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Tell me about your FIRST betta...

2K views 27 replies 23 participants last post by  copperarabian 
#1 ·
I was about 13 years old and had gone to a girls sweet sixteen birthday party and every family had a table of there own on the each table had a decoration ;a small flower vase with a bamboo stick and a betta :|. Dont remember his color, didnt even find out he was a betta until many years later

Took him home and kept him in what was probaly a half a gallon tank that i used to have a hermit grab in , the tank was only half covered. I would feed him goldfish flakes and food i that i used to feed my hermit crab :|

One day i woke up and my fish was gone from his tank i looked all over the room didnt find him. 5 years later we were moving out of the place and my father and i were removing the carpeting from my room when in the same corner where the table i used to keep his tank was at, under the carpet i find a perfectly in tact tiny fish skeleton i kid you not just like this but smaller

http://www.agassiztrading.com/photos/photos-boneroom/fish-skeleton-1.jpg


Poor guy :-(
 
#2 ·
I was working as an illustrator for a publishing company and one of the customer service reps who worked in the offices across the hall from us got fired for essentially telling our head honcho that she was a flaming sack of flea bitten cow pies. It was actually pretty great, imo. Sent the e-mail around to EVERYONE.

So anyway, she hands my co-worker her fish that she was keeping on her desk and says "HERE! I'm leaving before they fire me! Take care of my fish." My co-worker knew I loved animals so she gave it to me to take care of. I took it home very carefully that night and put him in a 1 gallon container I grabbed at wal-mart that had a little lit lid on it. He unfortunately didn't last very long as he was kept in maybe a half gallon bowl his entire life and she hadn't changed his water but once every few weeks. It got dirty fast.

I'm pretty sure he was just your average blue/red veiltail that I named Herbert.
 
#3 ·
I was taking a walk through Walmart and a whitish pink and blue betta caught my eye, none were in good shape but this one was alive so i grabbed it and grabbed a gallon bowl and went home. After dumping him in the gallon bowl of spring water he just sank. Upon closer inspection he had fuzzy white stuff on his gills, i went to bed thinking maybe it was just stuck to him from his dirty cup cause it had alot of fuzzy floating stuff, the next morning i found him dead and covered with fuzzy stuff. I put him back in his cup with clean water and buried the whole cup out in the field and felt guilty and sad for him but figured i did my best. At the time it was my best because i didnt have internet and knew very little but looking back i could have maybe saved him if i knew what i know now. I didnt buy another fish for 8 years and now i have two bettas and the proper knowledge of care XD
 
#4 ·
I was in a farewell party for my friend, then she came to me "what do you think about taking care of my betta?" and I was like "You have a fish?! o_O" then she replied "You are the only one I trust in keeping him, if you can't take care of him my husband will throw him at the Thames".

THen I said "huh ok, you can bring him at my house anytime you want".

And that's how I got Fillet, he's with me for 3 months now, my first fish ever ;3!

http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z129/biones/P1060121.jpg
 
#5 ·
my first betta.... well MY first betta was what i know now as an Orange Dalmatian Veiltail. my mom would get bettas before that, the horrid bettas in vases(usually named Fishy, Fishy 2, Mr. Bubbles... silly names). well, his name was Zach(he started my Final Fantasy naming tradition, i guess. :3), and he lived in a bowl. a half-gallon bowl. little guy was a trooper. i'd only change the water when it turned brown, never acclimated him, over fed him severely. yet, he never got sick. x: never got ick, velvet, bloat, nothing. one day, my sister's evil cat conned my good cat into knocking his bowl down. poor boy lived in a Blue's Clue's cup until my mom bought him a new, thicker bowl. soon after that, i moved, and he got a one gallon tank, the triangular ones like i keep Lulu in now. he was so happy, and prettied up really nicely. then, near the end of his life, he got the 10 gallon, all to himself. he had a blast swimming. he'd zoom about, play in the current, and was one happy betta. sadly, he died in that 10 gallon. i found him one morning, stuck to the filter intake. :< he started my love of Orange Dals, and i want to make them more popular and easier to find, in memory of my lucky find. :3
 
#7 ·
I always want dog and one day about 4 years ago instead of dog i got my first betta. I never even went to fish department before. I didn't want fish at all,i thought they are boring. Of course i fell in love with him and now i have bettas at home and at work at my work table. And i introduced a few of my co workers to betta :) It first betta for them too. I love betta fish.
 
#8 ·
I currently have my first betta! He's also my first fish ever. Got him in March. His name is Blurple. (He's bluish/purplish - well, he's your standard dark blue veiltail with red wash/ventrals, so he looks purplish sometimes.)

Personality-wise, he's hilarious. He never stops moving, and he flares at me if he catches me looking from across the room. Flares at everything he sees, actually. Always rebuilds his bubblenest the day after a water change. He's got a 2.5 gallon bowl with live plants in it, soon to be a 5 gal tank. He's currently staring at me.
 
#9 ·
Well my family had a betta a several years back named Matrix, but about 4 years ago I decided that I wanted to get one of my own. I decided to wait because my sister had 2 hermit crabs in our 5 gallon tank and I wanted to use that tank so I wouldn't have to buy my own. My sister ended up getting me a betta and fish bowl for Christmas a year later (she needed pictures of it for a school project). Well sadly she got a very sick betta from Meijers and he only lived for about a week. The following week I went out with my sister to a pet store and got a happy healthy betta who lived for about 2 years (and got him a 2 gallon tank to replace the fish bowl). The hermit crab is still alive (going on 6 years old now), and is now in my care.
 
#10 ·
Mine was Stalin, a VT male from petsmart. I couldn't have a dog so I got him. He lived in a .75 gallon bowl. I never went into my room (where he was) and a week after I got my Dane puppy... yeah, I forgot about him so much he died because all his water evaporated. D; I didn't even sleep in my room, I never knew...

Kaida was my second, years later. Julep my third <3
 
#12 ·
My first, well I call Buddy my first, because I petsat for him before he became mine permanently,was a reddish brown veiltail. Shortly after keeping Buddy for a neighbor I decided to get my own, a pretty turquoise veiltail named Boy Blue. They both lived in .5 gallon vases, before I knew better. They both lived for about 2.5 years.
 
#13 ·
I don't believe my first had a name. He was a beautiful light turquoise. I was probably 15 or so. I saw him at the pet store and I got my parents to get him for me. I really liked him and thought he was so pretty but he stayed in my room where all I did was sleep. He was in a tiny bowl/tank that I only changed when it looked horrible. It seriously was probably less than a .5 gallon. He actually lived for a year or so but I am not sure how. He eventually died of dropsy. Poor guy!
 
#14 ·
One day i woke up and my fish was gone from his tank i looked all over the room didnt find him. 5 years later we were moving out of the place and my father and i were removing the carpeting from my room when in the same corner where the table i used to keep his tank was at, under the carpet i find a perfectly in tact tiny fish skeleton i kid you not just like this but smaller

http://www.agassiztrading.com/photos/photos-boneroom/fish-skeleton-1.jpg


Poor guy :-(
Disturbing.... :-?

Mine was Engine. A red veil tail. He lasted the night :(
We were soo new to bettas, and killed a lot. I was about 6.
There was no H2O conditioner...
 
#15 ·
On my 15th birthday in February, I wanted to get a hamster... but my little 5 year old brother would not stop whining about how it wasn't fair that he didn't have a pet. So mom made a deal with me and said "I'll get you the hamster and him a fish, but you also have to do the water changes for the fish tank."

We were looking for a goldfish (*facepalm*), and then were directed to bettas... seeing as they were "easier" fish. We bought a 1/2 gallon, and a red veiltail who my little brother named Puffy. I cleaned the water once a week for a few weeks until I noticed Puffy getting sick and clamped. I found my way here, and then started doing 100% water changes while I begged my parents to let me get a proper set up. Eventually we got a 10 gallon tank, a heater, and a filter and cycled it. I stuck him in with 6 harlequin rasboras, and he was happy and colored up amazingly. Unfortunately he contracted a freak illness a few months later and never really recovered, then passed on in October.
 
#17 ·
I'm sure everyone here new about my first encounters with the betta kind. My BFF had betta's for YEARS and without heaters hell barly without water changes they survived four years...So my dad wanted to get some...Then after a LOT of research nearly two months worth staying up all night doing said research I got into a HUGE arguement with my dad over cycling and after getting the tank stuff I found Kalona...He was my first betta but I had to wait a week before getting him. Poor thing I feel so guilty now because he and Kaida died awful deaths. They were my first boys the first fish I had since I was seven...

Then after getting Kaida's old tank set up the weekend my BFF was over we went to WalMart and me and her looked for almost two hours straight and the first one we saw flared at Emiri-chan. Then we got Akira because he was the most active...And then he enabled the rest of 'em.
 
#18 ·
The first betta that ever lived in my house was my mom's. I named him Po and he is happily living on our fireplace working on his latest bubble nest.

My first betta is my female, Suki. I went my local pet store looking for a betta. I had my eye on two little black females, but they looked odd, and I am seriously doubting they were even bettas. So I walked away from them and found Suki's tank. I bought her and took her home. :) Her name means 'beloved' in Japanese.
 
#19 ·
i got my first betta when i was like 5 years old. he was a blue veil tail named gladiola (i thought that was how you said "gladiolus", the flowers my mom had planted) and he lived in a half gallon vase that we probably cleaned once a month. i feel really bad about that, but hey, i was five, and at least i know better now lol
 
#20 ·
I had originally decided that I was going to get a goldfish since I wanted something to take my mind off of my dog that I couldn't keep since I moved. So I took a trip to Wal-Mart and went into the fish isle and noticed little containers with betta fish in them. I knew nothing about them at the time but I decided to look at them instead of the GF. None of the Betta Fish were active except for one boy who swam crazily and flared at the other fish. As I began to reach for his cup I noticed movement in the corner of my eye. Thats when I seen Shiro the Betta fish that I have with me now. Call me crazy but it felt like I had a fishy connection because he stared at me the whole time and watched me pick up the other fish. Lol I'm glad I bought him though he such a little character :)
 
#21 ·
Mom brung home a betta from her job in a vase with a plant. I named him Henry. He was a dark red color and lived for YEARS. Like 5-6 years. He used to flare at my finger/face. One morning I woke up and he was dead. Not sure why. Old age I guess. I buried him outside. Poor guy!
 
#22 ·
My first betta that I can REMEMBER was a red VT named Jax! Lol I was like ten i think and he of course lived in that stupid betta home all pet stores have. He lived for a good two years in my room! I did actually move him to that 1gal cube thing walmarts have. I didn't have any fish for a while until Lucifer who started me on the betta bug! He was a royal blue VT and I got him a 3gal eclipse tank. Thus my addiction started 4 years ago!
 
#23 ·
I still have my first betta. I got my boy at Petsmart almost a year ago. As soon as I walked into the fish section, he was the very first betta I saw on the shelf. His colors were so bright, and he was one of the healthiest ones I saw there. I wasn't even going to pick him at first. I was looking at all the others, but I kept going back to him. I wound up buying him. <3 I bought him a 2.5 gigantic margarita glass-like bowl. He loved that thing. Now he has a 5 gallon. He has such a personality. xD He's a little jerkface who loves to make his mama worry. It's probably because he's so spoiled.
 
#26 ·
I think a major repition here is most of us were small children. We hadn't a clue! Which is why I love this forum, it is child friendly and appropriate. Parents are so weary of the internet and with a safe site like this parents, children, and everyone else can get accurate information.

I wish parents would research first...
 
#27 ·
My first betta was a dirty white crowntail with red/purple fins. I named him Zues. My boyfriend and I were walking through meijer and decided to each buy one. He currently passed though. I have a short story about my boyfriends. He was a bright red regular betta. He got him in a small 2 gal. Then upgraded to a five. Then a ten. Then a 35 gal...with like 20 other fish! lmfao. then he got sick of fish and got frogs. then more fish to put in with the frogs. then another betta. and another....now he has no fish and a bearded dragon.

Funny what happens when your animal loving girlfriend makes you buy one fish, huh? lmfao xD
 
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