Hi everyone! I recently decided to adopt a betta, and two days ago, I rescued this guy from a local pet store. As usual, I was looking at the bettas that they had for sale, when I noticed a pretty little bi-color betta with a white body and blue fins swimming sideways in his cup. My heart went out to him, and I immediately decided to try to save the fish that, to me, looked like a beautiful orchid flower.
While I was checking out "Orchid," I noticed that he and a cute little orange betta had gravel in the bottom of their cups, and their water levels were lower than all the other bettas. I guessed that these two fish were "leftovers" that had gone unsold. When I got to the register with "Orchid," the sales clerk confirmed that the cups with gravel in them were indeed from a previous shipment of bettas, so all I could think of was poor "Orchid" had been sitting in his cup for too long, and was suffering from ammonia poisoning. Sadly, "Orchid" died before I could even get him home, which made me realize that if I didn't go back and get the other betta with gravel in his cup, he too might suffer the same terrible fate as "Orchid."
So, I rushed back to the pet store and quickly purchased the orange betta. Thankfully, he was still in good enough shape to survive the ride home, and now my lucky little boy has a loving mom and plenty of fresh, warm water to swim in! I named him "Vulcan," after the Roman god of fire, as he is like a firecracker in his new tank--swimming all over the place, happily checking out every square inch of his tank. Upon close examination, I saw that has several small areas where it appears that he may have suffered some ammonia scald (notice the brown spots around his head and on his fin), but I am hoping that these clear up with good nutrition (New Life Spectrum Betta Food, as well as freeze-dried blood worms and brine shrimp) and plenty of water changes. Here's a picture of little Vulcan checking me out this morning:
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He consumed two pellets this morning, and two more this evening. He had shown interest in his pellets from the first day that I had him, but he would always gulp them down and then spit them right back out. I realized that the pellets were probably too big for him (New Life Spectrum Betta Pellets), so this morning I broke each pellet up into smaller pieces. That did the trick, as he ate each little piece and didn't spit any of it back out. In a few days, I'll try offering him treats of freeze-dried brine shrimp and bloodworms, but for now I want to keep it simple so that he gets used to the NLSBP as his staple diet.
