# A long journey



## Lyric Shadowcrow (Aug 6, 2014)

The Goldfish and more detailed look at me. Sometimes I wonder without the fish would I have even tried to be the person I was to become? 

I got my first fish tank when I was two maybe three years old. I remember going to the pet store run by a marine biologist (she stayed in business until I was in my 20's). She let me pick out a carp (silver with yellow fins) Lightening and a solid orange pond comet named Goldenrod. My baby brother got a black moor (Blackie) and a pale orange and white pond comet named Comet. I begged mom to put me in charge of the fish tank and with her help I did all the work for it. Back in the 70's it was the take the fish out set them into a bucket put fish back into tank after waiting for the tap water. We didn't have the stuff that can be found now. Comet and Blackie were later moved into a separate tank and I kept my pair in a 10 gallon tank and they passed away a year after my senior graduation just a month apart. Estimated lifespan of a goldfish varies upwards of 80 yrs or longer. I thought keeping my pets for nearly 20 yrs wasn't too bad but I wanted to do better. 

During the life span of Goldenrod and Lightening I had upwards of 20 different fish tanks a pond and over 200 varieties of fish. Everything from guppies to leaf and butterfly fish and baby whales. I had a brackish tank and one that was for my pet Powder Blue Crayfish. I also was working with newts, salamanders, hermit crabs, and using my pond I bred khuli loaches. By the time I graduated HS I had a certificate as an animal care specialist and volunteered at a wildlife rehab center working with birds of prey. I finally got in with a zoo and was in the fore-front with the advertising of it. Pics were made of me bottle feeding a baby tiger with a cockatoo on my shoulder and it was used at fund raisers. I bred and raised show guppies during my college days and to my dismay watched the funding for the zoo plummet and lost my job. Working at home I got into animal rescue and started taking in dogs and cats and found them new homes. I also shut down a store at the mall for their mismanagement of hermit crabs..ended up with a colony of nearly 100 thankfully my custom tank could handle it and all was well. 

Looking back at distant memories some stand out. Tigerlily Sprinkle Pepper a wild type betta that I trained to do tricks. She could jump through a hoop, walk on her fins with her head out of the water and roll over. I was 12 years old when she passed away and I was devastated. Newton my firebelly newt also passed away during that time frame and I had him for 9 years. I still have the records of when I bought him and dated it when he passed away. 
I miss my pets but time flies and sometimes what we want and need are two different things. I will discuss my other fish in detail one species a night. The goldfish eventually were moved into larger housing and it was all natural. I researched diligently the type of substrate and plants that were common with the goldfish and tried to duplicate it to the best of my ability. 

I type this with Jax sitting on my shoulder he is fascinated with the computer and I wonder what has to be going through his reptilian mind. Phoenix the dog is curled up near my feet. She adores Jax and always has a doggy kiss for him. Jax is usually offended and stalks off to where her tongue can't get him. I know chameleons are usually too frail for much handling but Jax adores getting out for some attention and if I don't get him out he begs. He will perch by the door of his enclosure and run his nails down the screened part until I open the door. He will then climb onto my hand and arm and make his way to my shoulder and hide in my hair. Mirage also stares at the monitor and I think he is my personal proof reader, silly betta  My other fish don't seem to care about anything except to let me know they are ready for lights out. If anyone reads this I hope you enjoyed it.


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## BambooTikiBettaGirl84 (Jun 29, 2014)

Man that is pretty neat that you were able to teach your fishies some tricks! I wanna teach mine how to swim through hoops. They already know how to eat out of the fish food hoops I have, so I am guessing they will do other tricks if I have enough patience.


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## Lyric Shadowcrow (Aug 6, 2014)

Its fairly easy to train a female betta some tricks. 
1. make a hoop out of anything you have lying around.I bought a slinky super cheap and cut one of the loops off
2. make sure the fish is hungry food is the key motivator here
3. get the fish used to the hoop (using it as a feeding ring is perfect)
4. using a piece of favorite food (krill shrimp worked well for me) entice the fish to swim through the ring
5. when the fish is fine with that start raising it out of the water
6. the fish should soon be ok with jumping out of the water
Good luck and have fun


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## BambooTikiBettaGirl84 (Jun 29, 2014)

Oh sounds perfect and I bet my girls will catch on pretty fast. They LOVE eating so that won't be a problem getting them to follow food.

I might just start off having them just swim through hoops, then advance them to jumping through. Either way, pretty neat trick!


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## myexplodingcat (Apr 9, 2014)

WOW. That's a lot of fish history. Sounds like you've had a really neat time with animals throughout your life!


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## Lyric Shadowcrow (Aug 6, 2014)

Tigerlily was a jumper too so that kind of helped kick start the idea  
Sounds like you have it figured out on what will work for your girls 
Keep me posted on your progress and soon you will be charging admission for your betta show lol

There is a lot more I haven't touched on too..just didn't want to overwhelm anyone on a first entry


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## Lyric Shadowcrow (Aug 6, 2014)

Caution DON'T do this unless you really know your fish!

The first time I got male bettas they were sold to me as Butterfly Bettas. I was lucky to find a true albino, a pure red and navy blue. I tossed them into a 10 gallon tank that had a school of 10 tetras (black and neon- 5 of each) I had lots of various live plants. 
The fish never fought and ate together peacefully even though they did jostle each other for choice bits of krill, brine shrimp and raw shredded chicken with natural color enhancers (found in the spice aisle and secret to my fish's colors).

Since them I have kept veil tails and deltas successfully in a male colony of upwards of 10 in a 55 gallon tank. Mirage my current betta is a Half moon and has shown aggression with other fish. I am not adding more bettas until he passes away. I miss my all male tanks though and plan to have another one later on down the road.

You can test your Betta's temperament to see how aggressive he/she is:
1. Place a mirror near the cup and see the fish's reaction 
If the fins flare it won't be a good choice

2. Put two cups side by side and watch the reactions of the fish. 
If neither flare and ignore each other you can mix them

3.Always have a back up plan should it not work!
Sometimes fish behave differently when they acclimate to their new home

I have been keeping Bettas in colonies for over 30 years without a serious injury to the fish. I also had lots of tanks in case of something going wrong which never has thankfully. 

Would I do this kind of set up again..yes many times over!


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## Lyric Shadowcrow (Aug 6, 2014)

Fish compatibility the good the bad the what in the world is that?!!!?

I had a danio tank that housed leopard, blue spotted, blue spotted long fin, zebra, golden leopard long fin and zebra long fin. They were in schools of 5 or more but since they were all the same species they schooled together and even intermixed spawning. I added a betta into the tank and the danios attacked the poor fish. I quickly removed the poor thing but sadly he didn't survive. To this day I will never put bettas in with danios or sword tails. my bettas were housed with guppies, mollies, platys, and flying foxes with no issues. Then I got the tetra bug..everything had to be about the tetras. I added some to a betta tank and that for me was pure delight the tetras darting around the live plants the bettas swimming along near the top ignoring the little fish. I watched the fish tank for hours. 

During this time I got another fish tank and got the idea of having "invisible" fish. I happen to be a prankster and nothing delights me more then playing tricks. I bought a school of glass fish ( without the stupid colors..inked/dyed I don't care it wasn't natural). I also added 5 glass cats and a flower pot on its side for spawning and hiding out. Then I got the ghost shrimp about 12 or so of them. Once everything was in place I told my school friends to come over and see the invisible fish. They did and at first didn't believe me when I told them there were real fish in there. It took them several minutes to spot the fish and shrimp. 

Soon my tank inhabitants started spreading through the school everyone was saying that I owned an elephant, a whale, and a shark. plus all the wild and crazy fish and then I had real fish that were invisible. I started charging admission for people to come into my room and see the fish. Lol, my fish were more popular then me but it didn't matter I had pets no one had ever seen before. Even one of my dogs was very popular (part wolf). 

I started keeping schools of the more aggressive fish including Cichlids, Leaf fish, and a rope fish...now please understand that none of these were housed together that would have been bad. 
I had African cichlids and South American cichlids in their appropriate tanks never crossing the two kinds. 

I also had the odd ball tank which I touched on briefly. A high school friend started his own fish store and I worked with him for a bit before things went south for me. Now my friend knew my interest in the hard to find and really odd fish. He went out of his way to always find something just for me to work with..he would call me and say he found something I needed to see. I would get over there as fast as the bus could take me or drag a family member along.

One day he took me to the back of the store (its almost pitch black) and there on a bare table was a fish tank with a lone inhabitant. It wasn't very big, he had no idea what it was since it came in a shipment of plecos. It looked like a cross between a magnet and a fish. The markings were black lines on silver scales and the face was..odd. No one knew what it was and my friend told me if I could ID it I could have it. Oh a challenge!
I got on his computer and started looking up plecos and after a few minutes I told him I thought it was a rubber mouth pleco. He thought I was nuts since at the time they weren't shipped to our part of the country. He looked at price lists for such a fish and couldn't find one. He was planning on finding a way to get more and while he was going about that, his girlfriend at the time (now wife) bagged and tagged my wonderful new pet. I had to name it Houlihan (from M.A.S.H.) since it seemed fitting. 

Since it couldn't go in with the African cichlids due to their aggression, I put it in with the South American tank. It worked out rather well so all was good until..it started to grow...and grow. I had a decent sized catfish tank that housed the twig catfish (farawella) banjo catfish, a baby bumble bee catfish, and my most infamous pet at the time Jaws a young bala shark (fresh water..not really shark but named as such) Jaws was a pain, he would nip at anything and everything. Cleaning out the tank involved getting Jaws out of the way. I nearly renamed him Cujo. My other fish in the tank that was a terror was my banjo cat (Hank) he had a terrible habit of swimming to your hand then perching on it, just to dig his pectoral spines into your flesh and walk across, if that didn't work he would roll over and get you with the dorsal spines. I could never clean the tank without wearing protective gloves. One day I plan on getting another banjo catfish and maybe with luck I can get a bumble bee catfish and redo the tank. Everyone needs an oddball or two...


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## BambooTikiBettaGirl84 (Jun 29, 2014)

I used to have those tetras that were injected with colors. They were clear but had different colored stripes in them. This was way before the "Glofish" phenomenon. I know many people dislike those fish because it's cruel to inject them with such things, but as a kid I loved them. If they had natural ways of making those fish, I would deff get another tank for "invisible" fish like those again.

Keep up the great journal entries, I really enjoy reading them!


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## Lyric Shadowcrow (Aug 6, 2014)

When I found out they were injected with dye (tattooed basically) I was disgusted. Now they use jellyfish biolum in the danios to make them glow..still think its cruel but each to his own.

I am glad you are reading them and enjoying what I post


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## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

I love tetras. They are a lot of fun to watch! Look forward to hearing more about your set ups.


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