn't. I remember visiting one summer and the adorable little bundle of love ran into the living room and rushed to say hi to everyone. He was sweet and excited and wanted to be pet. Son 4 yelled at the puppy because he didn't want it in the house. That would require time and training so he preferred to lock it in the garage or back yard and leave it there. Trigger was never neutered. He grew into a large, tall dog with tons of energy that was never expended. He wasn't trained, exercised, or walked. Trigger and Bella spent most of their time living in the backyard with little to no interaction . Trigger would often jump the fence and take himself for a walk. 

Eventually Bella got pregnant. Shocking, I know. She gave birth successfully and the family managed to get rid (I say 'get rid' because they did not find homes for the puppies. They gave them to whoever would take them, regardless of the person or circumstances) of all puppies but one. 

I was visiting again in July of 2013. Bella had recently given birth to a second litter. Trigger had jumped the fence and ran away for good. A couple weeks before I was set to fly home we went to the sister's house to see the new puppies (I'll attach pictures). Three were black and one was brown. The brown one was the family's favorite. While looking at the puppies a sheet fell off the back door and I saw Bella with a larger, though still small, black dog. I asked who the black dog was and one of the sons said he was one they couldn't get rid of from the last litter. His name was Beast. I demanded to see him. 

Beast was a terrified, nervous dog. He stayed crouched low to the ground and if you moved too fast he would flinch and run. It took persuasion to get him to come up to me for some petting, but after that he slowly came out of his shell. His tail came out from between his legs a little bit and I fell in love with this little terrified dog. I must mention that the backyard was disgusting. There was feces everywhere. I had my mom record Beast's behavior that night. We came to visit as often as possible and eventually I was able to ask Son 1 about him. Son 1 said, without shame, that Beast was a stupid dog and he beat's him to make him listen. After talking to multiple sons I gathered that he was beaten, yelled at, whipped with sheets and towels, and sprayed with the hose very hard. I started sending videos of him to my dad and stepmom and told them all I could. Eventually, they said if I could get him his first round of shots, give him 3 flea baths, and get him to Vegas I could have him. I only had about a week, maybe a week and a half left so that gave me very little time. My mom has always been dirt poor so they didn't think it would happen. They gave me those conditions fully expecting them not to be met. They learned that was a mistake. Beast went on his first real walks, I took him to the lake and introduced him to water, geese, cars, and people. He had never seen any of these things before because his entire life consisted of the backyard. We guessed him to be about 10 months old. He got his first round of shots, he got three flea baths, and my oldest brother drove him to Vegas a few days before my flight home. 

Now I had a dog that was abused, terrified of pretty much everything, and had zero experience living in a house or being out in the world. Oh my god is was awful. I got in arguments with my parents before I even got home because my stepmom wanted to name him Bubba (didn't suit him at all) and that was the nickname of one of his abusers so I wasn't having it. Beast refused to go in the backyard. He was petrified of it. It took months to get him to go in the backyard by himself. I didn't get any sleep for a month because he didn't know he was supposed to be on our sleeping schedule. When everyone went to bed he went to town tearing up everything he could reach. He wouldn't stop unless someone was with him. On walks, he pulled like a freight train. 

Aaaaannnnnnndddddd someone's home so I'll finish this later. Ta-ta for now!


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Man, now I really know what you mean when you say you've dealt with unreasonable parents. I'm so happy you rescued Beast. Awaiting the rest!


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Ok this may be a three part series.

I forgot to mention something about Trigger. Because he had a lot of energy that was not being expended, he could be extremely rough. I've been told that when he and Beast "played" it was much more an attack. Remember, both boys were not neutered. Beast did not enjoy this "play" and was not comfortable with it nor did he enjoy it. Bella, his mother, could be equally as outright aggressive. I believe this contributes to many of the problems with dogs he has today. 

Let's see, where did I leave off. Oh! Walks. Walks were nightmares. I hated them. I had read up so much on how to train dogs, watched videos, picked my favorite trainers, and had absolutely everything planned, but none of it went that way. I had planned to begin training leash manners in the house and slowly progress to outside walks, but my parents thought that idea was stupid. My dad's idea of training was put a choke chain on the dog and let him choke himself. Eventually he'll learn that choking himself is bad and he'll walk nicely. For one, that's not how that **** works. For two, I was totally against a choke chain. Unable to adhere to my original plan, and with a harness on my absolutely psycho dog, I did my best to walk him twice a day. My knuckles bled. My hands were cut open by the leash. He lunged and barked at everything and everyone. Strollers, fire hydrants, stationary motorcycles, leaves, garbage cans, headlights, other animals. It was horrible. I was very quickly regretting bringing him home. I couldn't get a minute of peace because the damn dog was constantly running at 100 mph and tearing up everything. There was a certain spot on the wall he would repeatedly mark every night, even after he got neutered. It got so bad that my dad said screw it and tore out all the carpet downstairs. It solved the problem. Although when we got an area rug for the living room so it wouldn't be all concrete, Beast peed on that too right after we laid it down. Don't worry, that habit is gone now. 

I started to think it wasn't possible to train Beast and I wanted to give up. I couldn't train the way I wanted to because my parents had no intention of cooperating or helping or maintaining any boundaries. Much of the training I accomplished was quickly undone by them and he didn't get strict training until I moved out. Even now after a visit to Vegas I have to put him through bootcamp when we get back home because my parents don't give two shakes of a rat's a** about training or rules. Eventually I gave up and bought a choke chain from Walmart because the dog was going to legitimately break my hand when he was lunging. They only had one chain and it was big enough to be both a choke and a leash. 

aaaannnnnnddddd I'll have to continue again later. Damn it.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

How do choke chains work? 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

So this is pretty much going to be about both Beast's evolution and mine. We've learned a lot and come a long way. 

Choke chains are pretty simple. There are two ways they can be put on. When put on one way, they tighten when tension is put on the leash (the the more tension the tighter the chain, choking the dog is possible) and loosen when the tension is removed. When put on the other way, they tighten when tension is put on the leash and lock in that position, not loosening when the tension is removed. Chokes are made of various materials, including chains, chains with fabric woven through, nylon, and leather. 

The choke I bought was far from the correct size but it was all I could afford. I had worked through most of his reactivity and fear issues except for his reactivity to dogs, as well as taught him how to walk on a loose leash with the harness. The choke was only to lessen the strength of his lunging. Before I put it on him I researched how to use it. It was terrifying venturing into trainers and tools I had automatically dubbed cruel and horrendous. I practiced putting the chain on my wrist until I got it on the right side every time. It did lessen the lunging but it had it's own downside. He was no longer lunging hard enough to cut open my hands and cause me immense back and arm pain, but he began lunging in another way. I must mention that he has a skinny neck and head and can easily pull out of a flat buckle collar. He tried this with the choke chain too. When he would lunge he would try to get out of the chain. He lunged full force, jumped in the air, and jerked his neck around violently in an attempt to break free. It was terrifying. I truly believed he would break his neck and I was desperate to find a way to keep his feet on the ground. I still preferred all the "positive trainers" but using their methods didn't do jack. I don't have that type of dog. With my dog if you give him an inch he'll take a mile, and then another mile, and then another mile. I started truly learning about dog training. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the downright abusive. I learned about every training method, how every tool works (I probably should explain this. Everything used in dog training is simply a tool. A flat buckle collar, a choke, a prong collar, an electronic collar, a halti, a front hook harness. They're all tools with proper and improper uses. In the wrong hands a flat buckle collar can cause more injury than an electronic collar, and in the right hands a prong collar can be the gentlest training method there is), every point of view, the evolution of dog training, and the results of various training methods. As I cast off my preconceived notions and truly looked at things for what they are, I began to realize that some of these praised "positive" dog trainers aren't positive at all. Victoria Stilwell for example is atrocious and should not be allowed to train dogs. She has no idea about dog behavior, pegs many dogs as violent, puts dogs in stressful situations that will cause them to fail, and leaves behind an anxious dog that hasn't been cured of anything. Zak George is great if your only problem is obedience but he can't handle anything more than an overly playful dog and his techniques are sloppy. Cesar Millan has his goods and bads, too many for me to ever go into. Many trainers using only a flat buckle collar would yell into the dogs face, use intimidation, yank on the collar so hard the dog would be knocked off balance. Yet because it was simply a flat buckle collar it was considered gentle. Leerburg is greatly effective but he breaks the dogs down completely and has used a horrid method for curing human aggression: lifting the dog up by a choke into the air until it passes out. Some who use prong collars say you need to yank on the collar until the dog yelps (let me explain how a prong collar works. It has the prongs, which are dull and do not poke into the skin at all, and a part on the collar that's either chain or fabric. This area has two rings, a D ring and an O ring. When both rings are hooked the collar does not tighten at all. When the O ring is hooked the tightening is slight and not very smooth. When hooked on the D ring it can tighten, but only to the point where the collar hits the O ring. It is entirely impossible to choke a dog with a properly fitted prong collar), while some electronic collar users only turn the collar up high enough that the dog barely notices the stimulation, and from there on it's used to catch the attention or to cause an annoyance. It is not turned up unless in an emergency situation where the off leash dog needs to be stopped immediately. See where things can start to get confusing and complicated? A flat buckle collar can collapse a trachea, while an electronic collar can be very gentle. I was having a bit of cognitive dissonance. Then I explored the halti and front hook harnesses, how they function, and what damage they can cause to the dog when they are improperly fitted, which, as with any training tool, is the vast majority of the time. They are no more gentle than any other tool and cause equal amounts of damage.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Damn it I didn't mean to post yet! And I took too long to finish typing to edit it. So here's the rest. Damn I talk a lot. 

I began merging training methods. I could see the benefits and effectiveness of each in different scenarios and realized no method is perfect on it's own. Alpha dog trainers are unnecessarily harsh, while cookie pushers don't teach the dog self restraint. Beast's behavior began improving and I put him on the "nothing in life is free" program (my parents, obviously, did not). With me he became a respectful dog. He would listen to whispered commands and hand signals while my dad was still yelling them. He walked even better on a leash and paid attention. But I couldn't stop his lunging and neck jerking. More research. Then I bought a prong collar. I was terrified. Like any good dog parent, I practiced on myself first. Fun fact: my dog and I have the same size neck. The collar I bought had rubber caps over the prongs that could be removed if desired. I put the collar on properly (at the top of the neck as high as possible, as that placement requires the least amount of pressure to get a response and discourages pulling) and off we went. Slight improvement, but after a week the rubber caps had to go. Annoying as hell. Oh I must mention my dad was pissed when he discovered I was using the prong collar, and still is, yet won't educate himself on it. The lunging at other dogs didn't stop (clear proof that a properly used prong collar doesn't hurt), but it was less forceful and he stopped yanking his neck around and choking himself. 

While watching dog training videos one night I stumbled upon personal protection dog training and was amazed. These dogs were not only fearless, but their obedience was stellar. And they were happy. Unlike other attack dog training videos I've viewed, these dogs weren't wearing electronic collars or prong collars that had to be used to control the dog. They were wearing sturdy leather flat buckle collars and harnesses and were under complete control off leash with nothing more than the handler's voice. I had discovered K9-1 Specialized Dog Training. They are my gods. They were everything I could ever wish for in trainers. Their training involved educating the trainer as much as the dog, and they were highly educated in dog training and had trained with some of the best. They cared about dog behavior, body language, and finding the root of behavioral problems. They meshed together prong collars and treats. They train dogs using love as the primary reward. They don't shove their fingers down a puppy's throat when it nips nor do they let the problem behavior continue. They take on dogs with countless behavioral problems and work with them. They have videos on their methods, on how to properly and gently use a prong collar, and have a whole series on how to properly train with a halti. Yep, I had found my heaven. But my heaven was located in New York. That sucked. But at least I learned an even better way to use a prong collar. 

When I moved to California I found a dog training company that was certified in the same method of dog training as k9-1. I saw them having a group training class in a very busy shopping/restaurant center. And I was heartbroken. These dogs were miserable. There was so much leash yanking and no love. I will never put my dog in that situation. I will not destroy his spirit in the name of obedience. I eventually upgraded his prong collar to a stronger, more comfortable (and expensive as hell) version and bought a backup choke he wears at the same time just in case the prong collar comes apart. He still lunges at dogs but overall it's not as bad. The wonders of combining methods. If he sees a dog coming at the same time I do I use the collar to get his attention on me (I can't remember what the term is called for the motion, but it's essentially just being really damn annoying by gently tapping the leash over and over again until the dog complies. Seriously, that's it. Just be annoying as hell) and reward with treats when he chooses not to lunge at the dog. There are some dogs this doesn't work with. There are some dogs he hates with an absolute passion and I have no doubt he would try to kill them. There are others he's ok with, and some that make him want to play. It's a complicated matter. But I finally learned how to communicate with Beast in a way he understands. We've also gotten better at training. He's a hard dog to train because he's easily frustrated but it's worth it. I love seeing the process of him understanding what I'm asking him to do and I love learning how to tweak things so he can grasp the concept better. He knows how to sit/down/stand in quick succession over and over again in different orders, bark, dance (sorta. His balance sucks), bow, bark, bounce, jump, jump through a hoop, sit pretty, shake with both paws, give high fives with both paws, give a high ten, shake while standing, the beginning stages of limping, sit pretty, weaving through my legs while I walk, weaving through my legs while I'm stationary, targeting my hands, leave it, legs (walk in between my legs forward and backwards), tree (put his front paws up on a tree. Ideally he'll bark while doing it but he has a hard time multitasking), rollover, the early stages of a handstand (can lift his back half on a high object and hold the position as well as lift his back half in the air without support for about half a second), watch my eyes, heel at my left leg for a great deal of time while walking forwards or backwards with absolute attention on me, back up, drop it, and stay. I'm sure I missed something but that's most of them. Since he's a strong, bouncy dog with a high prey drive I've built up his strength the best I can with lots of jumping, balancing on things, and tug. He can be lifted in the air by the rope for a fair amount of time. He can be bounced around, lifted up until is back feet are just barely on the ground over and over again, and shaken but he'll be damned if he's going to let go of that rope. Sometimes he loses balance because his tail is wagging too hard and he looses grip. 

The biggest problem I had with him at first was his reaction to my cat. I wasn't there when they met because I hadn't flown home yet. My dad let him chase her. He didn't care. She lived in the garage for months because she was terrified. Once when we took Beast to the vet my dad asked the vet what he recommends doing. Yes, he asked the vet. A medical professional, not a behaviorist or trainer. The vet said let them work it out, and that's what my dad wanted to do and made me do. He wanted me to sit by and let my dog chase my cat around the house, corner her, and possibly harm her. I was pissed and he made me do it. Needless to say, ****ty ideas like that don't work. My cat eventually started coming inside at night and hiding under my bed, so in the morning I would have to pull her out and put her in the garage where her litterbox was. Even with Beast crated or outside, she would freak out. I would get peed on and clawed. Sometimes she would claw me and then pee on the spot she clawed. I don't know how I didn't get a full blown infection, but peed in cat scratches seriously hurt. My dad witnessed many of these episodes. One time he refused to have the dog put in the crate while I brought my cat down (and the cat had to be brought down) or hold him in place because he wanted to see what would happen. What the hell do you think happened? I was clawed into a bloody mess and peed on, Beast lunged at me and tried to bite the cat, and it was a disaster. My dad sat on the couch and watched he laughed. He said he thought it was funny. I will never forgive him for that. He forced my dog, my cat, and myself into a dangerous situation and was very stressful for everyone involved. I still have a grudge and I forever will. My dog and cat didn't make any progress together until I moved out. I know, surprising (not). They can now share a bed together. It was a mix of positive reinforcement (adding something, such as giving a treat or pressure on the collar) and negative reinforcement (such as taking away treats and ceasing pressure on the collar). Treats have been phased out entirely. Now he would never dream of hurting Cookie or else he would face my wrath, and that's not something he's keen on doing. I will withhold everything he loves for a very long time. Now the only issue they have is his love of her butt (and the custom brownies that come out of it), and his desire for a good sniffing every once in a while. She's not fond of a dog nose in her butt or a dog sniffing, then licking, her face. She gets angry and adds a few scars to his nose. He likes her but she hates him. If they're touching he glares. His prey drive with cats has mostly been switched to play but cats still don't like that. He and my aunt's cats don't get along the greatest but they've learned the key is to move slowly. One cat doesn't really care if the dog is out anymore and will hop his gate and go pester my cat. That cat has no tail, so the butt sniffing urge is real. 

Pretty much what it took to turn Beast into a good dog was getting away from my parents and using a variety of training methods. There were times my dad threatened to take Beast to a shelter (he has separation anxiety horribly. he tore chunks out of the upstairs carpet once. and he was never great at listening to my dad because my dad was more of the force and intimidation kind of guy, which just doesn't work with Beast) and I wanted to give up and rehome him. This dog will try your patience like no other and has some really deeply ingrained issues. He was worth it though. Being his owner is as exhausting as it is satisfying. 

Another dog is in his place at the Sister's house now. Remember that one brown puppy? They kept her because she was cute and didn't look like the others. The other puppies they gave away to small children before the puppies were old enough. Seriously, they'd ask a kid if she wanted a puppy, gave her one to take home, and then the kid would be sent back with the puppy because the parents didn't want it. Repeat that over and over again until all 3 black puppies ended up somewhere. The brown puppy is now Callie. She's two and according to my mom more traumatized than even Beast was. 

I have plenty of pictures to attach but my laptop is about to die and I've rambled on more than I probably should...that's even with omitting a ton of stuff. It's been a long journey, and we aren't anywhere near done yet.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

The first picture is the second litter of puppies, then is Beast and Bella at the back door, then Beast and my mom when he was learning what love is, and then random pictures over the last two years. The video from the first night I met him is too dark to get a picture from, but I'll probably still try.


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## Eduielil (Jun 29, 2016)

Beast is such an handsome fellow, sabrinah! And I thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts regarding dog training and your own personal journey with Beast. Honestly, I do not doubt that you saved this dog from abject misery and a horrible life, which is to be commended a million times over. Also, I can clearly see the special bond that you have with Beast through your words and how you write about him. I know it must have taken an incredible amount of dedication to not give up on this poor, traumatized creature. You truly are an animal lover and I'm so honored that you would take the time to share your story with us on the forum. Thank you for your journal posts. They truly were uplifting, enlightening and heartfelt. I wish you and Beast the absolute best and hope that you two have a wonderful life together.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

So I signed up for the K9-1 online membership a few days ago and am already extremely thankful I did. That stuff works! I made my first entry in Beast's training journal last night and mentioned my disappointment in the foundation style dog trainer in my area. Foundation style dog training is very gentle, but the training I saw (around a year ago, so memory of exact details is a bit fuzzy) was very rough. It was in a very busy, public place, I believe it was the Pruneyard. It was a class of maybe 10 dogs, mostly german shepherds, and all looked miserable. Ears down, tails tucked, averted eyes, etc. When the trainer told the owners to put their dogs in a down there was a lot of very hard yanking, which should NOT be present in foundation style training. The trainer looked very angry and glared at the owners and dogs. Frankly, he scared me a little bit. Ok he scared me a lot. When the trainer told the owners it was time to move on (before each dog was even in a down) I asked a poor nervous guy in the back of the class what the training company was. He said it was Canine Specialties. My heart sank, because that's the name of the foundation style trainer in my area. I'd also read a few sketchy reviews in the deep web about outrageous prices and obnoxious trainer, so I was extremely saddened. I expected this kind of training from Cali K9 and Primal Canine, but not from Canine Specialties. I pretty much gave up on finding a trainer in my area and could never quite make sense of how a trainer certified in foundation style could be so aggressive. Since the guy in the fricken class gave me the name, there's no reason to assume he was lying. 

Fast forward to today when I logged in to K9-1. Mike, the guy who certifies the foundation style trainers, had actually read my journal and sent me a message very concerned about the trainer and asked for the name. I'm hoping so fricken bad that it turns out the guy in the class lied and that was not Canine Specialties, but rather Cali K9 or Primal Canine. You have no idea how much I want it to be a different trainer. I had cried that night after seeing the training class and having my hopes crushed. If it does turn out that it wasn't Canine Specialties, I'll probably cry from relief and schedule a consultation the second I get back to California, provided that I can afford the classes in addition to tutors for the upcoming semester. I'll also be very concerned that there are people out there either purposely or accidentally mixing up the names of the dog training companies. What if someone with a much more problematic dog than mine had been considering Canine Specialties, but upon being given the wrong name instead went with one of the other two trainers who are very, very forceful? It's a horrible thought. Or what if someone is entirely turned off of foundation style? I never gave up on the training style, I just accepted that my only hope was to learn from videos a company on the other side of the US posts. I am so extremely impatient to hear back about whether I was given the wrong name or not. Cross your fingers!!!

In other news I ordered my cat a water fountain so she'll stop drinking out of Spike's tank. On Prime Day I bought Beast some Himalayan dog chews. Generally one or two small pieces sell for $10-15. I got a POUND for $20. So excited. I also ordered a leather leash for Beast. It hurts me to buy a leather product, but for my dog I shall compromise. Since the training we're doing will involve us staying when dogs pass instead of running in the opposite direction I need something that will be gentle on my hands for when we inevitably have an oops and he lunges like mad. I also need something that can handle lots of lunging. So leather leash it is. Beast and I went to the dogsupplies.com outlet store today. He has a harness and seat belt for the car that I've never tried out so I figured this was the perfect short drive to give it a go. I was expecting a full blown temper tantrum, maybe an attempt to chew himself free. Nope. He was fine with it. At the store I got him a super skinny leather collar with an itty bitty buckle that will hopefully help reduce the hair loss on his neck. It's mostly the buckles (of any kind, plastic or metal) that cause the hair loss. Hopefully the combination of tiny collar and tiny buckle does him some good. Since Dog Supplies doesn't have stores anywhere else besides their headquarters on the other side of the US and I don't shop on their website often, I always go a little crazy when I'm there. The tiny collar was only $5, but then we also bought a tendon chew, a bag of Fruitables, and a cookie. He got the cookie because like always, he was a very good boy. They have open bins of treats (biscuits, bully sticks, pig ears, chicken feet, duck feet, rawhide, all of which he already has) and Beast didn't try to take anything or steal a toy, although he gave everything a thorough sniffing. 

This weekend I'm going to Roos-n-more with my dad. It's a little zoo type thing about an hour away but they only take in rescue animals or exotic pets people decided they didn't want anymore. For a little more $ you have the option to meet either a monkey, a sloth, or an otter. Then we're going to shark reef. Am I fond of sharks in tanks? Hell no. I hate it with a fiery passion. But it's a father-daughter activity, and hopefully I can find out where exactly they obtain their sharks. 

Once I upload pictures to my computer I have something I need to rant about. It's truly stupid and a massive waste of money.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Oh goodness it's been a busy weekend! 

On Saturday I went to Roos-n-More. It's a "zoo" that's full of exotic pets people didn't want any more. The have quite the mix of animals. There's two camels, goats, alpacas, a zedonk, a zebra (but he's an ass so he doesn't get to make friends), all of which you can feed carrots. Camel kisses are also an option (feeding a camel a carrot by putting it in your mouth). They have a fennec fox. Some horrible lady bought it as a purse pet and then didn't take it to the vet when it's leg was broken. The fox of course can't live a normal life now and must be given medication daily because of it's legs. There's two of some type of cat, parrots, macaws, a toucan (they have a really weird tongue), lots of colorful smaller birds, a capybara, otter(s?), porcupines, armadillos, a hedgehog, an albino ferret, a black monitor, two constrictor type snakes (don't remember which), giant cockroaches, a huge millipede, a baby kangaroo, a sloth, and bunches of monkeys since people love getting monkeys for some stupid reason. Not all animals are out for viewing. They have a house that many animals are kept in. For a little extra you could have a 15 minute meet and greet with a monkey, sloth, or otter. My dad and I did the monkey. You wait until your meet time, are let into the house, empty your pockets into a container, sit in a chair with your hand flat and food in it, and the keeper will bring out the monkey. Her name was Nala and she was a capuchin monkey. Her owner purchased her as a therapy monkey for kids with autism and apparently didn't realize that a monkey is harder than a dog. When Nala arrived at the zoo she was so stressed she chewed off part of her own toe. The keeper doesn’t make her interact with anyone or at all. She simply sets Nala on the ground (with a leash of course) and lets her decide whether she wants to visit with people or stay with the keeper. Thankfully Nala liked me. She climbed up my leg into my lap, made monkey noises, settled herself in, and ate the food in my hand. You’re allowed to pet her back with an open hand but under no circumstances are you allowed to grab or hold her at all. When she finished with the food in my hand she climbed to my dad’s leg, took his food, and went back to my lap to eat it. When she was done with that she went down and grabbed the water bottle she likes to play with. It’s one of those big Arrowhead bottles with the blue flip top. She grabbed it with one hand and climbed back in my lap to chew it up. Apparently that’s not a thing that happens often. The entire 15 minutes, except for her trip for the water bottle and to my dad’s leg for food, was spent cuddled up against me. OMG it was adorable. I thought I was going to die when she looked up at me and batted her eyes. Almost overwhelmingly cute. 

After that we went home for lunch, my dad had to break off part of our broken window pane, and then we went to Shark Reef and Monster’s Revealed. Monster’s Revealed was pretty much the shark version of Bodies. I hadn’t been to Shark Reef since we moved to Vegas around 10 years ago. It was ok. There was an albino alligator or crocodile, I don’t remember. There was piranhas that are mostly fed chicken, steak, and fish pieces but also get live goldfish once a week. One tank had some carp, arrowanas, and very unhealthy looking turtles. Another had stingrays and some massive fish. A bigger tank had small sharks with pretty fish, a round tank had jellyfish, another had lionfish, a touch pool had sting rays and horseshoe crabs. The biggest tank had the sea turtle, big sharks, guitarfish, saw fish, giant stingrays, big fish, and a bunch of bright blue little fish. 

On Sunday we went to the Sigfreid and Roy Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. It was eh. The tigers and lion had it fairly well. The enclosures were decent sized and each had a pool, waterfall, giant ball, grass, real trees, and fake tree walkways. It was one big cat per enclosure except for the juvenile tigers (two in a large enclosure) and the jaguars. The leopards got the **** end of the stick. The enclosures were crazy small, had no pool or anything, and multiple cats in each. The dolphin tanks were eh. The main tank was pretty decent and had fake coral with arches and stuff. The other tanks were bare. They didn’t do formal shows but did 15 minute training sessions twice an hour while they rotated the dolphins through the pools. It didn’t look like there was too much scarring from fights on them but really it wasn’t super easy to see how they looked. 

Yesterday I also got the Himalayan dog chews I ordered on Prime Day as well as the Leatherberg Leather leash. Beast immediately broke off a couple good sized pieces of the chew , one of which I microwaved to see if it really puffed up (it did), but he slowed down once he realized it tastes better when he scrapes parts off. The leash is going to take some serious getting used to. The old leash was a half inch, 5 foot nylon leash. The new leash is ¾ inch, 6 foot and leather. It’s very big. Holding the leash the k9-1style is pretty uncomfortable because my hands are so small. It has to be over my pointer finger instead of my thumb and my hand kinda hurts. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with a half inch leash though so I’ll just have to get used to it. It is a very nice leash. It’s already very soft and flexible, well stitched at the bases, the clip is big and strong (though it’s a bit rough to open), but the smell is pretty strong. 

Today I went to the Bodies Exhibit with a friend and then we sat in Café Rio for four hours catching up. Café Rio has surprisingly comfy chairs. We didn’t even realize we had been in there for that long. I severely regret eating as much as I did. 

My aunt sent me a picture of Spike a little while ago. His red is still intensifying. In a couple more weeks he won’t have any translucent spots left. The red is also spreading down his tail to his body, which I’m not too fond of. I may hold a bit of a grudge if he goes full red on me.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Woooow!!!!! I'm happy a place like that exists for animals in need. The monkey is so cute  

And Spike is beautiful! 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Most of this will be rants. For betta plans skip to the end. 

I need to rant. If you haven’t noticed already, visiting my parents means a lot of anger, annoyance, and rants. Most of it revolves around Beast, of course. 

I don’t know why everyone seems to think they know my dog better than I do and can control him better than I can. I’ve had him for 2 years and tested him in a number of situations. I’ve taken the time to learn dog body language and behavior so I can speak dog. Not to mention I’m majoring in Zoology with specialization in wolves and minoring in Animal Behavior. I’m pretty damn sure I know my dog as well as a bit about the dogs around us. 

First thing to rant about. When my dog barks or whines at things, they (especially my stepmom and grandpa) like to bark and whine with him and then get annoyed when he continues for a long time, doesn’t stop, and won’t listen when they tell him to stop. All you’re accomplishing is stressing the dog out more and validating his barking. They also don’t care to listen to me when I tell them the proper commands to use with him because they, and I quote, “aren’t going to follow my training” because they’re his grandparents and they shouldn’t have to. If you want a dog to listen to you, you have to use the commands he knows. For example, if he’s in the kitchen and you want him out of it, the proper thing to say is “out of the kitchen.” Simple, right? Say it and he’ll leave the kitchen with no problem. Instead of saying that simple thing, they like variations such as “get” and “go away.” What do you expect to happen when you aren’t using words he understands? My stepmom has finally started to use the right words half the time. 

Second rant. The outer pane of one of our windows broke so window guys from two companies came by to check it out and give us quotes. Beast does not like strange men, especially ones in his territory. When the guys came I wanted to put Beast in a room, but my dad wanted to just close the doggy door and let him lose his mind at the door. Well, when the doggy door is in the sliding door doesn’t lock. You have to put wood behind it. After maybe two minutes of lunging at the door Beast had it open a couple inches. A minute more and he could, and would, have pushed it open. I put him in my room. I wanted to leave him there until the other window guy had come and gone, but my dad wanted to let him out. All this accomplishes is a more panicked, stressed dog. Today the window guys came to replace the window. My dad wasn’t here for this part so I got to do thing my way. When they got here I put Beast upstairs in my room and the came back down. If he barked I told him “quiet” and told him what a good boy he was when he immediately complied. Every time he barked again I would repeat. If he stayed quiet, I would tell him he’s a good boy every few minutes. When I got the chance I went upstairs, gave him lots of love and some treats, and came back down. He eventually stopped whining entirely and I rewarded him with a bowl of doggy ice cream. The result of doing it this way (keeping the window guys out of his sight, giving the proper command to stop barking, not yelling at him, and giving lots of praise and rewards for performing the desired behavior) was minimal whining, no barking, and less stress for everyone involved. After being released from the room he was all tail wags instead of raised hackles. 

Third rant. Beast doesn’t like other dogs. Since my dad and stepmom have hardly ever gone on walks with us and have participated in none of the training, they know very little about him. They didn’t believe that he reacts aggressively to 99% of dogs he sees. Yesterday, the neighbor’s corgi was in the garage. This corgi isn’t even particularly friendly. My dad wanted Beast to meet the corgi and insisted I bring him outside. I had zero interest in that, but if I didn’t do it my dad would and **** would have gone south real quick because he wouldn’t have handled Beast properly. Just think about this for a sec, ok? Beast already doesn’t like other dogs. This corgi is already in the garage, meaning in Beast’s territory around his pack. How could this ever end well? It didn’t. I geared Beast up in his prong collar and dominant dog collar, used the leather leash (it’s wonderful on the hands by the way) and took him in to the garage. Beast barked and lunged, the corgi barked and backed away. My dad tried telling Beast to sit in a deep strict voice but, like always, that doesn’t work. I’ve told them before that once he’s locked on there’s no getting him back. My stepmom tried to reassure Beast that it’s ok and pet his head. Does she not realize that’s a bite risk? When he’s in that state you don’t fully register to him. He can and will snap at you. Notice, everyone not holding the leash were the ones trying to get him to do things. Now, I could have put him in a sit quite easily but that wouldn’t have done any good. It would have lasted a second before he’s back and lunging again. Even after seeing his reaction they’re still insisting Beast and the corgi could be friends. Do they not realize they screwed that chance up pretty royally by insisting they meet when the corgi is already in Beast’s territory? Since the corgi is a small female there was the small chance they could have gotten along had they been introduced in a better manner. Preferably one where the corgi isn’t in or near Beast’s territory and people aren’t around confusing the poor dog. Odds are that interaction has also set us back in the resistance for reactivity training. 

Before the corgi incident we had been progressing quite well. Using the resistance training he can sit still as long as the dog is 30-40 feet away and small. For him that’s quite an accomplishment. When he does break and lunge my hands don’t get destroyed by the leash. The leather absorbs a lot of the shock and is very gentle. I can’t wait for the day they make a vegan leather leash that works just as well. His leash manners have been good for a long time but we’re modifying his position to be where K9-1 trains theirs. His training won’t truly progress until we get back to California. My aunt has learned to appreciate the training I do with Beast. She’s learned how to walk him and sees the difference in his behavior when you use the proper commands, body language, and training style. My aunt isn’t even a dog person and she’s managed this. My dad is a dog person yet he has no appreciation or respect for training. Does he really think he was the one that turned Beast from a nightmare into a good dog? I spent hours and hours working with him before they came home from work and when they went to bed. I tried to establish rules and such that they quickly undid when they got home, but I would put them in place again when they were away. The result was a dog that listened to me impeccably when they were not around, and a dog that only listened sub-par to them. Clearly his methods don’t work well since it wasn’t until I moved out and was able to do things entirely my way that Beast and Cookie were able to live together without danger of Beast killing her. It’s not that I’m a fabulous trainer, because I most certainly am not. I just took the time to get to know Beast thoroughly, work with him in various areas with various training techniques, learn his ticks, responses, triggers. They can see the results of his training, so why do they still fight it and insist on doing things their way, which achieve no results? 

I’m just sick of the same crap every time we visit. Oh and they make Beast fat. He’s already getting less exercise because it’s fricken 110 degrees outside. Is it really necessary to add steak fat on top of that? No, no it’s not. 

Oh I watched Batman vs Superman last night. Superman is HOT. Sigh. I’m rewatching Man of Steel today just to see some more of his perfection. 

In betta news, not much is going on because my tanks are in another state… I offered to hire someone to clean the tanks but my aunt said no, she’ll do it. Apparently now she’s saying if I ever leave again I have to hire someone to clean the tanks because it takes too long. I OFFERED BEFORE I LEFT. WHY ARE YOU GETTING IRRITATED NOW? I. OFFERED. YOU SAID NO. I’m prepping for getting a king when I get back. I ordered a 3 gallon kritter keeper as a QT/HT since the 10 gallon has cories in it and I have every intention of getting a sick betta. I also ordered Garlic Guard because I’ve been wanting it and this was the perfect excuse. Oh and a Hydor Original Theo heater for the 3 gallon since my only spare little heater isn’t adjustable. I’ll probably pick up some silk plants when I get the king since meds may be involved in his recovery. My mom is coming down asap when I get home. I’m getting back on a Saturday and she’s wanting to come down that Monday. Works for me! We’re taking Beast to Vasona, which is a big park with a lake, some streams, and lots of trails. It’s pretty easy to avoid dogs there as long as you stay on the path that follows the stream so there’s trees and bushes to jump behind. We also may go to Neptune Aquatics for more frozen food and plants depending on the state of my tanks when I get back. I want to check out their moss prices because I’m planning on planting my HOBs, including growing moss down the outflow. Going to Petco to pick out a king and get more cat food is also on the list. My mom wants to bring Beast but understands that that’s not a very good idea. I’m good at playing dodge the dog at the pet store, but I don’t want to risk him lunging at a dog while we’re next to the bettas and having cups fall down. 

Does anyone have any advice for how to clean a very large piece of spider wood? It won’t fit in a bucket to soak and pour boiling water in, and it certainly won’t fit in a pot. My aunt wouldn’t want me to use one of hers anyway, even if it’s layered in foil. I’ll see if I can find a picture of the wood. It’s T shaped with a long, thick branch sticking out of the top and clusters of smaller branches sticking out on each side. Ideally it’ll be going in the 10. I also need help deciding how to put it in there. When I get back to Cali I’ll post pictures of it in front of the tank in different positions. I’m open to hacking it up if anyone has an awesome design idea.


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

I'll draw a design for you! I have an idea, but don't know if it will work. What size of a tank is it in?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

It's a 10 gallon. The piece of spider wood in the back is staying in and the piece of malaysian driftwood in the front is coming out. I don't know the measurements of the new spider wood but it's at least a foot in each direction. The long pieces at the top are probably close to 2 feet. It also isn't all nice and straight up and down. The long top branches are at an angle and slightly curved.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

I'm just leaving a quick comment while I'm on my break, but I really appreciate and really look up to you for how well you care for Beast. Taking the time to get to know him, being consistent with rules and such and knowing his limits and having so much patience. You are truly a wonderful person  


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

;~; sorry I poofed~ I'm working on catching up what I missed but I too just wanted to comment on how good a job you do with Beast despite all the setbacks! I lost a dog before because of people around me not listening to me telling them how to treat and train the pup because I was considered too young at the time and I'm fairly certain he ended up being put down so I understand your frustrations. Like I said before though, I really admire how much effort you put in to him and he's very lucky to have you!


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Dalloway! I've missed you! How have you been?

So my dad and I drove back to Cali today. Well, he did the vast majority of the driving because I'm too slow for his tastes. That bit him in the ass a bit though because he got a speeding ticket. Turns out Beast hates cops. I know, who would have guessed? I had to have a really good hold on his collar. He barked and growled the entire time, and when the cop finally headed back to his car Beast lunged at the windows so hard he scraped his neck pretty good on his collar. Mind you, it's a decent leather collar so that's no easy feat. When we got back to the house Beast decided to roll in crap in the backyard. So lovely. 

Cookie was pissed. She refused to see me for a couple hours. She's just now warming back up and forgiving me. 

The tanks are looking pretty damn special. I spent about an hour and a half just on the 10 gallon. The plants were a wreck. She didn't take out any of the salvinia minima from either tank so it was terrifyingly thick. The red tiger lotus in the 10 went absolutely insane. I told her if the stems got too long to cut them off but she didn't, so they were literally in knots throughout the tank. I cut it down to almost nothing and separated off a lot of plantlets. My rotala looks pretty ****ty and I had to take about half out. The crypts are melted to hell. The bacopa monneri is suffering but hanging in there. The banana plant died. One of my newer swords lost a good number of leaves. The wisteria is gone. The buce isn't looking so hot but it's not dead yet either. My aunt was pretty sure some of the pygmy cories died because she only ever saw one, but I've found four so at most one died. Regardless, I'll be buying 6 more soon. I haven't done a water change or cleaning on Spike's tank yet. The 10 gallon was exhausting so he's going to have to wait until tomorrow. I did take out handfuls of salvinia minima though so he should be able to breathe better. Oh! I'm planting my HOBs! In the 10 I shoved a piece of pothos and small pieces of sweet potato vine. Spike's tank hasn't been decided yet since I have to clean it first. 

During the Drs Foster and Smith sale I ordered things for the new betta I'm planning on getting. I got a huge kritter keeper type container for $10, and it holds 3 gallons. I also got a hydor original theo heater for it and some Guarlic Guard. The new betta is definitely going to need to be quarantined and maybe medicated. I'm testing out the heater in 2 gallons of water right now so I can adjust it and make sure it works properly. 

Beast is going to the vet on Monday. His ear has been irritating him off and on for the past two-ish months. He also needs a heartworm test to get another prescription for flea pills. Hopefully, my mom will be coming down to visit on Monday. That would make things so much easier at the vet since one person can go in and check him in while the other stays outside with him away from all the dogs. Since the vet is pretty close to Neptune Aquatics, I'm planning on stopping in there, provided that my mom does visit and can wait with Beast in the car. If she doesn't come then I'm sh*t outta luck in terms of anything fishy related. I won't even be able to get a new betta since the cup holders are too small to fit a betta cup in and there's no where else to safely put one. 

Guess what? I have a car! My dad gave me his old car. It's going to be much easier getting to and from college now that I don't have to rely on public transportation and carpooling. I have to get it registered to Cali and everything, which I'm nervous about. I don't even know where the DMV is in this city...

I almost forgot! Ya know that big piece of spiderwood for the 10 gallon (which I'll post pictures of in front of the tank later)? I'm pretty sure something's living in it. For the third time I've found a pile of sawdust-like powder underneath the wood. I don't know how I'm going to boil that thing, but clearly I have to. I rrrreeeeaaaaallllllyyyy want to know what's in it though. So bad that part of me want to just hack it apart until I find it. Obviously I won't because that's a nice $15 piece of wood, but it's still tempting.


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

I've been well thank you ^^! Busy and tired though, I just started a new job back in May and I finally finished most of the preliminary training. I.. also got a new Betta two nights ago haha ;;. He's still tiny making him the youngest Betta I've owned... And also the first Betta I've actually purchased ! How have you been other than stressed ^^''?

lol, Beast and I agree. I don't like being pulled over either XD! Congratulations on getting the car!! I keep forgetting everywhere else it's DMV and not RMV so I wasn't sure what you were talking about lol. 

I saw the picture of the spiderwood, it's gorgeous by the way! If it fits into your sink you could always stop up the sink and pour boiling water in there. If there aren't any larger holes, it's likely that anything chewing it is microscopic or termite-like. A large enough population of the former would cause visible residue. If you want a betta but can't place the cup anywhere, ask for a fish bag and double bag him/her. It's much safer to transport them in a bag to begin with and you still get to keep the cup (if they try to take it back, ask for it because it's part of your purchase). Bags are easier to secure like say in the glove compartment or something. The dark will also help keep them calmer.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Picture of new betta please????
I've been pretty much just stressed. Well, now I'm sad because my tanks are so bare because of all the plant death. Do I go buy new plants, or do I be a good girl and wait for what's left to grow back? 

My aunt wouldn't let me put the wood in the sink most likely. It's an old white sink that stains easily. I am try though. I really want to redo the 10 because I think it'll make me feel better about how crappy it looks. 

The glove compartment is a good idea! The little compartment between the seats would actually work really well too. I think that could hold a betta cup fairly securely. Am I could put stuff around it so it can't move. You're brilliant! 

Since I'm on my phone I have to post the two pictures of the wood by the tank separately. I think I like this first one the best. If I can maneuver it right the branch that's taller than the tank may fit through the filter cut out so I don't have to remove it. If that doesn't work I'll just cut it off and shove it somewhere natural looking.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

This option is pretty boring


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

This would require some special balancing skills and looks quite awful


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

And this just is just eh


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

*New Betta!*

My mom didn't come today. Her "boyfriend" (it's complicated and he's a d**k) insisted on coming with her, so I told her not to come. He's not allowed in my aunt's house for one, and for two he makes everything miserable and I hate him with a fiery passion. That means no pygmy corie since I refuse to drive all the way to the vet, back the house, then back to the same area the vet is in. I drove by myself here for the first time. It wasn't too horrible. But to get to the vet requires multiple freeways. I can promise I will cry at some point and I will have a panic attack. I have to leave in half an hour and I'm terrified. 

I went to Petco to look at the bettas and get cat food. I got there right when they opened and the lady was just putting the bettas out. I asked if they had any kings and they only had one, so I got him. He's not huge.He's about 1.5 inches, maybe a little more BO. I was so preoccupied with him that I didn't notice some of the cat food that was supposed to be on sale wasn't rung up at sale price. That's like an extra $10 or more that I shouldn't have had to spend. Oh well. That's what I get for not paying attention. The betta isn't in bad shape but his cup water was filthy and he has a tear in his tail. So far he's very active, has no problems swimming, and is very confused about the salvinia. He keeps attacking it. Right now he's in the 2 gallon QT. He'll be staying there at least until I get more plants and cories. I ordered plants from JDAquatics this morning so at least I'm part way done on that mission. I'll get some pictures once he settles in.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Nameless is a problem child already. `He's terrified of hands, which I'm assuming he learned by being repeatedly picked up and shaken around in his cup. He won't eat. I tried frozen mysis shrimp soaked in guarlic guard, frozen bloodworm, Omega One, NLS. He did eat one NLS pellet this morning but I think it was more out of curiosity than desire to eat. I know he's hungry because he keeps trying to eat the bits of salvinia minima that fall to the bottom. He's also a jumper. Hot a very good one, but he tries. On the bright side he's a fabulous bubblenester. It's quite a nice nest with large, strong, bubbles. I know next to knowing about betta shape and fins and such, but I think he's rather nice looking, although small. WHICH IS WHY HE NEEDS TO EAT. He will never be a big boy if he doesn't let me stuff him full of frozen goodness! I'm this close to trying flakes. They're crappy Fluval flakes that came with my tank kit, but if it turns out he wants flakes then I'll buy the best damn ones I can find and use them to wean him on to the good stuff. And he just tried to make a jump for it again. I'm very glad I stuck with only putting 2 gallons in the tank instead of the full 3 it can hold. He can't jump more than an inch or two out of the water and it would take a good 4 or 5 inches and really good aim to jump out of the little lid that's open a bit for the heater cord. 

In other news the cories are just about back to their old selves. I believe the cure was some yummy frozen food. That's seriously all it took. One meal of frozen mysis shrimp yesterday and now they're back to bouncing off the walls of the tank. Apparently no one got frozen food for the entire 5 weeks I was gone, even though she said she would feed them frozen. She never, ever does what she says so I'm not sure why I'm surprised that she didn't take care of the tanks the way she claimed she would. Grrrrr. Can you tell I'm a bit angry? 

On Thursday I'll be going to get the cories. 10 of them. I'm not sure how I want to acclimate them though. I got airline tubing and a valve to drip acclimate, but do I want to leave them in the bag or put them in a container that hooks on to the side of the tank? My mom might come of Thursday (slim chance) and if she does the container would be a better bet since she'll want to be running around the backyard with the dog while they acclimate, and the container is more stable than a bag in terms of tipping over.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I'm really upset and I need to vent a little bit. 

So I mentioned how my mom was supposed to come down on Monday but didn't and informed me at 12:30 in the morning. Well she was supposed to come today and, once again, didn't. She was going to pick up a rental car and come down this morning. I told her last night to text me and let me know if she would or wouldn't be here. I got up early this morning to make myself presentable, spend a ridiculous amount of time getting Nameless to eat, doing a WC on his tank, making my bed, etc. I text her multiple times asking if she's coming and I get no reply. I think to myself, "ok, she's driving so she can't text." Eventually it's getting to the point where she should be here by now so I call and it goes straight to voicemail. She's bad at charging her phone so I figure it could be dead. I have to go to the vet and the aquatics store today, which I prefer to do around 10:30 after most of the traffic is done, but I decide to wait for her a little longer. By 11:30 I'm losing hope and figure I can at least run to the post office. With my luck she'll show up when I'm not there. Once again, she still hasn't shown up. She finally texts me when it's nearly noon saying she's not coming. This is the same crap she did when I was little. She would say she's coming, I would get crazy excited, and I would wait all day for her to show up. I wouldn't eat breakfast because she would say we would get breakfast when she got there. When it was getting close to lunch I would have a small snack but not a meal, because of course we would get lunch when she gets there. When dinner time was approaching I would have another snack because surely we would get dinner? Half the time she never showed. Instead of just calling and saying she wasn't coming she would leave me there to wait all day. I used to write poems and draw pictures about how sad I was that my mom was late or didn't show up. I guess in some regards we never grow up, do we? I still spent half my day waiting for her to show, and I'm still upset that she waited so long to tell me that she wasn't coming. I would rather know early in the morning so I don't spend all day looking out the window every time I hear a car drive by. She claims she's going to try to come tomorrow. I'm not going to hold my breath. I'm going to drive on the scary freeways today and I probably won't be able to miss all the lunchtime traffic, all because I stayed at home waiting for her to show up instead of going at the safe time this morning.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Whelp. Spike is a vicious monster. I bought 4 fire red cherry shrimp along with the cories. These are very nice shrimp. They are absolutely completely solid red. I put 2 in Spike's tank and 2 in the ten gallon. Spike has murdered and begun consuming one of the shrimp in his tank. I'm trying to find the other one to rescue it. Spike cannot have nice things. Spike is also not getting dinner tonight because he murdered his tankmate and runs away with the body every time I try to remove it. He's such an ass that he can't even have snails in his tank. He bullies them so much they close up and stay that way until they die. He is currently furiously hunting the second shrimp. It appears it was a very good idea not to try introducing him to the 10. I do want more shrimp for the 10, but I should probably wait to see how Nameless handles them. If both fish are jerks, I'll probably have to divide the 10 for them and move all my tiny critters to the 5. I'll be very angry if I have to do that.


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## Autumncrossing (May 2, 2016)

The most expensive betta treats you will ever buy 


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

I always feel awkward posting images on someone else's journal ^^;, but this is, in keeping with my Pokemon themed naming tradition, Flareon (or flare for short which is perfect in so many ways, not just in coloration because he's a regular hothead and flared at me every time he saw me the first 24 hrs:










It's very blurry because it's' an old old 3 gallon I use for QT so it's scratched and stained and kind of gross lol ^^;

Aha, if you're going to ask my opinion I always vote for buy more plants!! I'm probably going to buy a 20 long for Flareon since I doubt he'll leave my rummynose alone once he grows bigger than them and I'm thinking of all the plants I'm getting XD...



sabrinah said:


> My aunt wouldn't let me put the wood in the sink most likely. It's an old white sink that stains easily. I am try though. I really want to redo the 10 because I think it'll make me feel better about how crappy it looks.


If it's those white ceramic/porcelain sink you can use either straight up bleach or comet or try bar keeper's friend (powder version), they get rid of stains easily. I also highly doubt tannins would have composition to permanently stain the sink.

^^'' thanks <3~ I just hope it's a useful suggestion, it really depends on your car.

 Pictures of new boy please!! I like the first and last positions of your wood best. I think the last one you could get really creative with the plant placement, especially if you get attachable ones like anubias/ferns.

I'm sorry about your mom :/, sounds a lot like my dad's behavior so I understand the feeling of not growing up and wanting to get over it already and give up on them but if I may give my opinion..? 

I LOVE cherry shrimp ;A;~!! The only nearby place I can find them is Petco though and they're always like... breeder's cull quality ^^;. I know this sounds awful a bit but I want bright red cherries if I'm going to fork out the $2 per they usually go for... Speaking of I also noticed a very berried amano shrimp this morning and I'm just like whaaaaat??? It was completely unexpected.. I haven't been very attentive to my tanks lately due to being busy and I do water changes on the 29 every 2-3 weeks or so so I'm not even sure when she started carrying eggs and I'm torn between stressing her out trying to save them or just leave it alone... I also don't have nor wish to purchase a hydro/refractometer because I definitely will not be getting a saltwater tank anytime soon nor do I wish to breed amano regularly >_>... Aaaah what do I do D8?? What would you do?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

He's so pretty!

I bought a fair amount of plants from JDAquatics. I wasn't expecting quite so many and was pretty overwhelmed. I got 2 portions of java moss (some for planting the HOBs, some for putting on driftwood. I'm not really ready for it yet so it's floating in a container of water in the tank), a portion of willow moss (I tied it to 4 rocks and put one in each corner of Spike's tank. If it survives it'll look awesome when it starts growing in), anubias nana petite, staurogyne repens (trying to make a sort of carpet for the 10 with it), hygrophyla corymbosa, mermaid weed (for Spike's tank), assorted buce pieces, and a plant sampler (containing an assortment of crypts, stem plants, and rosette style plants. It comes with way more plants than I was expecting). Pretty much everything is in the 10 right now because Spike's tank is a hot mess and everything besides java fern seems to die in that tank. The fungus in that tank also isn't finished yet and I'm getting sick of it. 

I ended up just setting the driftwood on top of a shallow container and pouring boiling water on it. After I poured a couples times it was flexible enough for the base of the wood to soak. The fungus started right away after putting it in the tank. 

My mom is supposedly going to come tomorrow. Obviously I'm not counting on it. 

Seriously your RCS are only $2? I paid $5 each for mine. Which is why I was so pissed that Spike ate one. I would settle for the uglier ones at $2 if any of the stores around here sell them. There's a guy on Craigslist that claims to have high grade RCS for $1 each, but I figure I should wait and see how Nameless handles tankmates before I get more. 

I have no clue what to do about amano babies. I would want to try to hatch the eggs, but the whole salt water things complicates things. Is there a way to reach that salinity level using aquarium salt only? I also have no clue how amano reproduction works...If you can get the eggs from her I would try salty water. Why not? If you don't do anything, the eggs won't survive anyway so what's the harm in trying? 

I spent all day with my grandma today and that included a short trip to Petco. Of course she looked at the bettas. It doesn't matter how much I try to explain things to her, she is dead set that bettas could live together. There was a baby koi boy and she said I could put him in with one of my bettas and they wouldn't be able to eat him. I said "HOW MANY TIME'S DO WE HAVE TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION" then proceeded to tell her how the baby would promptly be murdered and how males will tear each other to shreds. She does not believe me. Oh, and for some reason she has the idea that the different labels (koi, butterly, dumbo, etc ) mean they each require different care than the other bettas. I've tried explaining to her that no, they just detail the color and tail type, but she doesn't believe me. I want to pull my hair out any time we talk about bettas. Or anything animal related really. She also didn't seem to believe me when I said bettas can jump. I refuse to ever let that woman own a betta. I don't care if she falls head over heels in love with it, she's forbidden from having it. She will buy every aquarium product for freshwater, saltwater, ponds, whatever she can find, and put it all in at once because "what if..." and "it could work...". Yea. Not happening. 

I have something quite shocking to say. I, the person who loves all animals unconditionally, do not like Nameless. At all. I despise him and severely regret purchasing him. I would take him back if I wasn't worried about him dying slowly in a cup. He has no personality and he's impossible to feed. He spits everything out. All he does is build his damn bubble nest and attack the thermometer as loudly as possible in the middle of the night. I spend a good 20-30 minutes 3 or 4 times a day trying to get the stupid fish to eat. If I wasn't so desperate for him to grow I would say screw it and completely ignore his existence for a couple days until he's absolutely starving. I can tell he's hungry because he viciously attacks every pellet, but 95% of the time he'll promptly spit it out. The same goes for all frozen foods. If he at least had a personality I wouldn't mind him being a pain. If he never develops a personality he'll be Nameless forever. 

Now it's time to spam with pictures of the bird at the place I got the car smogged (did I mention that? Instead of a shop dog, he had a shop parakeet. Cute af), Nameless, Spike, the shrimp and cories during acclimation, and the 10 gallon (one showing how many plants died and right after I put in the new driftwood, and another picture of the tank after all the new plants)


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

^^ thanks!! I have a thing for koi lol, he also had terribly swollen gills when I saw him and I just... My heart broke in half when I walked away from him x_x'.. I even broke my own personal rule of never buying fish, especially Betta, from Petco for him. I've Never broken this rule before!

XD oh wow that is a lot plants. They came in looking really healthy too. S. repens are gorgeous! I had some too and they carpet nicely if you keep clipping them (they'll grow nearly 2" tall in low light) which also helps propagate them easily but be careful to not let them be shaded. They prefer the higher range of low light as a minimum and I let my tank get overrun by my R. rotundifolia once and killed all my repens that way :/. XD that wood looks so fantastic... I'm thinking of buying Manzanita wood but every time I see your pieces I waver again. Why can't I find such good pieces here :C!? Hrmm, I've had more success keeping fungus away by boiling and letting it soak a few days and then letting it dry completely and repeating. I think this is effective in disturbing whatever it is that causes the fungus mid-cycle which prevents it from popping up with a vengeance. I've only ever purchased Malaysian driftwood so I can't tell if it'd be the same kind of growth but it might work for you.

Yeah, $2 and some change, I didn't think that was a good deal but $5 is insane ^^'.. The fish store in Framingham where I bought my disastrous purchase of rummy and cory sells much higher quality cherries for the same price range, it's just a hassle getting them from there. rcs are easy to breed, I wouldn't be surprised if they are high quality, even at that price. The amano here are nearly $5 at Petco.. $5 is a LOT for rcs x_x...

No, marine salt and aquarium salt are two very different things. Aquarium salt is basically just sodium chloride. Useful for certain treatments, acts as an irritant for freshwater fish which is effective in producing slime coat production, and useful for killing certain parasites. Marine salt is water with concentrations of sodium chloride, bromide, potassium, calcium and a dozen other ions. Marine salt provides all the essential elements of seawater, buffers KH and slightly raises pH. Even though the highest concentration in marine salt is mostly sodium chloride, it's the balance and ratio of the other salts that make it essential and noninterchangeable for aquatic life that requires seawater salinity. Amano live in streams so the larvae get washed out to sea and that's where they live until they mature enough and return to the freshwater streams. The salinity needs to be full strength saltwater at 33 or 34 ppt?? One of those. And they carry the egg about a month so so long as the eggs are mossy green I know I have time ;~;! XD My deal is I don't think I want to buy the equipment (I also don't have an extra tank now with Flare so I'd have to buy a 5 gallon). I just paid my college bill so I'm being stingy due to my bank account being so empty >_>. Ok, you've made my mind up then~ If I can get to the pet store before she drops the eggs I'll buy everything and hatch them.

Ah, sounds like my grandma and her dog ^^;. 

Aw, I'm so sorry. It sounds like he's stressed out though so it might be best to just give him a day or two of quiet before you try feeding him again if he's still not eating. It can take a month or even more for a fish to become accustomed to a new home... If you're still not warmed up to him you could always try rehoming him to someone in your area. He is really gorgeous though, I have a thing for that wild Betta coloration too. It's the same coloration as my Rusty ^^~

That parakeet is adorable <3. And no, you did not as far as I'm aware. What's a smog check?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

He was worth breaking the rule! Where do you usually get your bettas?

It's odd because the fungus is only on certain parts. I was really hoping the rcs would eat it, but apparently they have higher standards. I'm tempted to get an amano to see if it can tolerate the taste of the stuff. Or, I could be patient and buy a couple from you once 

MY MOM IS HERE OMG i HAVE TO GO SORRY FOR STOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

The tank looks AMAZING!!!!!!!!! 

And ah... Nameless. I hope he does get easier to feed and more accustomed to his surroundings with time like Dalloway said. 

Sorry about your mom. Sometimes my mom complains about her mom, and I ask why she can't just talk to my grandma about the things she does that cause others issues. But my mom makes a good point, and you've made it before on my journal, that parents just don't listen sometimes no matter what you tell them. And talking it out can be disaster. I'm glad she came through in the end though!! I hope everything went well! 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Shall we continue?

He was worth breaking the rule! Where do you usually get your bettas?

It's odd because the fungus is only on certain parts. I was really hoping the rcs would eat it, but apparently they have higher standards. I'm tempted to get an amano to see if it can tolerate the taste of the stuff. Or, I could be patient and buy a couple from you once you hatch the cute little eggs. 

Nameless pretty much has nothing but his looks going for him. I got him a silk plant today so maybe that will make him feel better. I can't put anything live in there since the tank gets pretty much no light where it currently is. The salvinia I threw in there is slowly dying off from the darkness. I need to switch out his IAL but his bubble nest is under it so I guess I'll just have to stick another piece in there without taking the old one out. I got him to eat a tiny bit of spirulina brine shrimp today. Oddly enough he would only eat the pieces with spirulina in it. The plain brine shrimp bits he spit out. I do not understand this fish. I think I will give him a full day or two with absolutely no interaction. Ya know there was a few scuds hiding in the salvinia roots, so maybe he's been eating those. That would explain why he spits out all his food. But the way he attacks it suggests he really is hungry. I refuse to put him in the 10 gallon until he's eating regularly though. Just in case it turns out to be an internal issue I don't want to introduce it to the cories and I really don't want to put a hungry fish in a tank with tiny fish. That would be stupid. 

The parakeet was seriously the cutest thing! It just walked around on the counters. If it's owner was working somewhere he couldn't see he would scream until his owner moved him closer. When he was feeling neglected he would scream until the guy put him on his shoulder, then the bird would get all cozy and happy. I seriously can't accurately convey how cute the bird was. 

A smog check checks the emission levels of vehicles in an effort to reduce air pollution. If your emissions are too high you fail and have to make modifications on your car to reduce them. 

The visit with my mom went ok. She was annoyingly checking her phone a lot. And her "boyfriend"/warden (his nickname is "The Warden." That gives you an idea of how pleasant of a person he is) called her sooooooo many times asking what she's doing, where she is, and when she's heading home. The relationship I have with my mom is a bit odd. Since I lived with my dad since I was 5 she didn't really raise me, and thus doesn't really do the mom role well. She's more in the friend role. We talk nearly every night and can talk about absolutely anything. I made it very clear how mad I was that she didn't tell me when she wasn't coming the other day. Today when she kept checking her phone I asked what the heck was so interesting and important and better than spending time with me. She apologized and said she would stop but every time we stopped anywhere for any amount of time she would pull out her phone. That's pretty much how things with my mom go. You tell her what she did to upset/anger you, she apologizes and she says she'll stop, then she immediately does it again. She's one of those people that pretty much never changes in any way.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Well, we've got some issues. Some of the new, tiny cories have bright red gills. It continues along the underside from gill to gill as well. They're still active and eating but it worries me. Also, my hot water is yellow. This could be why their gills aren't looking so hot, but the larger cories are perfectly fine. Apparently, yellow hot water can be the result of sediment in the water heater tank, rust in the tank releasing iron, or iron bacteria. My aunt doesn't want the land lady coming over right now so she say's we have to deal with it. Yay. The cold water is fine though, so for water changes I'll be microwaving cold water to get everything to the right temp. I did a small change on the 10 gallon with completely clear water and I'll do more every day or two until there's no way any nasty water is left in the tank. Since the shrimp are completely fine I imagine whatever is in the water isn't that bad. One even molted today. 

The day before yesterday I had no interaction with Nameless besides putting Prime in his tank and tossing in a small piece of IAL. He abandoned his bubblenest under the old piece of IAL and immediately started another under the new piece. Yesterday I finally got him to eat without spitting out his food. I only gave him very few pellets at a time to insure he stayed hungry for the next meal. He at 3 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, and another 3 in the evening. Though he's short he's pretty thick so I imagine a full meal for him would be 6 or 7 pellets each time. Today I convinced him to have 2 pellets for breakfast and 2 pellets for lunch. His lunch was supposed to be mysis shrimp but he doesn't recognize anything that's white as food. I was hoping to move him to the 10 gallon soon, but until I'm sure the red gills on the tiny cories isn't anything serious I don't want to risk it. He got an extra gallon during his WC today though to introduce him to having a larger space. He was in 2 gallons before and now it's just under 3. I don't want to give him the full 3 because I don't trust him not to try and jump out of the tiny gap in the lid made by the heater cord. I flared him for the first time yesterday. He only got to see the mirror for a minute but it riled him up for quite a while. He's very pretty when he flares. I'll post pictures of it eventually. I wanted to see how fast he can swim. I don't know how it works with all bettas, but Spike swims his fastest when he's flaring. If that's true for Nameless then the boy is slow. With regular flaring Spike easily makes it to 180 but a month and a half with no flaring has ruined that. He doesn't even get close. I'm hoping I can get him back into shape. Nameless isn't anywhere near a half moon. I am starting to question whether the split in his tail is damage or if he's a double tail. I suppose only time will tell.

Does anyone else have a betta that burps? Nameless burps after every bite of food he takes. It's not very polite. 

Oh! And suggestions for a name for Nameless are welcome. I tend to like names that are either descriptive or after greek gods and such. 

One more question. Had anyone ever attached craft mesh to a filter output? I wanted to attach moss to mine so I figured I would tie the moss to the mesh and glue the mesh to the output. Sounds like it would work, right? No. it didn't. It was very determined not to stick, no matter how dry I made sure everything was. Suggestions please?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Yet again stupid Nameless is refusing food. He won't even attempt it. I ordered Atison's Betta Food off Amazon today since their pellets are supposedly tiny and he seems to like only the smallest of the Omega One pellets. He apparently doesn't like the pellets too small though, because he refuses the Hikari micro pellets. I am THIS close to putting him up for sale/adoption. He only wants live food. Live gammarus shrimp, which I would be happy to start a separate tank of to keep a good supply but that's not a balanced diet, and live bloodworms (I found one on plant roots and figured why not try?). ALL HE DOES IS BLOW BUBBLES AND BURP. Seriously, could he have a throat issue? Nameless has a limited amount of time to start eating because the new semester starts in 2 weeks and my load is way too heavy to spend over an hour every damn day trying to coax his irritating butt to eat. And I'm trying to find either a shelter to volunteer at or a pet supply store (no live animals sold) to work at, but in this city that's not as easy as one would think. Most places are a good 20-30 minutes away with horrid commutes and many of the shelters aren't flexible in the least with hours. I think I'm going to have to start looking at the snobby pet stores in the very wealthy, but very nearby city. I certainly wouldn't fit in well considering I hate spending more than $10 for anything but at least I don't have to worry about mistreated animals. And I won't be tempted to buy anything because even with an employee discount I couldn't afford it. 

I saw one of the tiniest cories flashing today with white fuzzy stuff on it's head. I want to make sure there really is fuzz and it's not just my imagination but I can't find the fish again. Since putting them in I haven't once seen all 10. I saw 9 once but since then I've only seen 7. Of course some could be hiding out somewhere else in the tank but I'm worried the new baby cories could be dying because of the red gills, and now the flashing and fungus.

Did I ever mention how Nameless reacted to garlic-soaked food? It was like it made him convulse. He would twitch and spasm uncontrollably for a couple seconds. Pretty weird and fairly scary.


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

^^ Thanks <3! I can't wait to see how he continues to marble out as he grows. I think he's going to lose his white which is a pity because I like the white but maybe it'll come back eventually :3. I have actually never purchased a Betta before ;;.... My first Betta, Peeko, was purchased by my mom because she found him in a general store that had no business selling live animals of any kind and he was in a filthy cup with brown water and half his dorsal was starting to dry out because there was so little water. My second, Rusty, was technically from the same Petco Flare is from but I took him from a lady that was trying to return him because she'd basically nearly killed him already but was blaming the store. They weren't going to refund her because it had been way past their return policy so she just left him on the shelf or counter half dead and terrified from all the sloshing so I told them I'd take him. Mr. Mime was adopted from a member of this forum that lives here in MA. I've had Rusty 3 years and 4 months, Mr. Mime 1 year and 4 months now but those are the only betta I've ever owned. I've never been much of a betta fan to be honest ^^;. I was always a goldfish and schooling fish girl but I can't dedicate the space and time to take care of goldfish for a decade + anymore and somehow these little fishies just swam their way into my heart during that time I'd quit fishkeeping.

The parakeet is very adorable! I used to have some when I was little, I love birds. I've never heard of a smog check, is that a CA specific check?

Glad to hear your mom made it c:! Even if she was on the phone all day, my mom does the same. I just walk away now, people are way too addicted to technology and I'm much too old fashioned for them because I find it disrespectful ^^;.

Ah, I wouldn't count on me too much x_x!! Can you see the images in the following link? https://goo.gl/photos/YKojFyM6XkU3tnjk6
The image of her on the leaf is from the 6th, everything else is from the 8th so you can see just how much lighter they're getting. I've worked multiple 11-12 hour shifts this week and I might be continuing to work as much the next week because we have an intern now at one of the locations I work at that's not getting the hang of it... so I think I may continue to be asked to pull double shifts there. I don't mind much though because I love the staff at both locations~ But I've been exhausted lately and haven't had a chance to get to the pet store for the salt, a new tank for Flare to free up the QT for the shrimp, or food for the shrimplets yet...

Don't worry about the red gills so much, it's a reaction to stress in cories . If they're behaving normally then there's no need to worry~ Just make sure the tank is kept clean with your regular water changes (Don't increase the wc schedule as it'll cause more stress) so they don't get a secondary infection from weakened immune system due to the stress of being moved. There is a type of small white fuzz that's not harmful so definitely just keep an eye out for behavior changes before you start treating!

I'm sorry to hear Nameless is still giving you a headache x_x'. My Rusty hates too strong a garlic flavor, he reacts the same way. I've also had 0 success with Seachem Garlic Guard as an adequate replacement for fresh garlic. My Mr. Mime burps too XD. He's also fairly huge, maybe it's a large betta thing? Because neither of my other two nor my first betta ever burped like him oO. Be careful with feeding attison's too much, it's really high in fillers. And honestly, it's not the worst thing in the world at all to feed a Betta almost exclusively with grammus shrimp. It's bad to feed them exclusively on only one type of DRY food but that's because so very few dry foods for carnivorous fish are of a decent quality. I'd say feed him what he'll eat and then when and if you have time spend a few minutes giving him a different food a few times a month. Protein is the most important nutrition for them and he'll be getting plenty of that with the shrimp. They do have a higher fiber content but I don't think that it's high enough to worry over. It's really hard to tell what the deal with his tail is oO. I'm not familiar enough with doubletails but at the same time that tail doesn't look like a double, it also looks too clean a separation to be a tear... He really is beautiful though !


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I wish I could acquire bettas the way you do! No one in my family really supports my fishy love though, and I'm not allowed to have more than two tanks. Bettas are such addicting little fish. 

Smog check isn't just a California thing. A fair number of states require it. 

Look at those eggs! You'll totally be able to hatch them. You have to promise to give updates on the babies! Unless, of course, you're still working crazy hours. Do you ever shop online? It would make it easier than getting to the store. I buy prepaid gift cards to use online because I don't want any of my card info on there. 

You're always so full of information! I will refrain from worrying about red gills or fuzz. My older cories never had the red gills when they were introduced and they were just as tiny as these guys when I got them. There is one other weird thing the tiny ones do though. I think one does it a little more than the others. It will be zipping around and suddenly it's body will jerk into a complete 90 degree angle, it will swim a little more, and then it happens again. It looks like a completely involuntary action. I am good at not treating things until I know something is definitely up. That doesn't mean I don't get the urge to do something, but I can resist it. 

Burping being a large betta thing sounds possible. Neither Spitfire nor Spike ever burped. It's just so weird. Atison's is pretty much just to test my small pellet theory. I'm not a huge fan of the ingredients list myself. Any idea if Omega One mini pellets are smaller than the betta pellets? If he would be fine eating mostly gammarus shrimp I would have no problem starting a colony in the QT once he's moved to the 10 gallon. I have a feeling he'll be quick to completely wipe out the established colony in there. 

I have seen a fair number of pictures online where the double tail isn't a complete split, but rather it naturally splits apart half way down the tail. That's how Spitfire's tail was. I couldn't get a picture of that when I put him down though because he had bitten off over half his tail by then. Spike is the type of double tail that's two entirely different lobes. Hmm I've never considered there being different degrees of separation in double tails before. What are the odds all the bettas I've had are double tails? I do fun Nameless very pretty as well. I think that's a big part of the reason I still have him. I know very little about betta form but to me he seems very well proportioned. And given his penchant for making bubble nests under IAL I think he would be fairly easy to breed if I ever got the desire. He may be a bit dangerous to a female though because he has a pretty deadly tail slap. Darn fish is going to break the thermometer or heater one of these days


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## fernielou (May 19, 2015)

I think you are too stressed over nameless pickiness. I had one once that frustrated me like that and eventually I just started throwing 3 pellets in and walking away. Guess what- he quit being picky. Betta can go days without food. What if you just decided to do that with pellets twice a day for a few days. see if he figures it out or starts acting lethargic. Healthy animals probably won't starve themselves. 


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

XD I'm not entirely sure it's a good thing though! I'm heading into school full time soon, I really shouldn't be taking on so many new tanks/extra responsibilities all at once D8! I did get pretty lucky in that my mother and I have similar interests, I know that much... But on the other hand I've only ever been allowed as many tanks as will fit in my room and my room is really really tiny. I have the floor space of a 3x3 square of 29 gallon aquariums so add in the 29 gallon stand (Mr. Mime's tank is currently under the 29), the 10 gallon aquarium stand, my computer/hobby/project table (currently housing my 3g QT and the 5g with the emersed setup), and my bed there's basically just enough room to open the door and turn in a circle XD. My bedroom is literally overrun by the fish! It took a considerable amount of time to wear her down to the point of letting me buy and put the 20 long in the living room. (It also helps if you condition the person you're living with. Like say you buy a new fish, then you also buy them really good food when you break the news. Or don't tell them at all and just let them gradually become aware of the new presence in your room ;D~)

Oooh, good to know. I have migraines which aren't as bad as they could be but they give me motion sickness as a side effect so I've never been able to drive but I'm trying to find something that works to treat that with a doctor. I'm also getting my ears checked. So hopefully I'll be able to drive soon and I need to know all these things if I get a car ^^;... Though driving in MA is going to be a trip...

I will, I will! If I hatch them I'll keep you updated on the process with pics and vids!! I do shop online but I need to setup the 20 long to free up a spot for the shrimp. If I don't get that done then there's no way I'm going to be able to hatch them because I literally have nothing else suitable save for the QT tank. My emersed setup I can't tear down and use because that was formerly Mime's tank which I had to replace because it cracked completely on the side :/. I'm out of backups, I never thought this would happen to me! I definitely have to buy the food on amazon or something. My credit card gives cash back bonus for amazon purchases Cx, I like to buy from amazon~ I'm currently wondering if Kent Marine will be a good source of food for them. I have pvcs in my 29 gallon I can put for the shrimp to eat micro life from but I don't want to feed them yeast or whatever as a main source of food... I'm buying spirulina flakes regardless because it's time I made some homemade food for my fish again so I can keep that on hand as backup >_>...

Ah, I just really like cories ^^;. I'm from Brazil, it's like the land of cories there and I can't wait to visit there again once I'm out of school and settled, I'm going to buy so many cories there to bring back! I'll need to save up to get all the licenses I need to accept them . I think it's a hit or miss thing. My first batch of panda cories had them show up, my most recent batch didn't despite the latter being the one batch that was super sick and nearly all died.. What species of cory were they again? Pygmy? I know they're very jerky swimmers sometimes but I've never actually kept them before so I can't say for sure if I can help on that.. Do they stop moving all of a sudden too? Because I know jerky movements can be a defense mechanism for them when they feel threatened but I've never seen it first hand in an aquarium before.

It is weird right?! My first day with him burping I just stared at him like... "wait what???!" I was very confused XD. I have no idea what the OO pellets are like but I had a bottle of Atison's here. I opened it for you (it's basically been nothing but decoration here, I need to toss it) to measure it but I'm not sure if it's the same one because my bottle expired in 2010(???), oops. Never even been opened before... Oooh but it comes with a little spoon like the OO micro veggie pellets! The pellets are really tiny on this one:
https://goo.gl/photos/YKojFyM6XkU3tnjk6

Ah, it might be then. I've never seen a PK with a double tail before, didn't think it could happen before I saw him! XD If you breed him I'm really curious to see his offspring (if I didn't end up buying one )!

Edit:



fernielou said:


> Healthy animals probably won't starve themselves.


^+1, I second this~


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I need Nameless to eat because I'm on a bit of a time crunch. He did at one point go a full week without food, but since then I've been able to convince him to eat at least a pellet every other day. He needs to eat so I can make sure his poop is healthy and so I can introduce him to the 10 gallon with a full belly and hopefully reduce his likelihood of eating his tankmates. If he turns out to be a murderer I either have to do an entire redo on both tanks to move the cories and shrimp into the 5 gallon and divide the 10 for the bettas, or I have to rehome Nameless. This has to be done within 2 weeks before the new semester starts because my classes are brutal and I need to find tutors and a job/place to volunteer. There won't be time to deal with tank switches and the like. 

I wish I could just get another tank and hope my aunt doesn't get mad! She's kind enough to let me (and my dog, cat, and fish) stay here while I go to college so making her angry isn't the best idea. She was also the one who bought me the 10 gallon to upgrade Spitfire and make it a community on the condition that I didn't set up the 5 gallon again. But then she pointed out Spike on a trip to Petco and was ok with me bringing him home because he looked so awful. I think I'm already pushing it with the quarantine tank. 

There's a very good chance you will have to get a car smogged at some point then. It's generally required every 2 years. I used to get migraines so I'm familiar with that. 

Seriously if I got cash back bonuses for Amazon purchases I would be set for life. I buy EVERYTHING off Amazon. How did you get that perk? I need it. When I was briefly looking into breeding adorable shrimpies I found that some people use Biomax or the like for the fry to hide in and feed off of. They just keep a pile on the bottom of the tank and let it do it's thing. How do you make homemade food? Details please! 

Would you breed them if you brought them back or just let them swim around and look pretty? Mine are pygmies. Cutest little things I ever saw. They are very wiggly swimmers and swim in a stop and go fashion. Since I stare at the tank so much they're all used to me being there and don't freak out when I come up. There's a couple of the babies that actually swim up the glass until their at my eye level and they just stay there wiggling like mad for the longest time. It doesn't seem like a defense mechanism. It looks like a bad tick. The baby cory will be swimming along looking for food and the body will suddenly jerk into a complete right angle, then it continues on like nothing happened. So. Weird. I just get all the weird animals apparently. 

Thank you for looking at the size! Goodness they are tiny. Hopefully they're tiny enough for his liking. You would think a fish his size would eat the larger Omega One pellets but no, he seems to only swallow the little ones. Maybe the big ones are just burped back up too easy? He does burp after every. single. bite. I did get him to eat quite well today, though not nearly enough for a boy his size; it's just barely enough to fill up petite Spike. He ate 3 pellets for breakfast and 3 small bloodworms for dinner. Maybe that will be enough food for a visible poop. The QT is bare bottom and I still haven't found poop. 

Double tail plakats are fairly common but I think a good number look weird. The ones with the fully separated tails look odd to me. I'll try to find some good pictures on google of all the different degrees of separation. I actually really do want to breed but I just don't think I could or would be allowed. It would require getting a female betta and another tank, a grow out tank, containers for jarring, live food cultures. Then there's the issue of selling the babies. I wouldn't be comfortable selling to the pet stores around here because they don't take care of their fish and I don't want my babies to end up in cold little bowls. I have no experience shipping so not sure how that would work. Oh and the issue of culling. If they're tiny enough I could definitely feed some to Spike because he's vicious. And I wouldn't be allowed to keep any babies most likely since that would mean more tanks. Yea...but I really do want to breed. Some day maybe. If Neptune Aquatics had any interest in splendens I would totally feel comfortable selling to them (after informing them of proper care, of course).


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

Aah, I see, I see. Your worry is that he'll go after the other tank inhabitants if he's not well-fed.. Have you tried soaking in fresh garlic juice or spirulina brine shrimp? I find that either of those tend to be the best options for excessively picky/sick and not hungry fishies.

XD You could always try to butter her up before you bring up the subject of a new tank and just tell her how Nameless is big and not friendly and you didn't expect to have had such a hard time with him and tell her how grateful you are that she accepted all of you in and how Nameless is so big so it's hard to get him adopted, etc etc.

lol, it's a Discover card for students. They have different cashback bonuses during different seasons. From a while back until September the cashback bonus is home improvement stores and amazon, after Sept it changes again. It's not a bad card, they granted me 1000 in credit so it's not too low either. I think 1000, 1500 is their maximum and once your student status expires I believe they give you the option to get a regular credit account afterwards. Do you mean Biomax like the filter media? I'll have to check that out. I've never worried about shrimp breeding before because frankly I've never had shrimp breed (that I've noticed) in the past I don't think?? Ah, homemade food is easy, especially because I'm so close to the coast so I can get fresh food. I normally buy from this store down in Cambridge: New Deal Fish Market. It's important, to me anyways, to pick high quality meats for the food because it may be expensive but I don't need much since I only have just a few fish. I pick the stores I buy from by researching which stores in Boston have consistently been picked in the top 10 lists of reviews and articles as fresh, high quality stock. I like to use salmon (easier to pollute the water with salmon so I tend to not make it my main ingredient but rather as a supplement), cod, herring, shrimp, squid and/or whatever they have in stock I want to try. I've also used frozen krill from the pet store. If you're making homemade fish food as a staple, I recommend researching the nutritional content you want in the food and then shopping based on that but I make mine as a treat primarily so I go with whatever. I can also add in spinach, paprika, garlic, I always add in spirulina... Sometimes I added Vitachem as well though I have no idea what I did to calculate the percentage of that since it's been so long. Then you just blend everything up, bind it with gelatin, and freeze in sandwich baggies, thin like so I can cut up and separate into single serving blocks to make it easier for when I'm in a rush to feed. It's not that complicated nor an exact science, it's mostly just time consuming :/. If you're interested in making some I can definitely lend you my noggin for you to peruse when choosing ingredients ~

I wouldn't breed them, I'm definitely not a breeder XD. Though somehow the fish I buy tend to breed anyways so I just take that as their casual way of telling me I'm doing something right and then being on my way lol. I'm wondering how long the process takes to get a license to collect locally because I've been considering getting a tour of the amazon when I next go and it would be awesome to collect some aquatic plants to try to grow and bring them both back ;A; (No wild caught fish though, I don't support wild caught much)!! Ah, yeah, I've never kept that species.. If he's fine otherwise he might just have a weird tick? 

My pleasure C:, that bottle has been sitting here for too long, it's finally proved useful!

Oh wow those pk are gorgeous too ! I've never seen them double tail before, this is like a revelation to me XD!! Ah, yeah... culling.. I know it's necessary sometimes but I would just upset myself considerably if I had to deal with that...


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

He has no interest in soaked pellets of any kind, or in any kind of garlic juice- fresh or Seachem. He also wasn't fond of spirulina brine shrimp. I will try then again at some point of course. 

I very highly doubt she would be ok with another tank under any circumstances. Unless, of course, she herself finds a fish that's near death and she wants me to nurse it back to health. I really hope he does do ok with tankmates. If he doesn't I'm not quite sure what I'll do with him. Maybe I ought to just get a baby betta so it can grow up with tankmates. 

I may need to get a card like that. Yes, Biomax filter media. It won't look pretty but apparently it's functional. If I do make food I would definitely love your assistance! 

I imagine a license wouldn't be too easy to acquire. It would be awesome to get different kinds of plants! I don't support wild caught fish either. When I was considering buying the Pygmy cories online I was very frustrated because so many were wild caught. I do think it must just be a weird tick. He's the most active little one out of the bunch. 

Culling and selling are the main reasons I'm hesitant to ever breed. It's not like I could hand pick all the owners for my babies and ensure they have the proper care. If I knew someone with a large fish I could give the culls to that would make my life a lot easier. Sadly, I know no one who is interested in aquariums. I ought to make new friends that share my interests.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

It has been confirmed: pellet size must be very tiny. Which makes absolutely no sense considering how big his mouth is. On Monday or Tuesday I'll put him in the 10 and see how it goes. Of he's not a jerk I'm going to get more RCS once the plant mess is sorted because I only see one left. 

The plants in the 10 are still a hot mess. My old plants are continuing to turn yellow, get holes, and or turn to mush. I don't understand what's wrong. It has to still be effects from when my aunt cared for the tank. She admitted to not looking closely at the fertilizer dosages and not noticing the decimals for a couple weeks, and then trying to compensate by not fertilizing at all. That's a lot for any plant to bounce back from. The new plants are all melting like hell. The cories keep pulling up tg e staurogyne repens so for now I'm giving up on keeping it planted and letting it float until it gets roots. A fair number of pieces, nearly half, have melted into nothing so I think I'll order more from eBay. But do I buy tiny baby stems like what I have now or do I buy mature stems that have a decent leaf size? Either way they're floating until rooted.


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

Oh wow he's being more difficult than he needs to be :/.. At least he eats the tiny pellets! He's just a delicate boy at heart C;.

Even if you do get a baby though, it's no guarantee he'll still be okay later on. After 2 years my Rusty has now decided he hates snails and I am in a constant battle with him to remove the snails as soon as they mature from that tank before he rips his fins again flaring at them all day :/... Such peculiar fish!

I recommend it, you get a choice between a cityscape, a retro casette, a red flower (my pick), or standard blue for your card: https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/student/it-card.html and they have a cash back for good grades. I'm crazy and anal and maybe a little bit too logical and analytical sometimes so I made comparisons between nearly 30 credit cards before I made this one my pick and even if your uses/reasons are not the same as mine, I can still guarantee this card is at least a top 10, if not top 5, card for your purposes. Ooh, interesting. I do have a store that sells ceramic media nearby, I'm going to grab some if I get the chance.. It'll be good to grow algae/phytoplankton in too. Thanks for the tip!! I purchased the 20 long yesterday and am setting up the stand in the living room later today, I'm buying everything else off amazon with 2 day shipping. The eggs are getting lighter in color but don't appear to have eyes yet so I'm taking this as a good sign. It's been 2 weeks since I first observed the eggs so I should have another week at least to set everything up.. Hopefully. I really don't want her hatching in the 29 because I haven't been very diligent with my feeding lately and I think my fish will have a feeding frenzy :x.. And feel free to ask anything if/when you do C:!!

The license to pick up imported livestock here in MA isn't bad. You just have to pay a $100 fee if it hasn't changed in the past few years. The problem is Brazil's, especially my state's, government (you have to get a license from the state you reside in.. in my case where my family resides) isn't particularly a location where people understand the meaning of urgency :/. So who knows if I can get it in time despite it supposedly being not too lengthy overall. You do need to have a reason for your license since it's the same one you get to collect both plants and livestock so I'm hoping "research purposes as a biology major" will suffice XD. The hardest part will be finding a sponsor so I'll have to check how that works before I go. I think the fee was around $300 so in USD that's about another $100-150 depending on inflation. Not too bad considering. If I can't get the license I'll at least buy the fish locally and have them schedule to be imported a few days after I fly back. Yeah, it's easier to get them wild than breed them because of how many there are sadly... I hate this part of the hobby :/.

Check out if there are any aquarium clubs near you? I know there's an aquarium club down at Boston aquarium that meets regularly called the Boston Aquarium Society (though I've never been to a meeting ). I found these:
California Aquarium Clubs
California Fish and aquarium clubs and Societies
COAST Fish Club California - Home

Lots of Koi clubs.

Hmm, holes are usually potassium deficiency. Do you have KSO4 to dose just potassium? How are they turning yellow? Is it the whole plant or just the leaves? If just the leaves is it old growth or new? I would say buy the mature leaves, they're less likely to go into shock if healthy. Also, do you keep any of those plastic pots rooted plants come in? I usually cut the bottom and insert them into the substrate around my plants to give them a chance to root because my cory are destructive as well. I can show you a picture if you want of what I mean. 

Also, this is an old, old image of what my 5 gallon looked like but I had mesh in the filter kind of what you were asking about before:
https://goo.gl/photos/YKojFyM6XkU3tnjk6
The black thing you can see under the Hydrocotyle is a cut in half sponge for a sponge filter that I wrapped around the bottom half of the mesh. The filter was way too strong for a 5 gallon and the current was blowing him away so I had to divert it. Worked well but I'd recommend that insert into the other half of the filter to be larger than 3 rows of mesh squares if you're putting weight below because the sponge was too heavy and it broke .


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

He is an exceedingly difficult boy. After I finish this post I'm going to feed everyone some frozen bloodworms then scoop him up and float him in the 10 to acclimate. I'm debating on whether to turn the tank light on while I do that so I can see how he reacts to the cories. I probably should. If he reacts like Spike did when I had him floating in there odds are he's a violent jerk. 

Ya know bettas have the reputation of being one of, if not THE, easiest fish to keep. But they're so temperamental! A fish that may suddenly go on a rampage and kill everything in the tank shouldn't be considered the easiest fish to keep! 

I am for sure going to look in to that card! I hope you have success with the baby shrimpies! I'm ridiculously excited for pictures. 

So the process is sorta expensive but not crazy insane expensive. There's some YouTube channels I love to watch but I can't bring myself to anymore because the person went out and caught wild fish for their tank. Why do you have to tear an animal from its home to put it in a comparatively tiny tank? All the while risking it's life during shipping and stressing it out beyond belief. 

Last time I checked there were no clubs near me. I don't really live in an area that likes that kind of thing. This portion of Silicon Valley really cares about nothing more than pretty cars and businessy/technical stuff. It's quite boring and I certainly don't fit in. I will definitely check out those links though in case a new one has popped up since I last looked. 

I dose Leaf Zone which has potassium in it. When I'm out of that I'm buying straight up potassium. The leaves turn completely yellow, both old and new leaves, especially on my swords. I have a ton of root tabs in there though so I don't really understand it. I guess it could still be the effects of my aunt's care. I should just be greatful any plants are alive. Since she didn't notice decimal points, things that were supposed to be a 0.5 mL dose became a 5 mL dose. Then when she eventually noticed her mistake she stopped fertilizing all together. Going from regular fertilization to extreme fertilization to no fertilization and now back to regular must be fairly hard on the plants. I went with the ones that were more mature than I have now but not totally mature. The deal was a bit better. I rarely ever get plants that come in pots. I think I've only ever had two or so plants come in pots, and no I don't keep them. Pictures would be lovely though so I can do that next time! 

Yea I was sorta trying to do something like that. I noticed one piece of Java miss floating around had actually attached itself to the dried superglue from my failed attempt, so I just glued all the moss on the filter and made sure to put tons of super glue in bare spots and poke at it a bit so it would dry rough for attachment. Hopefully it works!

I got a picture of the little Cory with white stuff on his head. I've named him Fungus.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Well Fungus the Cory also has white stuff on his tail and it appears to be eating it away. He's nearly tail-less at this point. If I can catch him I'll QT him. That's a big if. He's a fast little sucker. 

Nameless is doing well thus far. Everyone got a fair number of frozen bloodworms before he was introduced. For Nameless it was to hopefully reduce the likelihood of him eating anyone. For the cories it was in case he chased them a lot and they felt the need to hide out for a couple days. He went crazy while he was acclimating but has settled down quite nicely. He's been in the tank about 3 and a half hours thus far. The first hour was in the dark. As of now he has no interest in the snails or the RCS. He enjoys chasing the pygmies a bit but quickly gets distracted. There was one attempt to eat a gammarus shrimp but, unsurprisingly, he decided it was too big and spit it out. The shrimp was seriously freaked and buried himself crazy fast. His tiny food requirement may actually be beneficial. I'm a bit worried for the RCS since both are freshly molted, one of which was this morning. Hopefully he proves to be compatible with community life. If he isn't I'll probably rehome him since I'm not at all attached. 

Does anyone have name ideas? My family actually likes the name Nameless. They think I should keep it that. I'm not too fond of that idea.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Does anyone else get extreme anxiety just knowing you have to go somewhere and/or interact with people? Going anywhere gives me anxiety and today has been especially awful. 

First I had to go get my haircut. It's not the haircut itself that gave me anxiety since I was going to see the guy my aunt has gone to most of her adult life, it's the having to talk to a stranger and driving to an unknown location. I was freaking out and sweating profusely the entire way there. I feel bad that he had to touch my hair with how nasty it was after that. Granted, he did wash it first, but he still had to touch it. Then when it came time to pay my card was declined and he didn't have enough change for my cash, so he told me to come back later and pay and he would run to the bank and get more cash for change. Well, I ran home then went up the street to Walgreens to break the $100 and make his life easier with exact change. It was the first time I've driven there (usually I walk) so anxiety was already high, then the cashier was displeased with my payment choice so anxiety went up a few more notches. By the time I got back in the car I was shaking. Then it gets worse. Since I wasn't thinking straight and was busy replaying her comment about the bill over and over in my head, I pulled out of the parking spot in the wrong direction. I wanted to cry. I made it back to the hair salon, paid, made it home, and have concluded I can never show my face at Walgreens again. I thought it was very odd that my card was declined so I checked my balance. I was shocked and pretty sure there should be a zero at the end of it. Apparently I've been spending too much. It still really doesn't make sense though, so I'm going to go through every charge from the last few months. And I have an appointment at the DMV today. And I have to go to the post office and pick up textbooks and head to the bank. I seriously think I'm going to have a full blown panic attack by the end of the day.


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## DangerousAngel (Mar 26, 2015)

(((HUGS))) I know those feelings all to well, I'm like that especially when I have to do something like talk on the phone, I put a lot of things off just so I don't have to talk on the phone. Try and take a deep breath (although I know those don't really help), and if you can get away to like a bathroom or something, and just try and calm yourself down, that always helped me enough to get through the rest of whatever I was doing.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Talking on the phone is horrible! I try to do as much as possible online. If online shopping wasn't possible I would have a ton more money because I hate going in stores. Generally where I am I have no where to hide, which makes it ten times worse. 

I survived the DMV, though I did miss a turn getting there and drove around aimlessly until I found a parking lot I could sit in and pull up directions. I finally got my plates, but I don't have screws to put on the front one. That car hasn't had a front plate in years. Hopefully my aunt has some around here somewhere that she can pull out when she gets home. I can't handle going anywhere else today so the bank and post office will have to wait until tomorrow.

Fungus the Cory is dead. I found him in a plant up side down and he was still breathing so I put him in a container and floated him in the QT tank with some ParaGuard. His tail was completely gone. I had to go to the DMV so I didn't have time to do much else. When I came back he was still alive and still upside down, though he had sunk to the bottom. I gave the QT a full cleaning and put an old filter in it without media to oxygenate the water since he was stuck on his back at the bottom. Within 15 minutes of putting him in the QT he died. Upon close inspection of his body I could tell that all his fins were rotting and the fungus covered his body in patches. The remaining cories seem healthy. I can only confirm that there are 7 left but the other two could be hiding somewhere. It's possible that the shipment of pygmy cories the store got weren't completely healthy. Or maybe Fungus got his tail nipped by one of the other cories soon after being put in the tank and since he was already extremely stressed from the move he succumbed to infection. I supposed we will never know. I buried him in the same plant as Spitfire and will be keeping a very close eye on the rest of the fish in the tank.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Another day of anxiety- this stuff is getting seriously ridiculous. I managed the post office with no problem but getting to the bank was another story. Has anyone ever driven in Silicon Valley? It's horrid. Blinkers are treated like Christmas decorations, people will switch lanes then change their mind and swerve back. It's just all bad. When I got to the bank I managed to keep the shaking under locks with lots of deep breathing and got Starbucks to reward myself, but the drive back was awful. I didn't want to go back the way I went so I looked up another way. Well, apparently my phone got confused and it didn't help that people wouldn't let me over so I missed a ton of turns. It didn't get any better when I finally got on the expressway. Again, people wouldn't let me over and I missed multiple turns. I eventually ended up saying "f**k it" and channeled my inner California driver to squeeze myself in and finally get where I needed to go. I planned to go get the car washed but I had to pull into my neighborhood for a few minutes to calm myself. Thankfully I did manage not to cry. Anxiety and crying go hand in hand for me. Getting the car washed was my first time by myself. Again, more anxiety. The line was long and one car had issues and had to go get an attendant. It took over 45 minutes and my bladder was killing me by the time I pulled out of the car wash. I was going to go to Target to get screws so I can put the front license plate on the car but my bladder couldn't handle that. I guess I'll be going out and about again tomorrow. Sigh. At least I won't be driving to unfamiliar places. It bothers me that a lot of my family doesn't understand anything about anxiety or believe I have issues with it. They just tell me to get over it. That's not how things work. If it was that simple I wouldn't have these issues. 

In other news, Nameless is now comfortable enough to eat in the 10 gallon. He's also started a bubble nest. The fish is like a vacuum. I have a wide variety of critters in my tank including a few planaria, a bit of detritus worms, cyclops, and more that I haven't identified. Nameless eats them all. He plucks them off the glass and munches. Hopefully by the end of the week I know enough about him to come up with a name.


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## astrummortis (Aug 15, 2016)

Poor Spitfire! I'm so sorry he's not getting better


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Spitfire is long gone actually. I euthanized him a couple months ago. But hey, welcome to my journal! Oh and there's a post in here somewhere with pictures of him dead so watch out for that in case you want to skip over it


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## astrummortis (Aug 15, 2016)

Oh, sorry! I must have not read the date or thought I was clicking the last page and wasn't.ugh, being new to a forum rookie mistakes!

Poor guy. I'm still browsing your thread, but I'll probably move past them. I haven't seen enough fish death yet to be used to it.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Even when you're more used to it it's still unpleasant to see pictures of anything dead. I posted them to see if anyone else could find more problems he had that I didn't notice.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

It must be the worst when others tell you to "get over" something that isn't easy to get over. So sorry there was so much trouble with your recent trips. And ugh, I know, I replay rude comments in my head a lot too and I usually have to watch a show or bury myself in something to distract myself to make myself feel better. This is a good reminder for me to watch what I say to strangers at work and in my every day encounters and to be more positive and respectful to others. 

Lol @ Nameless. A picky eater and now a vacuum! 




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## fernielou (May 19, 2015)

I think you should name Nameless Munch. Or Dyson 

Sorry to read about your anxiety. I had a friend in college who would come get me to make phone calls for her because she was so afraid to inconvience strangers (not me apparently ) I hope one day you will learn to put rude people out of your thoughts - not worth your time or energy. Easier said than done, I know!


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

It's odd because there's a lot of comments I have zero problem with, like the ones that are insulting or offensive. Those aren't a problem for me at all. The judgemental ones get me though. I really can't explain it. 

Dyson was actually the first thing I thought of when I watched him suck up the planarian. Even I have difficulty getting them off the glass and he just sucked it up like nothing. I think Nameless may have just gotten himself a name!


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

I love the name Dyson!! 

In my experience, the judgy comments make me feel inadequate and also offended. Like, you don't know me! What gives you the right to say that? At the same time, I think, are they right? Am I like that? 

I can also wave off rude comments because I can say to myself that they're like that and it's not my fault their grumpy pants are on so tight. 


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## fernielou (May 19, 2015)

Had someone when my mom was dying and I was working at a restaurant come up and say I was needing to perk it up. I mean I was thinking about her dying and I'm not even 20 at the time. So I try to hold the judgment bc of that experience while also realizing people suck and you sometimes just have to blow it off 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

He shall be Dyson then! It makes me think of the guy in Lost Girl. I can have a theme tank! I'm pretty sure the two RCS are one of each gender, so one will be Kenzi and the other Hale. Now there's 7-ish pygmy cories to name. Hmmm... Trick, Lauren, Tamsin, Vex, Morrigan, Massimo, and Rainer. There! A fully named tank!

I try so hard to never be judgmental because you never know what someone is going through. In reality it's none of anyone's business. If it doesn't effect you directly then everyone should mind their own business. Sometimes I irritate my parents with how accepting I am. For example, my dad doesn't like flamboyant gays or cross dressers much. There's a lot he doesn't like in that realm but we'll stick to that for now. He's made comments before about guys wearing makeup. Generally I avid giving my opinion on anything at all costs because it starts an argument or he'll get angry and it's just not really worth it. But on one occasion he asked my opinion on the makeup and cross-dressing and I told him as long as their bits and pieces are tucked away under the skirt I really don't care. More often than not they can do makeup better than girls can so frankly I envy their skill and would seriously love to be taught how they get their winged eyeliner so perfect. He wasn't fond of that. He's also complained about gay PDA and got mad when I told him not to look then. Gradually he's becoming more accepting though. He and my stepmom both asked me if I was gay when I was visiting because I haven't had a boyfriend in two years and haven't mentioned any guys to them. They seemed relieved when I assured them that I'm straight, but they weren't mad or scared when they asked so I consider that progress. But seriously, what girl mentions every guy she talks to to her parents? That's not how that works.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Oh yeah, I used to engage in conversations about lgbtq issues with my parents and now, I just shrug or nod or stay silent. One time, I was listening to the radio and the host was gay and talking about how he introduced his boyfriend to his parents but broke up a day later. It was a funny story and my dad laughed but then got confused. I had to clarify that he was gay. And I was ready for a bad comment from my dad but he just said that the radio station must be really progressive. Surprise!!! 

I actually like watching men do make up on YouTube because I find they have more varied looks to teach. Also, it wows me how beautiful and feminine they can be and then the next look, handsome and masculine. 




fernielou said:


> Had someone when my mom was dying and I was working at a restaurant come up and say I was needing to perk it up. I mean I was thinking about her dying and I'm not even 20 at the time. So I try to hold the judgment bc of that experience while also realizing people suck and you sometimes just have to blow it off
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk




Geez. That sucks. I'm sorry  


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## Dalloway (Apr 13, 2014)

sabrinah said:


> Talking on the phone is horrible!


XD I used to be the same way too so I totally understand the feeling!! I still avoid it in my personal time but I work in a pharmacy so I kind of was forced to get used to it now :crying:..



sabrinah said:


> Fungus the Cory is dead...


I'm so sorry to hear that! It sounds a lot like columnaris which is what my Pandas had. In my case, and possibly even in your case, it could just be an infection they already had from the store or that they acquired during shipment. Columnaris infects and spreads much more easily when the fish is stressed so a recently purchased fish is much more susceptible and unfortunately it spreads within 24 hours and usually the majority pass away within 48hrs. If you want, send me a PM if you need treatment advice in case any of your other cories get infected too and I'll let you know how I treated my cories because the first response treatment didn't work for me for my Panda. I can't remember what I used off the top of my head but I'll check for you if you need me to from my logs.



sabrinah said:


> Has anyone ever driven in Silicon Valley? It's horrid. Blinkers are treated like Christmas decorations, people will switch lanes then change their mind and swerve back.


Ah, basically it's the kinder version of driving in Boston C:. Seriously, never drive here if you can avoid it. I have warned you. Sorry about all the anxiety ;~;..

:blueyay::greenyay::blueyay:
^^ Yay Nameless/Dyson is eating!! Even if it's not the food you're giving him XD. 

Ah, my gram was extremely racist before towards darker skinned folk and I'm just confused. Because it's like.. Gram, WE'RE NOT WHITE. My family ancestry on her side is like that border between Europe/Asia/Africa and there's no way to even mistake 90% of our family as caucasian. I don't get it. She's gotten better too.. I think. Or maybe she just gave up on giving dirty looks to dark skinned folk ^^;. And it's not even their nationality, it's literally just how dark the skin is. She has a threshold between ok/not ok??? It's so weird.



fernielou said:


> Had someone when my mom was dying and I was working at a restaurant come up and say I was needing to perk it up. I mean I was thinking about her dying and I'm not even 20 at the time. So I try to hold the judgment bc of that experience while also realizing people suck and you sometimes just have to blow it off
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I'm sorry to hear that too. I work with giving people their medications so I get the short end of the stick a lot of times but I can't judge either. Especially because I'm literally seeing what they're going through... For the most part. Some people just like making others miserable though x_x.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Moral of the story is BE NICE!!! Life has seriously sucky times for everyone and there's no need for grumpiness to make it worse! 
My mom is horribly racist but she still does her best to be nice to all strangers unless they're especially rude or mean. Of course once she's away from the people she'll say awful things but never to anyone's face.

The thought of columnaris is terrifying. It's been 3 days since he died and so far no one else is growing white fuzzy stuff. Dyson does appear to have scraped the side of his head, most likely while he was chasing the cories. He doesn't even look where he's going! He just assumes if they can fit so can he. Many a plant has been uprooted when he gets stuck. I'll be watching that spot very closely. I tried to get a picture of it but the fish is impossible and won't stop moving. 

When I bought my RCS there was two itty bitty baby shrimp in the bag. I assumed they had died but I saw one yesterday!!! It's orange.

Apparently there was something in the air this morning because Cookie, Dyson, and Spike all went absolutely nuts. Cookie was running around the room, jumping on the side of the bed and hanging there like a spider cat, then setting off to repeat again. I was terrified she was going to climb up the side of the bed and run across me with her claws still out. It did happen but she was kind enough to only tear up my leg. Dyson and Spike were both swimming around crazy fast flaring for a solid 20 minutes. There was absolutely no reason for this but I'm glad they were feeling so energetic. 

I have pictures! I tried getting pictures that show how much brighter Dyson has gotten but he doesn't like to cooperate so those pictures suck. Spike wasn't feeling particularly photogenic either but I still got a couple decent ones of him. His fins are finally solid red and his body is clearly heading down the same path. I'm not excited for that at all. Cookie has an addiction to treats I got for Beast at a farmer's market. They're just straight up dried strips of chicken. No preservatives, no salt or anything. This cat hates healthy food yet she loves these enough that she sticks her head in the bag and tries to chew a corner off if it's closed.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Dyson is gorgeous!!! How do you feel about him now? He's showing more of his personality from what I'm reading, even though most of it is troublesome XD

And lol @ Cookie. Cats are so difficult but I love them for it. 

On a heavier note: It's very possible for people of colour/non-white people to have racist ideas or prejudices within their own race as well (internalized racism) or having prejudices against darker skinned people (colourism). We live in a society that is mostly dominated by images and ideas of whiteness. It's a sad thing and a hard thing to unlearn. I remember when I was younger and I was very proud that I wasn't typically Chinese/Asian but now that I'm older, I know that was very sad and hurtful. I used to want to be white and it's not possible for me but I've learned to love who I am and my culture and my race. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I still don't love Dyson. I feel no connection with him and looking at him doesn't bring me happiness like it does with Spike and did with Spitfire. When I look at him it's more of "what the heck are you doing now?!" and "don't eat that!" Oh and I can't leave out "do NOT tail smack the HEATER again! Are you trying to break it?!?!?" Maybe he'll grow on me. Even if I don't like him I couldn't bear to rehome him because I wouldn't know if he's receiving the proper care. If he got stuck suffering in an improper home all because I wasn't thrilled with him I wouldn't be able to forgive myself. At least he's doing a spectacular job cleaning the tank. I haven't seen a single gammarus shrimp since I put him in and I haven't seen any planarians after I watched him suck one off the glass. 

Is anyone ever fully happy with their color through their entire life? I'm as white as you can possibly get (German, Austrian, and Irish. I practically glow in the dark.) and I was always made fun of for it. I'm super pale with freckles and couldn't tan if my life depended on it. As a kid other kids would make comments about me being too pale and looking like a ghost. My friends would say I would look better and thinner if I had a tan, that I need a spray tan, that I should try tanning beds because all the pretty people have tans. All I wanted was to be Latin like my stepmom so I could have a tan. Even when she hasn't spent any time in the sun at all for months she's still tan. In middle school and a good chunk of high school I was always trying self tanners so I could wear a skirt without anyone saying I'm too pale for once but I sucked at applying it so I just ended up orange. But hey, orange was still better than ghostly. Orange was counted as a semblance of tan and thus much more acceptable than being pale. I tried really hard to get a tan for a while and laid outside everyday in the 110 degree Vegas heat and you know what I got? More freckles, including a number of large ones on my legs that made them even more unacceptable to show according to everyone. Even now I avoid shorts, skirts, and dresses so my legs don't show because I'm so pale that you can see a fair number of my veins, and I have spider veins which aren't pretty. If I was the porcelain type of pale that's smooth and not blotchy in the least then I would look acceptable. I seriously wish society would stop focusing on physical appearance so fricken much. Hardly anyone fits in to what's considered acceptable and desirable unless you have the money to alter your body.


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## fernielou (May 19, 2015)

You are a cellophane human? Lol me too. It doesn't bother me and never has...my mom had skin cancer while pregnant with me so even though that natural color some people have is nice, don't add risks to your life to have it. cellos need love too 

I had a fish I hated once and I am not attached to Olaf really (speaking of cellos needing love). I am so dang attached to my koi boy and I was attached
To pinky and Gilbert. I am trying to rehome him to a good family. Maintaining a 20 gallon tank for a fish you don't even enjoy - crazy


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I am cellophane! I went to Great America on Saturday and got mildly burned in a couple places. No tan for me though. I'm already fading back to my usual glow in the dark paleness. The burn was totally worth the churro I got though. I swear it was a good foot and a half. 

How do you make sure it really is a good family though? There's always the risk of them seeming good but then growing tired of the fish and severely neglecting it. Even though I really wanted a big betta I kinda wish I had just waited and bought one of KitKat's babies. There's a couple I really wanted. 

The other thing with Dyson is that his colors really don't show in the 10 much. Since most of the tank has salvinia or something else shading it he just looks like a black blob. There's one very tiny patch that his colors really show in when he swims through it. He's an awful centerpiece fish.


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## fernielou (May 19, 2015)

Well it's my friend and her daughter is having a birthday. She and her kids became snail fans due to my babies I bred and I ordered light purple snails and offered her one. She wants it but took down the 30 gal. I told her get a smaller aquarium and I would have a pink betta (hey cello look pink) and purple snail for her daughter. She's a good gal and she takes care of her stuff. It's a specific family


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

That's going to be one happy kid! Heck even I would get happy over a purple snail (it's my favorite color). And many cellos can definitely pass for pink. I don't know why but I'm not fond of cello females or pk males. I just don't find it very pretty. Although, a cello would probably look great in the 10. Since the body is so light they would show through the shadows quite well. Hmmmm....If I knew anyone that was in to fish I would have rehomed Dyson a while ago probably. If I ever do find a place for him I just may get a cello boy for that tank, or at least a betta with very light, bright colors.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Question for dog owners: What smells scare your dog?

Now an explanation for that question. I tend to sleep with my window open and the blinds up a bit because my cat loves sitting in the window. She'll climb through the blinds if they're not lifted. Anyway, Beast heard something, then smelled something, and situated himself on guard in front of the window. All was well and he went back to sleep. Then suddenly he jumped up, looked out the window, and absolutely lost it. Insane barking (at 11:30 pm) and growling. Since it's dark I can't see anything through my window so I pulled him back and closed and locked the window. My aunt got up to see what was wrong and tried to help me quiet Beast but he was having none of it. We decided to let him run around the house a bit in hopes that that would help him calm down but it didn't work. He would not stop barking. I should mentioned that he is trained to bark and be quiet on command and he would not comply with the "quiet" command. You could tell he was trying as he would growl instead of bark, but it was like he couldn't contain himself and had to start barking again. Anyways, I ended up having to grab the prong collar, leash, and a flashlight to let him check out the backyard. There were no visible animals or people and the gate was closed. We looked around with the flashlight a bit and saw nothing. Beast made sure to give his biggest, most threatening bark when someone walked past the house. When I started leading him back to the door to go inside he caught a scent. It seriously freaked him out. I've probably mentioned before that he's a horribly over confident, very dominant dog. His tail is always lifted as high as it can go and he's ready to challenge anything and everything (except for aquatic turtles. He finds those scary for some reason). Well, that smell made his tail drop instantly. He became incredibly jumpy and was clearly torn between tracking the smell and hiding behind me. I hoped that since we had confirmed the intruder was gone he would stop barking when we returned inside. Nope. I had to start correcting him for ignoring the quiet command because he absolutely would not stop barking and the neighbors have a baby. I may not like babies but I don't want to wake the fussy things up either. It took a good half an hour to get him completely quiet and relaxed enough to doze off. Once before he's smelled this same thing in the backyard super early in the morning that freaked him out for an entire week. We've also encountered this smell at a local lake. My guess is fox or coyote. Of course it could have been a person since he has a hatred for men, but his aggression wasn't quite at the male stranger danger level. Coyotes have recently been sighted in this area of the city and foxes show up everywhere. With all the fires and loss of wildlife it's not surprising that animals are forced to come in to neighborhoods. Many animals are attracted to my neighbor's yard because they have many fruit trees that they don't take care of. They also have geese and other neighbors have cats that are allowed outside, all of which are potential coyote food.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Two minutes too late to edit! Darn. After finally looking up some of the feces I've found in the backyard I've concluded it's probably a fox. My neighbor's yard really is perfect for any animal and the foxes here can climb, so it makes sense. If we could just reach an agreement that it will stop leaving half eaten avocados in the yard (although that could be a raccoon or opossum) and only climb the fence on the far side of the yard well away from my window, I would be more than happy to have a fox around.


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

Yup we have 2 huge possum's here my dogs bark at. They are honestly harmless and when They play dead you can touch them (don't really recommend that though). They are probably 20lbs each bigger than my dogs lol


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Opossums we are very familiar with. I have to move them from my yard quite often, especially the juveniles. All too often they're actually dead. We have a few large cats the wreak havoc on all the neighborhood animals. My dog isn't scared of them or their smell at all. He loves rolling on them. When they first started showing up he would bring them to me until he realized brining them to me made them go away.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Bad day. My last textbook STILL hasn't arrived. I'm very mad. It said shipping would be 4-8 days, max 12 days. Today is day 12 and still no book. Guaranteed fast shipping my a**. 

The 10 gallon is having a mass algae outbreak all over the glass. It's so lovely. All the plants are still melting like mad. Most of the crypts have lost all their leaves. The hygrophila is in the process of losing all it's emersed leaves and very slowly regrowing them. It's times like these when I'm tempted by CO2 to speed up growth. One of the two remaining RCS died today. I found it just as I was finishing up a water change. It didn't appear damaged in any way and seemed to have molted recently. I hope the female is still alive at least. She was getting fat and may have been berried. The single orange shrimp is still kicking. I think it's a male so if the female RCS is alive there's a hope of babies! The filter on that tank has decided it no longer wants to be adjustable and only works full force. Dyson has no problem with that but it still annoys me. It's six months old. This shouldn't be a problem. If it decides to screw up in any other way I'm going to buy an Aquaclear. 

Either my nitrate tests are broken or the tap water and tanks all magically have zero nitrates. I severely abused the #2 bottle many times, retested many times, and thew it angrily on the ground many times, yet it still shows zero nitrates on all water. Earlier today I opened my second master test kit (they were on sale so I stocked up) and tried out that nitrate test. Same result. It's not expired by a long shot so I don't know WTF is wrong with it. Is it even possible to have zero nitrates? I looked at last year's water report and the nitrates were 10, though the mountain water did have 0. I'm smack dab in the middle of a city though so I highly doubt we get any of the mountain water. 

The rest of the newer pygmy corydoras are all showing the same symptoms that Fungus did. It definitely seems like columnaris. I removed the 3 cories that had visible signs into QT and sent @Dalloway a PM for help. I also started the treatment advice of AAP and set the temperature in QT to 75. Based on their treatment methods I have everything I need for treatment. Being that only the new cories are showing signs of columnaris I think it's safe to say they probably had it when I purchased them. I don't think I'll be buying any more fish from that store. They're too dang expensive to have them all die. If the cories decide to lay eggs again I'll just scoop out the eggs, put them in the QT, and try my hand at raising them myself. That ought to be fun.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

The scary smelling creature apparently made an appearance in the backyard last night. When I let Beast outside this morning he went crazy and has hardly stopped barking since. 

I gave the 3 infected cories a bath in MB/Furan 2/Kanplex as recommended by AAP. I'm slowly adding salt to the water until the dose is fairly high. Thus far they're all alive and eating well. 

A bit of research revealed that the shrimp I found dead yesterday had died during a failed molt. Apparently I'm just not meant to keep shrimp. I think the large female is gone as well. I saw the little orange one this morning but he'll probably die at some point too, most likely from a failed molt. According to many forums and websites a failed molt can be caused by Kh/Gh, water temperature, and food. High protein food and warm water both make them grow quicker, and they may grow too quickly to be able to molt. They get stuck in the old shell and die. That tank is 80 degrees and the cories are fed high protein food, so that explains that issues. No shrimp for me. If the sick cories make it I might move all the cories into the 3 gallon QT temporarily and try to get them to breed. That seems to be the only way I'm going to get any healthy fish. 

I am furious. My mother didn't answer the phone last night for our nightly talk and didn't call back until 10 or 11. Her boyfriend-thing (let's just call him The Warden because that's what everyone refers to him as) has escalated his physical abuse. She was supposed to call someone to pick her up last night and get far way. She never texted me like she was supposed to and didn't answer any of my calls or texts today. Finally I got a text from The Warden saying to call her on his phone because hers isn't on. She went back to the a**hole. Again. This crap has been going on for years and I've been listening to her crying and complaining every single night for years and years. Yet every time she says she's going to leave she ends up going back, and throws in a couple days of dead silence to freak me the hell out. I'm done. I can't stand hearing it anymore. I can't tolerate listening to her say how awful he is and saying all kinds of crap about leaving and then never doing it. If she does try to leave she's back in that stupid house within a day. I called and told her I don't want to hear it anymore if she's staying with him. I can't handle being constantly stressed about her and dealing with the same stuff every fricken day. She did the same stuff during me fricken finals last semester. She called late one night saying she was leaving him, hung up, and I didn't hear from her for a couple days. That guy is violent and unpredictable so it's extremely worrying when she goes quiet. I couldn't focus worth anything and it definitely had a negative impact on my finals. If nothing is ever going to change I can't handle hearing about it anymore. It messes me up really bad and and this rate my college future isn't looking so hot.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

That's good to know about the molting thing! I'll be on the look out for that. 

Sorry about your shrimp and I hope your cories come through! Sometimes fish keeping is so stressful...

I think you're doing the right thing by taking care of yourself first/distancing yourself from what's going on with your mom. There's only so much anyone can do for others and the rest is up to them. 

This is NO where close to what you're experiencing with your mom, but I used to care a lot about one of my friends to a point that I missed an essay that was due and almost failed two of my classes. I was just way too preoccupied with trying to help her. I finally made the decision to just stop inserting myself between her and her, at the time, boyfriend. It took me a long time for me not to worry about her. We're still friends now but I don't worry about her even though I find some of her decisions questionable. 

Again, of course, my experience is not even close to what you're dealing with for many obvious reasons. I just think you made a very difficult but very good decision to take care of yourself first. I hope eventually your mom finds a way to leave that guy and get back on her feet. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

They've been together 10+ years and he's been awful the entire time. I honestly doubt she'll ever leave at this point. She knows I will never come visit her as long as she's with him. Friends can be like family so what you went through could very well be just as awful. Friends can be like family so it could very well be just as awful. I'll try to give you an idea of how stressed I am. I am an emotional eater. I always have been for as long as I can remember (all the way back to 5 years old for sure). Even through all my BPD and bulimia and other crap, I've always done it. Food is my equivalent of alcohol or drugs (makes staying in shape difficult). I'm so stressed that I'm not eating unless I'm reminded to or I have a social obligation to. 

I also STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN MY LAST TEXTBOOK and my aunt pointed out a black mark on my car and I can't for the life of me remember if it was there before. I didn't hit anything and if I did I would be bawling and refuse to drive. Someone could have scraped the car while it was parked somewhere. Or, one of the many idiotic, misbehaving children without parental supervision could have easily ran in to it on a bike or something. The children around here are horrid. The adults aren't much better. It doesn't help that I live literally right next to a park. Is there any way to know how old a mark on a car is?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Rant: Catcalling. I _hate_ it. 

Do guys really think that's the way to get attention from a girl? Do they really think that makes a girl want to do anything with them? No. Just no. If a guy wants to meet a girl, go start a polite conversation. Don't make comments about her body. Don't tell her to smile. Don't tell her she needs to show more skin. Don't tell her what you would do to her. Don't make vulgar hand motions. And most certainly don't get angry when rejected for using that idiotic way to get attention. Like _that's_ going to make the situation any better. Catcalling is rude and uncomfortable, and it can quickly turn scary if the guy doesn't take well to being ignored or rejected. I shouldn't feel stressed and anxious while walking my dog because of the immature, unpredictable males plaguing the neighborhood. BuzzFeedYellow has some great videos about catcalling online that I think all guys should be forced to watch.


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

Catcalling makes my skin crawl and kicks my anxiety into high gear! I only think it's cute when my SO does it... The whistle, the (failed) purr, it's only cute when it's someone you trust. I don't want to think of some strange creepy dude touching me * gag*


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

It's only not creepy if you're with the person catcalling you. And then there's those guys who take it up a step further and follow girls around. What the heck? Why would a girl give you her number if you're acting like a stalker? It's not ok.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Get plants, they said. It'll make your tank healthier, they said. They're easy, they said. 

NO. EVERYTHING IS DYING. And I mean everything. Anubias, java fern, hygrophila, crypts, staurogyne repens, bacopa. The swords are ok though. A lot of it is already dead. Many of the unidentified stem plants I got from JDAquatics are gone, gone, gone. It wasn't just the leaves that melted like expected, but the entire fricken stem. Mush. Bye bye plants. The hygrophila is headed down the same path. The emersed leaves are pretty much gone leaving me with nothing but stems, and many of the new leaves growing in are falling off when the parts of the stem start turning mushy. A fair number of the crypts, rhizome and all, went bye bye. WTF???? My parameters are fine, though by nitrates are either low or both my kits suck butt. I'm fertilizing like usual. With the new plants dying left and right it's clearly not still the effects of my aunt's care. The tank is back to being bare and unsatisfactory. With one of the larger RCS still alive (though not moving much, and I'm not sure if it's the male or female) and the single male orange shrimp, there's a chance at babies. The cories also decided to lay eggs all over the back of the tank. Since the sick cories are in QT I have nowhere to hatch the eggs, so they have to stay in the 10. There's not enough cover for baby anything in there anymore. So I improvised. I had a big chunk of lava rock that I bought months and months ago and I super glued the subwassertang from Spike's tank on it along with a bit of anubias and java fern. Hopefully Dyson refrains from exploring it and scratching himself. The babies really need the protection of all those little holes. When I do my next water change I'll either glue java moss to the spider wood or find a way to make the java moss mat stay on the ground. I'm tempted to take a bit of the willow moss I'm trying (and failing) to get going in Spike's tank and put that on lower portions of the spider wood.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Do you ever get tired of yourself? That's probably not the best way to put it but it's the best I can think of at the moment. 

I irritate myself severely. A classmate knew I was looking in to a Physics tutor and he asked a friend of his that was in our Chemistry class last semester. The classmate texted me about an hour ago saying his friend would tutor me and he sent me his friend's number. I avoided texting him for like half an hour and no joke typed up various drafts on my computer because texting someone I don't know well freaks me out that much. Yet another thing that causes me anxiety. I finally managed to send the text and then the anxiety got even worse for some reason, and has peaked now that I got a response that for some unknown reason I'm freaked out to read. Am I scared he suddenly won't want to tutor me? I don't think I am. He already told the other classmate he would. I think I'm broken. Why does talking to people scare me so much? It's not like I don't know the guy. I've had class with him and I've talked to him. I'm pretty sure I've asked him for help and/or clarification throughout the semesters. And he's way cheaper than the tutors I was looking at online. A good $40 cheaper. All that anxiety and the conversation went quick and painless and we're set to meet next week. So why was I so anxious? Why am I _always_ so anxious? I seriously have some level of constant anxiety going on all the dang time. I've avoided making many friends and giving people my number just so I don't have to deal with the stress of talking to anyone. I've made excuses not to hang out with the few friends I do have because making plans and knowing I'll be going somewhere brings so much anxiety. We did a group hang out once (indoor rock climbing and then lunch) that was so much fun, although I suck butt at rock climbing, yet I was freaked out the entire time. I'm so sick and tired of my anxiety, especially when it doesn't make sense. Knowing how it all works doesn't help either. I've taken psychology courses and I'm familiar with causes, treatments, etc., yet none of that helps me worth anything. I even get anxiety posting on the forum! This will be post #733, so you think I would have it down by now! Nope. It freaks me out every time, I don't want to post, and I immediately regret posting. I rewrite things multiple times, erase it all and leave only to go back to that thread and do it again, and occasionally vow never to post on the forum again. All the panic and anxiety is completely exhausting. At any given moment of near relaxation I could easily fall asleep and stay asleep for 12+ hours. 

Ok now tank stuff. I put the nerite for the 10 in Spike's tank because his driftwood has been covered in a very thick layer of dark brown algae for months. The snail is going to town. I'm pretty sure he's knocking down just as much algae as he's eating which is going to be so much fun to get off the sand. It seems like I'll have to get a nerite for Spike's tank. A dark one would probably be best so it doesn't attract too much attention from the tiny terror. My only option is Petco or PetSmart since I refuse to drive all the way to Neptune for a snail. Speaking of Neptune, the cories are still alive. They're getting daily baths in kanaplex/furan 2/double dose of MB and a daily 100% water change. I'm making sure to feed them before the bath so any leftover food is removed during the WC while they take the bath. I upped the AQ salt to 3/4 tsp per gallon. I think I'm going to work them up to 1 tsp per gallon. They've all lost a bit more tail, and in the case of one a bit more body, but it has definitely slowed. They're all still swimming and eating like little pigs. 

I think Dyson has grown a bit. I tried to measure him but he's entirely uncooperative. He may have grown 1/4 inch. Hopefully I can get his little butt to 2 inches. He ate a bit of mysis shrimp today! I swear he grabbed the shrimp, sucked on it, and spit the exoskeleton out. I guess he only wants the insides.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

I get anxiety from texting strangers too and especially phone calls. Also texts to managers or people I need services from. I do the same thing: avoid texting and then avoid looking at the response until I'm ready. I've always figured it's because I don't want to do it but it's something I have to do. I just want the end result and be done with it. I don't want to plan or think. Just get it done and over, please! 

Sometimes I just syche (spelling?) myself out before I do those things and it's just annoying, like you said. I don't have any solutions but just the hope that we can get over our anxieties one day or at least bring them down to a level that is manageable. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Yea I psyche (you were close!) myself out too. It seems like a lot of betta people have some sort of anxiety problem or another. I swear my guys are like little therapy fish to me. Well, Spike is. I still don't like Dyson. They have such cute little personalities (except Dyson) and are so pretty and relaxing (except Dyson)! At least the dang fish has learned the feeding routine. That's about the best thing I have to say about him.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I was just watching a BuzzFeed video and one of the girls had a betta on her desk in a completely bare tiny critter keeper. No heater. No decoration of any kind at all. I'm pretty sure that's the last BuzzFeed video I'll ever be watching. I'm furious.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

I've stopped really watching BuzzFeed videos. They seem to be more about virality rather than about actual content. 

And ugh. I get so sad when I see fish in movies and tv shows. Makes me wonder what they're gonna do with the fish after. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I was watching some dystopian movie or another and it had multiple large fancy goldfish in a less than half filled tank (which would have been too small completely filled). I mean it makes sense that it's not filled because there was no water, there was no rain, etc. But how long did those fish have to stay in that tiny thing for filming? Where were they in between days? Where did they come from? Where did they end up? It was not an enjoyable movie.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Maybe it was CGI? Let's hope it was CGI. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

It was not CGI sadly. I can guarantee it. I'll see if I can dig up my notes (I was taking a Survey of Film class. Super easy GPA booster) and figure out what movie it was


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Weird thing happened today. I had a HORRIBLE reaction to something in the tanks today. As I was finishing up the water change on my 10 gallon, my hands and arms started up with an unbearable painful burning itch. I washed my hands and arms multiple times but it just wouldn't stop. It took about 2 hours for it to go away. I can't figure out what caused it. My best guess is something in the new soap scent that I washed my hands with in between water changes didn't react well with something in the tank water. Whatever it was, it was absolutely horrible. 

More of my new plants are turning to mush. This time it was the largest crypt with a massive rhizome. I was super excited for it to grow back after melting. Now that'll never happen. The rhizome turned to mush and reeked to high heaven when I took it out of the tank. One full stem of the Hygrophilia corymbosa has also turned to mush. Most of what I'm assuming was guppy grass is dead. Various other crypts are gone. I am not pleased. Most of the mermaid weed in Spike's tank is dead or dying too. 

I saw Suicide Squad today! It was great. And I got a new little nerite for Spike's tank. The big girl from the 10 is still in there but she's too big to get to a lot of spots on the spider wood. This little one ought to be able to get to a fair number of them. Once the spider wood is looking better I'll put the big girl back in the 10 and leave the little one to clean the back glass and maintain the wood. I really hope it's a boy.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

My frustration with my plants has reached an all time high. Now my swords are showing signs of deficiencies! I said screw it and bought the GLA EI Index pack, which comes with 1 lb of Plantex CSM+B, KNO3, KH2PO4, and K2SO4. I also got 0.5 lb of iron and ordered a set of tiny measuring spoons. Once I get all that fun stuff I'm going to start dosing Excel in that tank again. It looks absolutely pathetic. Dyson is all clamped up now and gets progressively worse the more plants die. It's just way too open. 

The nerites are doing a good job in Spike's tank. They're knocking off just as much algae as they're eating so it's in clumps all over the sand but that vacuums up easily on water change day. That tank is also on Excel but it hasn't been long enough for it to have any effect yet. 

All 3 of the columnaris cories are alive. They're still in quarentine and getting daily baths and 100% water changes. I think I'll do the baths until I start seeing regrowth on the worst guy, give them a week, and put them back in the 10. I really need the quarantine tank to try hatching the cory eggs! Being that there won't be any live food I don't imagine the success rate will be very high but I'll give it a go anyway. I can put the java moss mat from the 10 in there so they can munch on whatever critters are hiding in it. It's not like I have any spare stem plants I can toss in. The best I can do is a dying clump of java fern. Seriously, everything is dying. The tank was flourishing before I went to Nevada and completely collapsed while I was gone. Now I can't seem to put it back together again.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I think I may have just realized one of the problems with my plants, though it doesn't apply to all because it only happened in certain spots of the substrate. Before I left for Nevada I used up the last of my Flourish tabs that had been sitting around collecting dust. I put them under the swords and crypts I believe. Maybe one under the wisteria since it had a lot of roots going on. I figured it would help the plants out a bit if my relative decided not to fertilize. Since I had stopped using Flourish tabs forever ago I completely forgot I had put them in there. When I got back I immediately put Osmocote Plus tabs in because by then there was a ton of deficiencies going on. I'm pretty sure I overdosed my substrate by adding in more root tabs so soon instead of sticking with water column ferts. That only applies to certain areas of the tank though. Mainly just one side of it actually. There's an entire portion of the tank that had never held a rooted plant because there was driftwood and Java fern there, thus the substrate was never fertilized. Most people recommend one Osmocote Plus tab per 4x4 area if it's fertilizing an entire tank. With what was in there the previous dosing wouldn't have reached the area that I put my favorite new crypt, so with the single tab I put there when planting it wouldn't have been overdosed. So there's the explanation for a wee bit of my plant problems. It doesn't explain why the rhizome of the best crypt went all mushy on me. It wasn't planted too deep or anything. And it doesn't explain why my stem plants aren't growing worth anything in either tank. In Spike's tank the light may be too high, but in the 10 that excuse isn't valid. The staurogyne repens aren't even doing anything. In the 10 most were pulled out by the cories and MTS and promptly turned to mush while floating. The few that are left are starting to grow but are showing signs of deficiencies. Sigh. The ones in Spike's tank are all still there and alive but haven't done anything. Spike's tank also has my only two remaining pieces of rotala, which are about 2 inches long each, neither of which has grown in two months. Very frustrated. Oh and yet another piece of mermaid weed is starting to turn brown on both ends. It's just not fair.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

So my nitrate test actually does work? I got my dry ferts from GLA today and immediately put a little KNO3 in a tiny amount of water (I was going for extreme because I couldn't get it to be anything but yellow) then tested it. It turned red VERY fast. So it's still working to some degree. I have a hard time believing the nitrates in my tap water have really been 0 for the past month so it's probably a bit off. 

I of course have to modify the dosing regimen for the dry ferts since I don't use CO2, just Excel, and only have 2.5 watts per gallon of spiral CFLs. The directions GLA gives for 10 gallons is to dose 3 times per week, macros and micros on different days: 1/8 tsp KNO3, 1/32 tsp KH2PO4, 1/32 tsp K2SO4, 1/32 tsp traces. I'm going to cut it at least in half, maybe in quarters. Quarters wouldn't be exact though because my smallest measuring spoon is 1/64 tsp. I'm not quite sure how much iron I need to dose. I'll probably wait a bit on that since I still have Flourish Iron left. Thoughts?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Still having issues with figuring out dosing. The 10 is looking a bit better but Spike's tank still looks like hell. 

Beast got his first bee sting during the walk on Sunday night. I didn't even realize that's what had happened until we got home and I saw the stinger. My aunt had to help me pull it out because he was NOT cooperating. Cookie's anal glands are impacted yet again (it happens once or twice a year for the past 3 years) so I'll have to figure out when I can take her to the vet to get them expressed before they burst. Old pets are so much fun. 

Organic chemistry is absolutely horrible. I'm pretty sure I failed the last lab. The study groups in that class are limited. I don't really get along with any of the girls, but I'm not comfortable studying with just guys in one of their apartments. There's one other girl that may eventually be part of the study groups, but I don't think she would be involved in the one on Sunday. I don't think I'm going to go. I know more than likely everything would be fine, but I don't trust people and it seems like rape and sexual harassment are becoming much more common occurrences. If the study group is ever in a public place I'll more than likely try it out.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

The vet is booked all weekend. My aunt's vet isn't open on Sundays. The earliest Cookie will be able to get to the vet is Tuesday. Her anal glands are looking worse today. Hopefully they don't burst before I can get her in. They burst once before during the horrible period when Beast, Cookie, and half my stuff moved in with my mom a month before I did. During that entire month Cookie hid in a hole under my mom's box springs and hardly ate or drank anything. I had no clue how bad she was doing until I got there. By then the holes from her anal glands bursting had started healing up, thankfully without getting infected. I'd really like to avoid her going through that kind of pain again. Many websites say it's a common problem with old cats and others say it happens most in cat's that don't drink enough and eat dry food. Cookie does eat a little dry nut I mix in so much water with her dry/wet mix that it's like a thin soup. I highly doubt that't her problem. She also has a water fountain for when she needs a little extra hydration. A couple sites recommended adding fiber to her diet (again, focused mostly on cats that eat dry) but I have a hard time believing that it'll be easy to get her to eat pumpkin. Besides, her poop is perfectly healthy. Not too hard, not too soft, and it stinks up my room on a daily basis. She doesn't cover it nearly well enough. If she has issues with the impacted glands more frequently the vet may remove them all together. I doubt twice a year is often enough to warrant that though. Part of me is tempted to learn how to do it myself since it's an $80 vet visit to get it done. The other part of me realizes that would be a very stupid idea and I would probably end up severely injured.


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

Sabrinah, you wouldn't want some Wisteria/WaterSprite clippings (or a whole plant)? It's overtaking my tank. No ferts, and only a Deluxe Aqueon Hood.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Given that everything is still dying I should say no, but what the heck. I miss my wisteria that died while I was gone. I'll take as much as you want to part with


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

Alright. It may take me a week or two to figure everything out.. I've never shipped anything before! >.< .... Do plants need heat packs?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Take your time! Plants don't need heat packs. When I've bought plants online they come a few different ways. Some have the box lined with styrofoam on all 6 sides, then the plants are bagged and wrapped in newspaper. Others have the plants wrapped in a ton of damp newspaper, then bagged, then wrapped in insulation and boxed. The simplest ones just have the plant wrapped in a few layers of damp newspaper, a lot of dry newspaper, then stuck in a box just like that. I'm most fond of the bagged then wrapped in newspaper method. Or the wrapped in wet newspaper, bagged, and wrapped in more dry newspaper method.


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

My water sprite died when our ac whent out the tank got too hot and it melted :/ I need to order more lol


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

Lol I'll probably give all my extras to Sabrina's, sorry Mystic. If I have clippings in the future, you can have some.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I don't remember if I mentioned it or not, but a while ago I put the cories that had shown signs of possible columnaris back in the tank. They had shown no signs for a while and were getting nice regrowth. It was also getting a bit difficult to constantly change their water. Apparently they weren't quite ready to be back in the main tank yet. I just pulled out a dead one. I'm thinking of dosing the entire tank with Kanaplex just to be on the safe side. Dyson isn't showing any signs of being ill but I haven't seen much of the cories lately so I'm not sure how they're doing.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I found another cory spasming on the bottom of the tank. I got it out (which was extremely hard because it was in the back behind the spider wood) and into the quarantine tank that I had _just_ put away. I'm not sure if it's going to make it or not. This one looks perfectly healthy. No fuzz, no fin rot, great coloring. I'll be feeding that tank food medicated with Kanaplex for a few days and moving any other obviously ill cories into quarantine for heavier treatment. 

Anxiety update! I didn't go to a study group because of it. Yay potential exam failure! I'll never make it to a study group. Ever. Failure is imminent. On the actual bright side, it's gotten so bad I've started drawing again and I'll finally finish a picture I started for my dad forever ago. I hadn't touched the thing for 2 or 3 years because I wasn't in the mood to draw. I'm never drawing anything for anyone again, no matter how much they bug me for one. I only draw as a coping mechanism when things get truly awful and I can't handle life. The anxiety was particularly bad yesterday and was worsened by an unfortunate bout of word vomit, so the second I got home I took out my sketching stuff and got to work for 3 hours. Another hour or two and the picture will finally be done.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I'm moving all the cories in to quarantine. The little suckers are hard to catch. I found one more laying on the sand like it was dead until I got the net to scoop it up. Since the first spasming cory wasn't one of the original sick 3 I figure they're probably all affected at this point. I don't even know how many are alive. I caught 3 this morning (and forgot to eat breakfast because I was too busy fighting with the stupid spider wood) bringing the total to 4 caught. There's for sure one more large one in there. I think I for sure have 3 of my original group left and 2 of the newer guys. I know quarantine is supposed to be relatively bare and all, but since I couldn't catch them without scooping out a few chunks of salvinia I figured they would be ok with salvinia and Java moss. There's also one small MTS in there as a test subject. I'm seeing how well they tolerate Kanaplex and higher salt levels. 

Cookie is going to the vet today. Of course her butt is no longer leaking. Time wise it's going to be rough. I get out of class around 9:10, have to wait for the parking lot to calm down a bit before I leave, and then it's a 15 minute drive home. Let's say I get there around 9:30-9:45. Then I have to get her in the carrier, which is a nearly impossible task, and get her in the car preferably at 10. The appointment is at 10:30 and the drive is 15-20 minutes usually, then we have to find parking. So there I'm at 10:20-10:25. The drive home will be during the lunch rush so it'll take 20-30 minutes, then the drive to school is another 15 minutes plus 10 for parking and getting to class, so that's 45-60 minutes. Class starts at 12:30. I have to leave the vet by the 11:45 at the absolute latest and would be cutting it extremely close. This is going to be awful.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Ok usually it takes a good 15 minutes to wrangle Cookie into the carrier, but this time I got her in on the first try! It took less than 1 minute! Maybe she wants to go to the vet


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Cookie was a very good girl at the vet. We got there about 15 minutes early and got put in a room right away. I did have to take her carrier apart to get her out but after that she let me carry her to the scale and stayed there long enough to check her weight. She tried hiding under the scale while we waited for the vet. I'll have to post pictures later. It's too cute. The vet was incredibly nice and explained everything he was doing and what organs he was feeling for. Other than her anal glands she's in perfect health. Her right anal sac is healthy but the left is infected. I opted to watch while he expressed them and he showed me the difference between what came out and explained what it all was. She's going to be on antibiotics for 2 weeks and then she's going back to the vet to make sure the infection went away.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Does anyone else have those days when it's really just not a fish day? First of all it was a pain in the arse to get the cories into the MB bath. I regret giving them the java moss. Then I finally got a good look at the one cory that had something weird going on for the last few days. Turned out it was something hanging out of it's gills, which explains why it could hardly breathe and couldn't eat. It didn't look like any kind of parasite I had ever seen before and kinda looked like a bloodworm, so I ended up pulling it out. It had been stuck for days without moving at all so I don't think it was going to come out on it's own. It's in much better spirits now. Through a series of unfortunate events one of the cories in the bath ended up in the water change bucket that was still full of dirty water from last weeks change. I couldn't find him and had to go get another bucket to slowly transfer water in to that until I could find the fish. It was so incredibly pale when I put it back in the quarantine tank. I don't even want to think about the ammonia level in that bucket. I hope it survives. But yea I think I'm done with fish for today.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Oh my... that's a weird thing to find in gills! 

I'm glad Cookie is okay! 

I'm not having a good fish day today either. Sigh. 


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

I had a day like that... I dropped equipment, cats knocked floating Betta cups into the community tank, I spilled a whole jar of food, couldn't remember if I had added dechlorinator and I woke up the next morning to find mouse dried out from jumping his tank because we couldn't find one of the cats and she had freaked him out  I cried


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

MysticSky22301 said:


> I had a day like that... I dropped equipment, cats knocked floating Betta cups into the community tank, I spilled a whole jar of food, couldn't remember if I had added dechlorinator and I woke up the next morning to find mouse dried out from jumping his tank because we couldn't find one of the cats and she had freaked him out  I cried




Oh no  that SUCKS! So sorry that happened ugh 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Ok Mystic you definitely win! That's awful! I'm so sorry! 

Update: bucket Cory looks absolutely awful. He's pale as can be. Worm Cory looks quite comfortable


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

It's alright, it does suck i was sad because I lost a pretty boy and I wasn't going to have pretty blue orchid CT babies :/


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

That would have been quite the sight to see. All betta babies are fairly pretty though so you never really lose


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Let's see. More dead plants in both tanks. All of my staurogyne repens is dead except for 2 stems. Most of my crypts are dead dead dead. Rotten rhizome dead. At some point I'll get more dwarf sag or try out pygmy chain sword as a carpet. Both tanks need it. Two stems of mermaid weed (out of 12) are alive and kinda growing. One tiny piece (like 2 inches long) of hygro is still kicking. Both tanks are pretty sparce. If I wasn't poor I would pack them both with anubias and call it a day. The new nerite I bought for Spike's tank died. There's pretty much just death everywhere. I need more plants for my tanks but I can't keep spending money I don't have on plants that'll die in a couple weeks anyway. I don't even know what to try anymore. The red tiger lotus was taking off in front of the tank so I moved it to the back where it belonged. Hopefully I didn't just kill it. The bulb is still good and has an itty bitty new leaf sticking out of it so I'm crossing my fingers that it will give me a baby I can put in Spike's tank. Spike's tank needs some sort of fast growing, low lying plant since his lighting is so high. Any ideas? I don't want algae problems to start up again. I already had to pull off all the moss I had glued to his filter intake because the algae was crazy. The cories in quarantine are enjoying that moss now. The flame moss is finally getting green. I hope that means I'll start getting growth soon.

Any ideas for plants for the 10? I'm thinking dwarf sag or pygmy chain sword for the front. I need to fill in the area under the spiderwood. It's really shaded and not much makes it there. My best option is probably anubias. It would look too weird if I filled it with java fern. Any other ideas?


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Dyson jumped out of the tank this morning. 

I went to go feed him and he wasn't coming to the front of the tank. I looked behind the nightstand and didn't think I saw anything (it's full of cat hair and various lost objects back there). Then I heard him flop. Sure enough, he was at the corner behind it, the hardest place to get to. I cleared everything but the tank off the nightstand, pulled out all the drawers and started pulling. I have oversized furniture, so even without drawers this thing is heavy. It's 3 feet long, 2 feet deep, thick, solid wood. Now add a 10 gallon tank on that. Fun times. Finally I moved it enough to squeeze back there and net him. He was absolutely COVERED in cat hair. He didn't even look like a fish. I switched him from container to container until all the hair was off. The cories got evicted from the quarantine tank and sent to the main tank because Dyson needed it more than them. While I got the QT ready he took an MB bath, which perked him up a bit. And guess what he did? He tried to jump out of it. Now he's in the QT with only a gallon of water so he doesn't have to struggle to the surface. I'm not sure if he's going to make it honestly. He was covered in scary amounts of hair. I'll post pictures later.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Anyone know anything about paralysis in fish?

Not only are Dyson's fins falling off, which I expected, but he seriously can't move. He can move his mouth enough to gasp for air and he can move his pectorals. The rest of his body is completely stiff and immobile. If he falls off the plant or IAL he's sitting on he ends up face down at the bottom of the tank and can't move. He may eventually tip over, but he generally gets stuck under the silk plant when that happens and he can't get out until I notice and free him. By then he's gasping for air. I've actually had to pick him up with a plastic spoon (I swear it's like picking up a dead fish) and put him on something so he can breathe. He also won't eat, but that's to be expected. Tomorrow I may remove everything but the heater and leave him in an inch or two of water, just enough to cover his body, so he has a better chance at breathing. It won't help much in reality since he tends to get stuck in corners, but it's better than being stuck under a silk plant.

I think the 10 gallon is going to go. It's brought nothing but bad luck from the start. Spitfire got sick, cories are dying, Dyson is dying, plants are dying. The 5 is great though. I'll let the cories do whatever in there for now, but when the dollar per gallon event rolls around I'm getting a new tank, glass canopy, and light. Then I'm tearing the old tank down, giving all the plants a bleach dip, throwing out the sand and filter media, and starting over.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Oh no poor Dyson  

I wonder what's going on with the tank... it sucks to read things going wrong so it must suck even more to have to experience it. Ugh... 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Right after I posted that I found him stuck upside down. He can't flip over. I hooked the bath container to the inside of the QT and filled it just over an inch of water, scooped him up with the spoon, and laid him in there. This way he has a better chance of getting air. I also filled up the QT more so it would reach the container he's in to keep the water warm. It's not looking promising.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

SIP Dyson


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

Aww, no! Dyson is your beautiful DT, right?

SIP


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Dyson was the new king, though he was a DT. All my bettas have been double tails for whatever reason. He died a big boy though. He had finally reached 2 inches BO and probably would have kept growing


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

Aww, sorry to hear that.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I should have covered the top better. It's really impressive that he managed to get out of such a tiny space though. 

I definitely won't be making an effort to replace him any time soon


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

So it turns out the dollar per gallon event is actually going on until November 5. I went to breakfast with my aunt and grandma and then we hit up Petco. After picking out a Halloween costume for Beast (he's going to be a pumpkin!) we sorted through all the 10's until we found the best looking one and loaded it up. I thought we were done. Nope. My aunt looked around the other side of the display and said "but look how big this one is!" It was a 20 long. And I said I of course always want a bigger tank. Then she saw the 20 high and got excited about that one. Long story short, I got a 20 high instead of a 10. I did extensive research on what I could put in a 20H a few months ago because I desperately wanted one and found out I could get an angelfish. I need a break from bettas anyway. 

I'm conflicted on how I want to make the switch. 

To save money, I'll reuse the same sand that's in the 10 right now after giving it a good rinse. That means moving out all the current inhabitants. So I would move any remaining cories, the nerite, the lone shrimp, and a few of the MTS in to the 3 gallon. I would put some of the cycled media from the Aquaclear into the old Marina Slim that would be in the 3 gallon so I could use the Aquaclear filter to cycle the 20. Other MTS would be put in Spike's tank, and if there's a ridiculous amount they'll be put in containers and given algae-covered rocks. I'll put a little Osmocote plus on the bottom of the 20, maybe a bit of clay, and put 1-1.5 inches of rinsed Miracle Grow Organic Potting Soil down. Over that will be about an inch of my current black sand, rinsed like heck with vinegar and water. I'll need more plants for sure and I'll have to play around with the aquascape. I don't know what lighting to use yet. Any ideas? I don't want to have to dose CO2.


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

I'd get a Finnex product. The 30" Planted+ is on sale for $86; the smaller sizes and older versions would be less cash.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Being that that I am going to end up buying new sand (saw another Cory convulsing. I'm not using anything from the stupid 10 gallon in the new tank) I really want to avoid spending $80 for lighting. The cost of this tank is already getting up there. 

Soil: $10-20
Sand: $20
Second 50w heater: $21
Glass canopy: $14
Plants: $$$$$

That's not even counting the fish going in the tank. 

I was looking at T5HO but that's not any cheaper total. If I can find clip on lamps, which are about $10 each, I could get 2 or 3 of those with some 13 watt spiral CFLs (what I have now) I could get it done for less than $50. What's everyone think of that idea?


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

Whats the length of the tank?I found a seller on eBay with led light fixtures I'm debating on trying for a 20 long sorority


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

It's 24" long


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

Beamswork ea V2 LED Aquarium Light Freshwater White Blue 18 24 30 36 48 | eBay this isn't the one I wanted but it would fit your new tank and budget


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I'll look in to it! Thanks!


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I'm thinking I'll do 2 or 3 of the Walmart clip lamps with 13W CFLs in them.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstay...-Supreme-Clip-Lamp-CFL-Bulb-Included/44782714

Of course I'll start with two and see how it goes. Maybe I'll have to increase the wattage. I originally wanted the aluminum clamp lights but I read too many reviews of those catching on fire or starting to smoke to feel comfortable doing that. I suppose I could try to add reflectors to the Walmart lamps. I would like to just get reptile dome lamps or something since those are made to withstand heat but at that price I may as well buy the dang finnex.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Ok new price breakdown:

Marineland Glass Canopy 24" : $14
CaribSea Instant Aquarium Tahitian Moon Sand 20 Lbs: $23
Eheim Jager 50 watt heater: $21
Miracle Grow Organic Choice Potting Mix 32 Quarts (20 lbs?) : $10
Fluker's Clamp Light 8.5" (or something similar) x2 : $26
Plants (guesstimate) : $50

Total: ~$150

Now I could beg for some of these things as Christmas presents, but most of my family refuses to buy me tank stuff for any occasion. And I would have to wait until after Christmas to set it up. I'm going to do a fishless cycle, so that's already a month of waiting, and I want to make sure the plants are really going strong and I didn't screw up anything with the soil so that's an additional month of waiting. I don't want to wait 4 months to get rid of the cursed tank. Who knows what else could die in that amount of time? The stupid thing will probably explode or something and impale me or my pets with glass shards. If I move the 10 gallon across my room and set up the 20 asap, it should be completely ready for fish by January. That's the plan I would like to go with but I don't know if my aunt would be ok with me running 3 tanks. I couldn't do a fish-in cycle if I wanted to because my aunt would not be ok with the excessive amount of water use during water changes, and frankly I just don't have time for that. It turns out I can't move the cories to the 3 gallon because we're going to Nevada for Christmas and I'll be gone a couple weeks. No water changes will be done on any tank during the time I'm gone and that's just not acceptable in such a small tank. Unless packing it full of stem plants would work and having whoever watches them do top offs? That doesn't solve the problem of waste on the bottom though. Shoot.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I bought the canopy, sand, and heater for a total of $61. The Miracle Grow Organic Choice is only sold in some stores and does not ship to my state when purchased online. Looks like I'll be hitting up Orchard Supply. It says on the website it's sold in sores but I can't check store availability. If they don't have it I'll be buying the Miracle Grow Nature's Care Organic potting soil. I'm not sure where I would buy that from. It's sold at Home Depot but there's a really scary intersection to get out of the parking lot and I don't want to deal with that. I can't buy it online because it's also not shipped to my state. 

I'm still debating the lighting. Do I go with the reptile clamp lights? I was going to go with the cheap walmart/target clamp lamps but they aren't sold in my area. The reptile lights don't have the best reflectors. The aluminum lights have reviews saying they've caught on fire, and the ones that don't have those reviews either have very few reviews or are more that I would like to spend.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Hey fishy people. I need to talk about some things. I don’t really have anyone I can talk to and I feel like this site is a fairly safe place, so I’m going to unload here. Hardly anyone will read it anyway. Warning: this will be long. 

I have a history of self harm, eating disorders, anxiety, and depression. I know, I’m such a bundle of fun. Sunshine and butterflies. I’ve had an unhealthy relationship with food my entire life, probably in part due to the depression I’ve had for as long as I can remember. All those people who think kids have no idea what’s going on are so very wrong. My dad won custody of me when I was 5 or 6. I understood enough to know that my dad and mom were fighting over something and they didn’t like each other very much. When I was 4 my dad and stepmom got married. I did not like my stepmom and I don’t think she was overly fond of me. She wanted to have her own children but due to a messed up surgery when she was younger she was unable to and the surgeries to fix it didn’t work. I could tell she resented me before I knew “resented” was even a word. At some point my dad got seriously hooked on drugs. He spent all day in his room working out and doing drugs, only coming out to make a tv dinner or take me to school. I didn’t have many friends and my mom never came to visit when she said she would so I was very lonely. My best friend was food. It was the only thing that made me feel happy. I knew that I was bigger (both wider and taller) than a lot of the other kids and I didn’t like that. I wanted to be like the smaller girls because they had more friends and the boys liked them. I didn’t know how to make myself like them though so I continued to eat my feelings and be unhappy. 

At one point my stepmom left my dad for a year because of the drugs and I have to admit I was pretty happy. After an incident in which my dad passed out inside a locked closet in his locked room and was carried out of the house on a stretcher after my grandpa broke down the door and called 911 ( I found the firemen at the front door and was very confused. I was sent to my room but the door was still open when my dad was carried down the hallway. I remember it quite vividly), he decided it was time to get clean. My dad, stepmom, and I moved to Las Vegas not long after. Oh my did things change. My dad got stricter. I was grounded pretty much all the time, included over my birthday very often. I remember a couple times when he grounded me and/or increased my sentence because I wouldn’t stop crying. If you ever mentioned that to him he would deny it vehemently though. My body awareness grew in Vegas because the girls were skinnier and prettier. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t look like that and I hated it. I started to hate looking in the mirror. My dad also began using physical exercise as punishment. He would make me run around the apartment complex. I absolutely despised running and I still do. Once when I refused to keep running he said he would tie a rope to me and drag me. He never did and probably didn’t mean it, but I still went to school bawling the next day because I was terrified of what the night would hold for me. I was in 4th or 5th grade when my dad told me to flex my stomach muscles (I didn’t know how so I just pushed my stomach out as far as I could until it was hard), poked it, and told me I needed to lose weight. 

In middle school my self-worth was defined for me. My dad wanted me to have perfect grades. The overall grade had to be an A, and I wasn’t allowed to receive below a B on any sort of assignment at all. Even getting a grade in the low 80s would get me a lecture. If I got a C on something I was grounded for 2 weeks, a D a month, an F 2 months. If the teacher had entered the grade wrong I had to bring my dad a signed note stating that they had made an error. All my teachers hated my dad. My 6th grade science teacher hated him the most. I never had below a 98% in that class and had over 100% for much of the year, yet when I got a 78% on a quiz I was still grounded. I asked her if I could retake it so my dad would unground me and she couldn’t believe that he would do that even with having an insanely high overall grade. She changed the grade to an 82% without me having to take it because she felt bad that I had a dad like that. My value was directly tied to the grades I received. My stepmom tied my value to how I looked. I was always expected to look as pretty as I could and be as smart as possible so I would be worthy of showing off and bragging about. The self-hatred and depression continued to grow. I ate pretty much constantly. I began experimenting with self-harm. While shopping for a New Year’s outfit during some point in middle school my dad said something that still plays through my head daily: “Skinny jeans are for skinny people. That’s why they’re called skinny jeans. You’re never going to be skinny so you’re never going to be able to wear skinny jeans. Get over it.” He had told me I would never be skinny many times before that, but this one struck the hardest. If I went through all the comments my dad and stepmom made about my weight and appearance we would be here for days. 

At the end of 8th grade I got a boyfriend. My mental health went downhill fast. The summer before high school started I got pneumonia and lost 11 pounds. I was ecstatic because I had been trying to lose weight through working out and eating well but it wasn’t working. While I was still at a healthy weight I looked too thin. I loved it. My hipbones stuck out, my thighs hardly touched, all my clothes were falling off. I was addicted to being skinny and would do anything to be skinnier. I was always on pro-ana websites and always looking at thinspo. For those of you that don’t know, pro-ana is pro-anorexia and the websites share pictures of anorexic people, give tips on how to become anorexic, and individuals track their progress towards anorexia. Thinspo is short for thinspiration, which usually goes hand in hand with pro-ana. The eating disorders developed. I don’t even know if my eating habits fit into a category because they were so hectic and varied. I would throw up every meal; binge then throw up everything or binge then exercise excessively until I had burned off twice the number of calories I ate, passed out, or threw up; count calories; severely restrict calories to less than 400 a day; starve myself for days; binge for days. I also began cutting freshman year to cope with the stress of school and the desire to be thin. My boyfriend was not helping my mental health. I should have dumped him but I was afraid no one else would want me. He was always talking about other girls’ bodies, how hot certain actresses are, what he thinks the perfect body is. He never complimented me besides occasionally telling me I looked pretty. He said he would dump me if I gained 5 pounds. When I was 14 I lost my virginity to him because I didn’t want to risk losing him to one of the pretty, skinny girls he was always talking about. It was horrible, I wasn’t ready, and I severely regret it to this day. Eventually I told him I wanted to break up. I told him all the reasons why upon his request, and he swore he would change. Long story short I was with the guy for 4 years and he didn’t become a decent person until 2 years in, but by that point I didn’t trust him worth anything anymore and the relationship wasn’t the greatest one. He is one of my biggest regrets and one of the biggest contributors to my eating disorders. 

After about a year and a half I was tired of hurting myself and trying to shape my body into something it clearly didn’t want to be. One night after I had been cutting a lot I asked my dad for help. I never got help. He made me tell my stepmom and she immediately said “How could you do this to me?” Oh I’m sorry, while I was busy being miserable and wanting to die was I supposed to think about how cutting myself would ruin the image of the perfect little family you shoved down everyone’s throat? Instead of providing any actual support my dad’s method of help was his specialty: threats. He said if I didn’t stop cutting he would send me to rehab, I would fail all my classes, I wouldn’t be able to get in to any universities, and my future would be ruined. Unsurprisingly that didn’t make me stop cutting, I just stuck to cutting areas under clothing. My boyfriend’s method of helping when I finally told him was to get mad at me and threaten to dump me. Yea, because that makes things so much better. My stepmom helped by making my dad buy a safe to put all the prescriptions in so I wouldn’t try to kill myself. She would also routinely tell me I looked disgusting because I was getting too skinny (it happened every time I wore a particular sweater. So odd.). Really, they were all such a great support system. The only good thing that came of it was my dad backing off on my grades when he found out that was one of the main reasons I cut. He paid more attention to the overall grade than the individual scores. I mean really, with taking all AP and Honors courses, how could I not have the occasional C on something? A girl should be allowed to screw up on an assignment or two. My insanity continued throughout high school. I managed to stop throwing up and cutting, no thanks to my sucky support network, but would still restrict calories, binge, workout excessively, and harm myself in ways that didn’t leave marks. 

After high school I moved in with my mom for 6 months. I was pretty much on a 6 month binge. I was horribly depressed and I gained 30 pounds. After that I moved in with my aunt. My parents were horrified that I was fat. Things got better and I tried to get my eating under control. When I went to visit my parents in Vegas one summer I was hoping to run in to my now ex-boyfriend because I wasn’t over him even a year later. I checked his Instagram for the first time one night and saw that he had a new girlfriend. After a bit of Facebook stalking I learned they had begun their relationship 2 months after we had broken up. I was crushed. I thought I had meant more to him than a 2 month grace period, especially since I still wasn’t over him a year later. I stopped eating. I began exercising excessively. The hectic eating disorders were back. The depression deepened to its previous level. I didn’t want to be me anymore, so I changed. I started wearing much more makeup, I dressed different, I forced myself to be more social. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to be me anymore, I didn’t want to be the me that my ex had known. I started doing stupid things that I can’t mention on this forum. Don’t worry, no drugs were involved. My general rule was if old me wouldn’t do it, new me would. That rule is seriously stupid but I still kinda live by it. 

The last year has been spent just trying to keep my head above water. This semester has been particularly horrible. For my entire life my worth has been defined by being smart and pretty. Because I’m horrid at chemistry my GPA is far too low and I still harbor a deep hatred for my body. All that translates into is me being absolutely worthless. I’m stupid and fat. My depression and anxiety are at all-time highs. I started starving myself when the semester started without even realizing it. I just looked in the mirror one morning and hated what I saw more than usual so I completely stopped eating. It wasn’t until I caught myself relishing in the discomfort of hunger pains that I realized I screwed up big time. After working so hard every day to eat regular meals and not purge in any way I had to go and screw it up. Now I’m just trying to get back on track. I have myself on an eating schedule so it becomes part of my routine. Eating has never been so hard. If I don’t struggle to get it down, I struggle to keep it down. I’ve gotten in the habit of eating right before I leave the house so I don’t have the option of purging. I wish I could just work out like normal people until I’m happy with my body but if I’m not careful a workout spirals back in to purging through exercise. I always have to be aware of my mental state and if I catch myself having unhealthy thoughts I have to stop. It doesn’t matter if I’m half way through a workout, if I catch myself focusing on being thin instead of being healthy I immediately stop working out until I can do so with my head on straight. In terms of self-harm I don’t cut myself any more, but I will snap a rubber band against my wrist or dig my nails into my palm. I wish I could just stop it all but it’s so hard to stay sane without anyone to talk to or rely on for support. I made a really stupid decision recently. It was partly due to the horrible rule I decided to live my life by, partly because I was desperate to feel something other than depressed, and partly because I’m too screwed up to be in an actual relationship. Again, I don’t think I can mention what this decision was. For the first week it actually did make me feel fairly happy. I had a brief period of accepting my body and hating myself a little less. That’s all gone down the drain this week. I absolutely hate myself and I hate the decision I made but I’m kinda stuck with it for a while. Maybe in a week or two I’ll be back to enjoying it but I doubt it. 

Ok I feel better now. I just wish I had someone in my life that I could tell how I’m screwed up, why I’m screwed up, and not have them run away screaming. No one likes dealing with people that have this much baggage, nor do most people understand depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and self-harm. Everyone would think I’m crazy and unstable, which is true but I can still manage to almost function properly. 

In fish news I have the 20 gallon set up. Its nearly 2 weeks in to cycling. No ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates but I wouldn’t expect any with the plant load I have going. I’ll post a picture as soon as I can figure out why my phone won’t hook up to my laptop. When my dad finds out I have a bigger tank he’s going to flip. He says I have to cool it with the pets but he doesn’t understand that animals and nature are the only things that bring me peace and happiness. I need them like I need air.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Long time no update!

Spike is doing well. He's nipping his fins a bit but that's to be expected with how dang heavy they are. The poor thing can hardly hold himself up. 

The plants in the 20 tall are growing in well. So many swords in such a small place though. I got 6 purple harlequin rasboras at the end of December. Thus far everyone is doing well. They swim so fast! Two of them developed white spots but I couldn't tell if it was a fungus or ich because the little fishies wouldn't slow down for two seconds. I raised the temp to 86-ish but I can't totally tell if it made a difference. I'm actually starting to think it might be injuries. One of the rasboras is an absolute jerk! He (I'm assuming it's a he) likes to chase the others around and nip at them. Yesterday morning I found a pygmy cory dead. It had red gills but no other apparent damage. All the parameters were fine so I'm not sure what the problem was. 

Hopefully I'll still be getting my cockatoo apistos like I planned. I may end up having to buy the crazy expensive ones from the fish store.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I ordered two olive nerites from Bama Plants that finally arrived today. I was terrified they would arrive dead because it's very cold and my mailman sucks. When I checked the tracking it said "employee could not access the location." It's a residential neighborhood! There's no gate around the neighborhood or around the house. They didn't even come to my neighborhood. Absolutely ridiculous. Thankfully everyone was alive and well, and I received an extra nerite. Bama Plants really can't be beat for healthy nerites with cheap shipping.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

So how did the mailman find your house?? 

Sometimes I hate the post... they have a lot of excuses haha. But I can always count on Amazon! Their delivery people are so sweet. They even go the extra mile to hide my packages if I'm not home. They'll go put them in the backyard behind my BBQ or something like that. 

Do you have any pictures of the nerites?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I am having such a horrid time using the site on my cellphone and I'm having issues getting pictures on my laptop, so I can't post pictures at the moment but I'll try to soon. 

I've never had issues with them being unable to access my location. It's such BS. We online shop all the time and we're constantly getting packages delivered without a problem. Unless, of course, that package contains textbooks or aquarium plants or snails, then there's always a problem. Most of our Amazon packages are delivered by USPS. It's rare that we get an actual Amazon delivery person.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

It's like they know what's inside the package and that the package is important so then purposely mess up. All for giggles, of course /sarcasm 

The Amazon guy said they expanded quite a bit and couldn't keep up so that's why they started their own delivery service but I read it more as the local post service really sucks and they're getting lots of complaints. They even dropped UPS from their list of deliverers in my area. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I'm actually kinda worried to have fish shipped to me because I don't want them to screw it up and be unable to "access my location" or leave the package at the warehouse (which has happened twice with plants). 

There was actually a radio add on a few weeks ago asking for Amazon deliverers. They said you can make your own hours and choose where you deliver to. I'm not sure if that would be much better than the regular mail carriers. I don't trust people not to steal stuff. There's also so much rampant animal abuse that I wouldn't trust someone not to shake a box labeled "live fish" just for entertainment.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

OMG my laptop just imported all my pictures into folders by date. So now I have separate folders on my computer for every day I've taken a picture since the last time I imported. This SUCKS. So much cleanup. 

I didn't spend time taking decent pictures. I took one holding one of the small new snails, and I took two comparing the size of a small new one and my large old girl to my finger. Please excuse the broken nail! I broke it tearing the bag open because I was too impatient to grab some scissors.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Well heck I mind as well update on my furry animals while I'm here. Cookie is still a grumpy old lady. She got boarded for the first time ever when we went to Vegas for Christmas. She seemed to have handled it well and didn't hate me too much.

Beast had to get his anal glands expressed for the first time and he was NOT happy about it. He also saw snow on the drive back from Vegas! Apparently the extra dark shadows on the snow are very suspicious.

I don't know why so many pictures are posting sideways and I don't really feel like trying to fix it. Usually I have to go back and delete all the uploads, crop the pictures, then re-upload and for some reason that's the only thing that fixes it.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I got fish!

I got 4 more purple harlequin rasboras to help break up the aggression between the 6 I had. It was getting insane. Some were missing scales and one had half his tail bit off. The LFS had posted super red apistogramma cacatuoides in their shipment list but apparently those ones didn't show. They had orange flash but I really don't like that coloring. The agassizii was stunning but I really prefer the spiky look better. I ended up with a pair of apistogramma bitaeniata. I wanted two females but they only had one left. The girl spent forever sexing them all to make sure I didn't get a sneaker male, which was greatly appreciated. I'm sure my female is happy to be out of a tank with 6+ males! These apistos seem to have far less information out there than other species, and far more discrepancies, especially in terms of size and pH requirements. Most forums say they can acclimate to any pH as long as it's stable, they just won't breed in harder water. I don't care about breeding so that works for me!

My tank stock now is:
10 purple harlequin rasboras
3 pygmy corydoras (I don't plan on replacing the ones I lost from the large die off I had because I don't want to cause another one. I'm just letting these 3 be since they seem to be hardy and thriving) 
2 apistogramma bitaeniata
3 nerite snails
1 RCS (probably future apisto food)
Too many MTS

If I include the nerites in the stocking I'm 97% stocked, without them I'm 93%. I'm not even going to try to count the MTS.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I forgot to mention my plants!

My mother sword is a major over achiever. I wish I knew what type she was. She's created a baby sword right next to her that appears to have branched off her roots (I swear it's not just another portion of the mother sword. It has a separate crown and everything, but I'm assuming it shares roots). She also has THREE runners! The oldest runner has 4 nodes, all with leaves sprouted, the second runner is still growing and has 3 nodes, and the third runner just popped up the other day. That's 8 babies and more on the way! And when I bought it she had a massive baby sword on the end of a runner that I cut off. I'm having a sword overload! My entire tank is swords! 3 amazon swords, a misc. mother sword, two large misc. babies, and 7+ babies growing! Not to mention my collection of crypts... Needless to say I don't have an aquascape. The swords have taken over. I have a pile of swords. If my oldest amazon sword ever sprouts a successful runner (It's tried but the runner dies once it's a couple inches tall) I'm screwed. I would love to move some swords around and try to come up with some semblance of organization in this damn tank, but pulling up rooted plants in dirt is no bueno. If anyone has tips let me know! 

Oh my goodness the apistos are finally exploring! Yay! Ya know they don't have impressive colors or anything (pictures coming soon) but they're still absolutely beautiful in their own way.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

IAL truly is the aphrodisiac of the fish world. I put one in the 20 gallon yesterday to help ease the stress of the new additions and help prevent any infections, and today the rasboras are all flirty and wiggling all over the undersides of leaves. It's insane. They went from vicious fighting (it was observed, not just assumed) to baby making in less than 24 hours. 

Picture time!


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Update time!

The mother sword continues to be an overachiever. She has 10 babies going and has just sent out a 4th runner. Now I have 5 or 6 adult swords and 10 babies in the works. When the babies are good sized I'll definitely be selling them on the site unless by some miracle I end up with another tank. I'm dying for another betta right now but I know I can't have one. 

As you can tell I'm doing nothing in terms of plant control in this tank. I'm pretty much just letting them do their own thing and enjoying my jungle of swords. It wouldn't kill me to trim and re glue the java moss but I really just don't feel like it. And it has some hair algae in there that I would have to deal with. I had a big section of crypts but all of it melted one day out of the blue. I wish it would grow back faster. 

The male apisto is a jerk. He constantly pesters the female, which I expected, but he also regularly goes after the rasboras. He make a pretty good gash in the side of one. I'm keeping a close eye on it to make sure it heals well and doesn't develop any problems. I was crushing up NLS 1mm community pellets to feed them in addition to the Hikari micro pellets I've had forever but I felt like the crushing made too much of a mess. I bought the NLS small fish pellets as a substitute but the apistos don't like those! What gives? It's the same thing in a smaller form! Everyone goes crazy for the Hikari of course. I should just be thankful they're pellet trained at all. The fish store feeds primarily frozen bloodworms and flakes, and while I do feed a lot of frozen it would be awful to feed it for every meal. 

There's nothing interesting going on with Spike. He's determined not to let me take any pictures of him. I think I need to get a mini siphon for him. With the big siphon I can actually vacuum the sand, but in order to do that I have to take him out so I can take out the big piece of spider wood. It's too hard and dangerous to move the wood in and out with him in there. Any way I do things is super stressful to him but I really can't get a decent amount of snail poop out just using the hose. I've thought about rescaping his tank to make my life easier but it's just so pretty! I would love to somehow carpet it, but that's always failed. The light is a Finnex Fugeray planted +, but between the salvinia minima and plants on the wood the tank is actually really shady. Maybe I could try a moss carpet or something?


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