I really didn’t intend on getting a new betta this weekend. I was going out to price how much a new aquarium decor setup would probably be running me when I spotted the perfect fish in Petsmart. Well, I had to rescue the poor guy so I got him right there, rushed home and re-set up my fish tank (which now has a greek ruins sort of theme to it.

Mr. Spatula is a mostly blue veil tail betta with a black head, and red streaks in his fins. He’s also as dumb as a box of rocks. He spent the first two hours in the tank freaking out over his reflection in the back wall. I figured he’d stop eventually, but I ended up having to remove the background until I can figure out a suitable replacement that won’t reflect nearly so much. I also have to feed him by practically dropping the food on top of him. Otherwise he won’t notice it.

It’s interesting how two different fish can have such different personalities. Fish was mellow (He rarely flared, and never freaked at his own reflection) and raced right out when the food came in. Mr. Spatula is a bit more aggressive.

I’ll try to get a good picture at some point soon, and when I do I’ll post em up. He just wouldn’t cooperate. Probably not used to me being around yet.

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1. Er…Oops.
2. Mr. Spatula, REVEALED!!
3. Fishy Update!

What was the last thing you built with your own hands?
Submitted by Nick.

Ok, so technically this isn't something I built. And I guess it isn't with my own hands…but, it's the best I've got. For the longest time now I've been unhappy with how my Betta's tank has been set up. It's kinda generic, the plants suck and the sponge filter I had going in there was ugly as heck and took up a crapton of room. So I decided that I would switch back to a power filter.

Betta's have a particular issue in that they don't like strong currents. And while my tank (an Eclipse System 6) came with a filter, it didn't have any flow control on it so it ended up being much too powerful and Fish didn't like it very much at all. So I switched to the sponge filter, but it didn't do as good a job as I wanted it to do on the actual filtering bit. So I would have to buy a new filter for the tank with some kind of flow control. But the problem then became that the hood of the tank was set up in such a way that it wouldn't allow for a filter that hangs off the back of the tank without modification.

I talked to my parents (who are much handier than I am with these sorts of things) and we came to the conclusion that we could cut a hole in the plastic hood such that it would allow a filter to fit through. So I brought it over last night (after being tricked into carrying a very heavy elliptical machine into their house that they had just bought) and we proceeded to begin the cutting process. After quite a bit of work, we ended up with a nicely sized hole.

I set up the new filter last night and everything seems to be working fine. Fish doesn't mind the current so much since it's less, I have more room to work with tank decoration and it doesn't look as horrible in there. Now I just need to figure out how I want to decorate it, as well as getting a couple of ghost shrimp to complete the tank (and provide some possible little snacks for my betta)

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1. Fish, The Betta
2. Beta Betta Tank
3. Fish, the Betta: A Memorial

I don't have much to say at the moment except that I took a good picture of my Three Spot/Blue Gourami last night that came out pretty good. So I figured I'd share.

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1. New Fish!
2. Fish: The Movie
3. New Fish Addition

Well, I couldn't get a decent picture of my new fish since he's really moving around a lot, but I do have a video! It looks like Vox did a number on the compression, but it's still watchable if you want to see a fish swim around.

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1. New Fish!
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Just a quick update for now. I have a new fish in my aquarium. Like I mentioned yesterday, I was going out last night to pick up a new fish for my aquarium and I have returned with a Blue Gourami/Three Spot Gourami which I believe is female. I also picked up a few new plants to fill out the back a bit.

I was trying to take a picture but my camera is hard to work with at the moment (since I broke it) and I need to access the menu to change some settings so aquarium pictures don't look horrible. Luciky I was able to order a new LCD for my camera yesterday afternoon. They said it would be here in 1 business day, which I'm hoping means today and not tomorrow…that'd be pushing it though.

Pictures will be coming later, in any case.

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1. Fish: The Movie
2. Just A Fish
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I was saying last night how I would like to invent a time machine (or buy one, since that would probably be easier…) and zap myself back to when I was first considering getting my fish. At that point, I had said to myself "I can do fish…fish are easy!" I would like to go back in time so I can slap myself.

This sudden outrage at myself is caused by the fact that I spent about an hour last night with a toothbrush and my aquarium decorations cleaning of gunk. I only got about halfway done too, before I decided my hands were far too pruny and I should probably put the rest off. Some of those plants have an awful lot of leaves.

The tank does look much, much more colorful now though. It was starting to look pretty depressing.

Those fish better appreciate everything I do for them…

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Well, I almost lost another Zebra Danio this morning. Well…more accurately last night.

Last night I was working on the weekly (well, at that point weekly + 1 day) aquarium cleaning. Changing out the water, sucking up the crap in the gravel, that kinda stuff. It had been about a month since I last cleaned out the filter so I figured I should probably do that. My filter has a little basket thing that contains all of the sponges and gravely stuff that does it's cleaning magic. So I took that out while leaving the filter still running since it's a pain in the butt to unplug it all the time. So I pulled the basket out, cleaned out the stuff and put it back in…no problem, filter still works, all that stuff. I re-fill the tank, and then I went to bed.

Cut to this morning…I went to feed the fish and I noticed that I seem to only have two Zebra Danio's left instead of the three I was expecting. After looking around the tank for a bit, I decided to check the filter. I opened it up and started to pull the basket out. When it was about halfway out of the filter I see a danio make a flying leap out of the back of the filter and behind the tank. I watched horrified for a moment as it started flopping around and then I frantically tried to find something to pick it up with since it wasn't in an easy to reach location.

My plan was to grab a paper plate and try to get the fish to flop onto that so I could deposit it back into the tank. By the time I grabbed a plate though, the fish had already flopped off of my counter and onto the floor near my computer desk. I dove over there, and tried to get it to jump onto the plate but it wasn't cooperating. I ended up making a grab for it's back fin, pinched it between two fingers and quickly snapped it up and dropped it back into the tank.

He seems to be doing fine at the moment…but I'll have to see if the stress freaked him out too much or something. As near as I can tell, he got sucked up into the filter while I was cleaning it. Oops.

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2. Er…Oops.
3. QotD: Built to Last

I was just looking into my aquarium when I realized that I only seem to have 3 zebra danio's now instead of 4.

I used to have a fish with only one eye, which was dubbed Ol' One Eye fairly quickly on on in the fish keeping process. I can't find him anywhere. He used to hang up near the top, swimming in the currents up there, but I can't seem to find him anywhere now.

I did notice that he was kinda not moving quite as much as he had in the past…perhaps maybe he finally kicked the bucket. I figured he'd go first due to his missing eye. He's gone completley missing though. I checked all of the plants and under all the decorations…nothing.

Hope he turns up soon, one way or the other…

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I mentioned in yesterdays posting that I was going to be going out and trying to get a couple more fish for the collection. Unfortunately, none of the places that we (Wassy joined me on my quest since she needed a distraction) visited were either closed or didn't have what I was after. I've got one more place to look at tomorrow, but then I'll be switching to a backup plan and getting something else.

Today I've got an appointment to go get a new pair of glasses after I kinda crushed the last pair by stepping on them, which will be very, very handy because living in a blurry world for the past couple days has been…annoying. I can function without them, but reading signs and stuff is really, really hard.

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