I feel like I should provide a bit of backstory here.
As a kid, I couldn't stand crowntails. Thought they looked sickly and unnerving. Weird fish. Much preferred the pretty, showy veiltails of the local petstore. I stopped keeping fish after I turned 13ish, because a) we got a kitten, and b) they were mostly my parent's responsibility anyway. (Audience groans and says 'yep, I remember that too'. It's true though, isn't it? Unless you grew up in a fishkeeping household!)
So anyway. Few years later and I'm doing it on my own, and doing it with a-- well an acceptable amount of skill. CROWNTAILS. Still don't quite know what to make of them, but I ended up buying one who had the exact pattern I'd been looking for a couple weeks ago, and thus: the first foray into crowntail-keeping.
(On top of that he was a marble, so you know, my kneejerk reaction was 'HE'S NOT COLOURFUL AND HIS FINS ARE
FALLING APART'. Veetor is, in fact, very colourful, perfectly healthy, and has probably the strongest fins of all my boys. I have learned my lesson.)
I went to Petsmart today to buy a replacement heater, and decided to have a look at the bettas-- anyone who's talked to me about bettas over the past little while has learned that I've been DESPERATE to find a black crowntail. They look like tiny elegant little Grim Reapers to me. Lo and behold, I walked by the shelf and there was a dark, gorgeous little crowntail boy sitting in a filthy, blue-water cup, right next to a pale blue-and-white marble crowntail. (The two of them are so used to each other's presence that I kept them sitting together for almost half an hour when I got home and neither could've cared less.) Basically I needed them, and to be honest I'd been saving tank room for boys just like these two, so everything was set.
Anyway, tl;dr: here are Corvus and Dove.
So evidently, Corvus is not actually black
at all-- although in fairness, his water was so murky and he was so pale when I first found him that he very well could've been. He coloured up magnificently as soon as I put him in fresh water, and as much as I wish he was black, I'm kind of enchanted by his red fins and shiny green spots.
And this is Dove, who is just about the sweetest, calmest thing. He's very inquisitive but showing signs of stress at all, and he started exploring his bowl as soon as I put him in it. (They're both in temporary homes, which is sort of becoming standard for me-- I like being able to watch them for a few days before I put them into tanks, and every betta I've taken from cup to bowl to tank has been much more relaxed and happy in general.)
And just because, what the heck:
I told people Idaho's tail would never grow back, and he's very determinedly proving me wrong on that. Little guy is SUCH a trooper. It's even longer now than it was in this picture, which was taken about a week ago.
So yeah. Babies are growing up, Jess is learning to shut up and love the crowntails, et cetera.
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I had a fishtank growing up, whose run ended when I left for college, and I haven't had fish since. Soo....I'm not gonna say how many years later it is now, I got my kids each a 2.5 gallon tank and after a failed frog experiment, I thought that Bettas, which I remembered fondly from my tank, might be a good way to go. And I was quite suprised by the crowntails - they didn't *have* crowntails when I had my tank. They were so pretty and exotic to me - both the kids ended up picking a crowntail.
