The Homecoming

With the major water change I performed on Wednesday, and my nitrates measuring under 20 ppm, my tank was finally ready for a fish. On Wednesday evening, I set out in search of my Magnus or Grendel and instead I found Auberon.

I had imagined myself with a handsome blue betta, much like my regret fish Alfred, but tucked in the back of PetSmart's betta section, this grumpy, pale, little guy was purposefully swimming about in his tiny cup. 

Enchanted by his vivacity, despite the gross water he was swimming in, and by the slight iridescence that illuminated his little white body, I kept coming back to him over and over again.

After a lot of deliberation, I finally brought the little guy to the register. 

A whopping $6 later and he was mine.

It would be a bit before I was able to get him home and start acclimating him to his new environment and I felt terrible that I had not thought to bring a little Prime to bind the ammonia and make him temporarily a bit more comfortable in his cup. 

Had I thought about it, and felt like being a pest, I would have insisted that the PetSmart employees fix the situation for his journey-- after all, its the least they could do after making him live with rotting fish food in odoriferous water.

Acclimation was not perfect. It was only after I had started to add tank water to his little floating cup that it dawned on me that I should have tested the parameters (at least the pH and ammonia content) of the water he had been living in. I would have been curious to know what the ammonia concentration was with that rotting food in there-- I really wonder how long it had been since a water change had been done at PetSmart. 

I let his cup float for a few hours, slowing adding more and more tank water until the cup was nearly full (but with enough room for him to breathe) until, finally, I poured betta into a net (over a bucket, as not to get cup water in the tank) and set the net into the tank. It took him a few second to find his way out of the net, but as soon as he was out into open water, he was busy swishing around the tank.

 I acclimated and released with the lights off and didn't see Auberon in the light until the timer popped the bulb on in the morning. Under the light of the tank, he was even more beautiful than in the florescent light of the store. 

That iridescent teal shimmer I had seen in the daylight when I brought him outside after purchasing him was much more intense under my daylight bulb and featured hues of purple, pink, mauve and even yellow. 

His ethereal, diaphanous, appearance and fluttering double tail had me think of wings-- moth wings, butterfly wings, faerie wings, which lead me to name the little guy after the king of the faeries-- Auberon. 

He spent his first full day at home hunting the colony of copepods that had (almost miraculously) shown up in my tank. He was busy exploring, swimming to and fro, and almost giving me a heart attack showing me the dangerous places he could fit in the tank. 

Next water change, I'll do some rearranging to make sure there are no spots he can potentially wiggle into and get stuck. I'll also give the leaves of my anubias a trim since some are yellowing. 

I'm quite curious to see if any color intensifies or develops on the little guy especially because of that blue splotch on his dorsal fin. 

A few of his fin ray bones are exposed or damaged, mostly on his anal fin, so he has some healing to do but, overall, I think he's in pretty good shape. 

I figured he might not want to eat on his first day home, but I dropped a New Life Spectrum pellet in the tank anyway, and a minute or so later, when he discovered it floating over by the thermometer, he ate it. And then spit it up. And then ate it again. He's so tiny, I'm surprised the food would even fit in his mouth. 

I'm going to look into getting some frozen food for him and maybe another pellet food to add some variety. 

The video really shows how changeable Auberon's color is. Sometimes it seems like the different hues are just pulsing through him or like he's lit from within. 

So glad I took a chance on a pale betta rather than going with a traditional blue fish like I had intended!

Welcome home, Auberon!

The Fishless Cycle, Part II

Marimo moss balls added (8/13)

        The second half of my cycle was a bit more relaxed than the first half as I figured I was in for a long wait for the all the nitrites to convert to nitrates.

During the second week of the cycle, for the most part, I continued to test for nitrites and nothing else because I knew ~2 ppm ammonia was being converted to nitrites and I knew there were nitrates present, so really I was just waiting for the drop off in nitrites.

Tested	8/14/16	8/15/16	8/16/16	8/17/16	8/18/16	8/19/16	8/20/16
						did not test
PH	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	8.3		8.3
Ammonia	0 ppm	0 ppm	n/a	n/a	0 ppm		0 ppm
Nitrite	5 ppm	5 ppm	5 ppm	5 ppm	5 ppm		0 ppm
Nitrate	20 ppm	n/a	n/a	n/a	80 ppm		40 ppm
Action	dosed with 5 drops	dosed with 5 drops	dosed with 5 drops	dosed with 5 drops	partial water change dosed with 5 drops		dosed with 5 drops

On the 18th, I performed a partial water change late in the day and dosed with ammonia before bed. I did not test the next day as I had dosed so late the day before, I knew my results would still show some ammonia. It was very surprising to find, when I finally tested early in the morning of the 20th, that just two weeks after I started the cycle, it appeared to be completed. The partial water change, it seems, jump started the cycle and got things moving a little faster.

To test that the tank had truly cycled, I dosed with ammonia after performing partial water changes, then checked the levels 24 hours later. Here's what I found:

Tested	8/21/16	8/22/16	8/23/16	8/24/16	8/24/16
					after water change
PH	8.3	8.3	8.3	8.3	n/a
Ammonia	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm
Nitrite	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm
Nitrate	80 ppm	80 ppm	40 ppm	20 ppm	5 ppm
Action	dosed with 6 drops	partial water change dosed with 7 drops	partial water change dosed with 3 drops	major water change	betta time :)

After watching the nitrite test tube turn purple instantly for so many days in a row, seeing it stay sky blue seemed almost magical, and with my nitrates finally below 20 ppm, it was time to consider finally adding a fish to the tank!

The final arrangement. Driftwood and anubias coffeefolia added 8/15

The Fishless Cycle, Part I

        My mother kept an aquarium when I was a kid and, while I remember the fish and the water changes, the occasional bouts of ich, and the one instance of dropsy (yikes!), for the life of me, I do not remember her ever testing the water, let alone pre-cycling the tank.

So, when I decided that I wanted an aquarium of my own, I was surprised when I found that every internet fish forum and resource pushed cycling the tank before adding fish. Whether we knew it at the time or not, the aquariums of my childhood did cycle, but at the expense of the fish. Since I'm set on doing things right this time, I suppressed my overwhelming urge to "add a fish and see how things go" and started down the long road of the fishless cycle.

Water testing with my Master Test Kit is as close as I've come to playing scientist since chemistry class over a decade ago. Testing would be a lot of fun if it wasn't for my inability to differentiate between shades of green, purple and orange. 

Before I officially started my cycle, I figured it was important to test my tap water parameters since that is what I would be using (conditioned with Seachem Prime, of course) to fill the tank. 

Tap Water

Test	Result
PH	8.3
Ammonia	0 ppm
Nitrite	0 ppm
Nitrate	0 ppm

A good start, but seeing as bettas prefer a more neutral PH, the reading of 8.3 is a bit of a concern. According to my water service, PH readings last year were between 8.6 and 9.0 in some locations, so I consider myself lucky to have a relatively low PH.  

on the first day of  the fishless cycle (8/6)

I officially began my fishless cycle on August 6, 2016 and I started it, thanks to a lost package, without the corner sponge filter I had ordered. While I waited for a filter to arrive, I added an airstone to agitate the water since I had read that was important for bacteria growth. I also added some plants: Java Moss, Java fern and anubias, as I read, and was told by a helpful Petco shopper, that they quite like the water conditions during a fishless cycle. On August 6, I dosed my 5.5 gallon tank with 5 drops of Dr. Tim's ammonium chloride to get the cycle started. Here's what the first week of cycling looked like:

Tested	8/7/16	8/8/16	8/9/16	8/10/16	8/11/16	8/12/16	8/13/16
PH	8.4	8.4	n/a	8.3	8.3	8.3	8.3
Ammonia	2 ppm	2 ppm	1 ppm	1.5 ppm	0.5 ppm	0.25 ppm	0 ppm
Nitrite	0.25 ppm	0.25 ppm	.50 ppm	2 ppm	5 ppm	5 ppm	5 ppm
Nitrate	n/a	n/a	n/a	5 ppm	5 ppm	10 ppm	20 ppm
Action	dosed with 6 drops	added almond leaf for PH	dosed with 5 drops	none	dosed with 5 drops	dosed with 5 drops	dosed with 7 (oops) drops

Note: Once nitrite values hit 5 ppm, the measurement is not actually accurate as it is bound by the limitations of the test kit. As I entered the nitrite spike portion of the cycle, water in my test tube would immediately turn a dark blue/purple as soon as I added the test solution indicating that nitrite levels were sky high and beyond the capabilities of the test.

I was surprised at how quickly I began to see nitrite results as I understood that it would be a bit before this would happen. I credit adding live plants and all the established tank bacteria they brought with them for the speed of this part of the cycle. 

cloudy after rearranging (8/11)

On August 11, I finally received and installed a sponge filter and upgraded my terrible heater to a more reliable, Eheim Jager which required me to rearrange the tank entirely, including the substrate. I was concerned that this would impact my cycle, however, according to the data, things seemed to carry on just as they had been. One week of cycling and the tank was securely in the nitrite spike phase of the cycle, cultivating  the necessary bacteria for a healthy tank. The plants were thriving, some algae had arrived (brown diatoms) and things were swimming right along! 

The Story of Alfred

My recent stint as a fish sitter reminded me of my very first, and very sad, foray into the world of betta fish:

    One cold spring day in 2008, I found myself at a pet shop down the street from my college apartment, buying a large glass brandy snifter style bowl, a fake plant, and a beautiful blue veiltail betta-- Alfred. 

Like my friends, the keepers of Nemo, I just didn't know any better. 

       I brought Alfred back to my chilly apartment, placed him into the bowl, and set him on the coffee table to be admired. I cannot remember changing the water (or conditioning it), I cannot remember feeding him (though I must have), and worst of all, I cannot remember much about Alfred-- how he lived, his personality, or how long it was before he died (though it couldn't have been long).  

     Looking at this picture now, with all I've read about bettas, all I can say is that I am glad that I at least provided a soft plant he could lie on to gasp air from the surface.

     I have a lot of guilt about how I treated pets during this period in my life. I was too busy, too self-absorbed and too irresponsible to provide any creature, and sometimes even myself, with the proper care yet, time and time again, I subjected a pet to my negligence. 

      If someone had told me, when I was buying Alfred, that he needed more than what I was planning to give him in order to be happy and healthy, I'm not sure I would have listened. 

     We've all heard the betta myths, we've all seen them in the little bowls, the vases, the mason jars, we've all just assumed that this is what they need. We, the novice fish keepers of the world, only know what we're taught and when the pet store aisles are filled with bitty betta tanks and dozens of bettas floating in tiny, dirty, plastic tubs, we're instantly miseducated on their basic needs.

Like his life, Alfred's story is short, however his legacy, is not. I know better now, I'll do better now.     

The Fish Sitter

A few weeks ago, Nemo the betta came to stay with me while his family went on holiday. He arrived with his accouterments in tow-- a half gallon plastic tank complete with pink gravel, a pink plastic plant, and a pink plastic castle, as well as a container of Top Fin betta food and a gallon of distilled water.

I was left without much instruction on his care and was told just to give him six food pellets a day-- three in the morning, three in the evening. Thinking this sounded like an awful lot of  food, and curious as to how often his water needed to be changed, I turned to the internet for some advice.
It didn't take much searching before I realized that Nemo's half gallon puzzle tank and the unheated, unfiltered distilled water was less than adequate.

It first occurred to me to upgrade his tank, move him up to at least the two-and-a-half gallon (minimum size) heated tank that a betta fish requires, but after pacing the floor of many a pet store, and listening to the way betta fish are regarded by pet shop customers and employees, I realized that if even if I did make things better for him while he was with me, this upgrade might not be well received once his family returned to claim him.
After all, when he arrived at my house, I was regaled with tales of his escapades-- flopping around the bedroom floor after his keeper, a four-year-old child, knocked over the dresser he resides on. And tales of a friends' betta that had survived two months, unfed and unattended to only to die, once remembered, in a pitcher of untreated water.
With stories like this, how could I convince my friend and her little girl that this fish needed anything more than what they were giving him?

How do you tell someone that they're treating an animal cruelly, when everyone else, even the "fish experts" at the pet shop, say that what they're doing is okay?

Nemo heads back home today with a few more things in tow-- some Indian almond leaves to adjust the PH, water conditioner, a turkey baster (for spot cleaning), some New Life Spectrum betta food mixed in with his Top Fin pellets and a dose of Seachem's StressGuard in his water. When I return him to his family this evening, I'm hoping to have the opportunity to offer a little advice about the frequency of water changes (his tank measured .25 ppm ammonia 24 hours after a water change), the importance of keeping him warm, and the danger his plastic plant poses to his delicate fins.

Someday soon, I hope to introduce Nemo's keepers to my very own betta in his 5.5 gallon heated, filtered, planted, cycled tank, and show them what bettas really need to live-- not just survive. Perhaps that will open up a healthy, less intrusive, conversation about what is best for Nemo. If only that conversation could be had with betta owners and pet shops everywhere.