Pets

(: Great to hear necie.



Well... I will be taking my old doggy for ultrasounds on tuesday. Closest the dr. with the ultrasound machine comes is an hour away, which really isn't a big deal since I go up to that town all the time anyway. I've gotta try not to stress about it to much, specially since it's a week away yet. There is no such thing as getting prepared, I know she's old, and she won't be around forever, but my stomach's in knots worring about what we may find.

black_magnolia wrote:

Envy, what do you mean wit adding a male beta to your tank? You mean to introduce him to the other fish? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me. If I remember correctly, you said you also have guppies in that tank? Betas are pretty aggressive with all fish, to male guppies especially becasue they see them as a rivals...
Also, for any others reading, betas are best kept in a bigger tank then in some big bowl or similar with a filter and heating. They can survive in a small bowl, the same as a human can survive in a 10x10feet big cell... They live longer in a bigger tank and their colours are much brighter.

I've heard mixed reviews about bettas and other fish. Some claim that bettas are brilliant community fish as long as they're the only male betta in the tank, and some claim they bully everyone else. Maybe it depends on the fish. The ones my mum owned as a kid got on well with guppies, and the ones in the local garden centre are kept one male per tank with lots of other community fish without any problems, so it'd be 50/50 as to whether one would get on in with others in our particular tank.

I don't think we'd keep the male guppies in the same tank as a betta though - Due to the tail thing. We were thinking of separating them off anyway to stop our fry tank from becoming overcrowded.

Technically, you don't need a filter in a tank for any fish to live, as gas exchange happens on the surface area of water, so as long as the water has a lot of contact with air, it'll be oxygenated. The filter just helps circulate the unoxygenated water up to the top, like a heart in a human. Sort of. Our babies are doing fine without a filter due to their little size and the relative surface area of the water in their tank. They're surprisingly hardy - We've changed the water in the big tank many times before, to find babies still alive and swimming around (we take out the other fish until the new water warms up because they get chilly easily) so we're not too concerned about the fry not having a heater too.

Envy wrote:

Technically, you don't need a filter in a tank for any fish to live, as gas exchange happens on the surface area of water, so as long as the water has a lot of contact with air, it'll be oxygenated. The filter just helps circulate the unoxygenated water up to the top, like a heart in a human. Sort of. Our babies are doing fine without a filter due to their little size and the relative surface area of the water in their tank. They're surprisingly hardy - We've changed the water in the big tank many times before, to find babies still alive and swimming around (we take out the other fish until the new water warms up because they get chilly easily) so we're not too concerned about the fry not having a heater too.

I know that, just most people rather have a fish tank closed on top so that fish don't jump out and the cat doesn't jump in. :silly:
Regarding the heater, one thing is surviving and an other thing is how comfortable the fish are. Example, Goldfish are cold-water fish but I'd even have a heater for them just to keep the temperature in a perfect range because we don't heat our rooms much, so the water would get too chilly during the night and big temperature changes aren't that good for them either.

Good luck with the beta! I'd really want to hear back how the community tank experience ends up!

@ necie1286: Glad to hear your cat is back to it's usual self!

thank you black_magnolia and nwbevk. Envy i hope your fish get alone and nobody gets hurt

:S Hrrm. Swordtail gave birth randomly. We only managed to rescue two, and things aren't quite right (there may be more hiding around, but we haven't seen any so far).

One died pretty soon after we got him out of the big tank. We don't know why. He had really nice markings too..The only baby we've seen with white/red/black spot markings. All the others came out black and red to date. The other one. Well. He reminds me of 'Two-Face'. He's so small we can't quite tell what it is, but basically, half of his face/body is black. We can't tell if it's a lump or unfortunate markings. Thinking it's markings, but not quite sure, seeing as quite a few babies have come out with defects lately.

YaaaY!! My old husky doggy has no internal masses! Brought her in for ultrasounds today, nothing unusual, her organs look great for a dog her age. Specialist did figure out what the problem is, hard to explain cause I forget what the right parts are called, but basically urine keeps getting stuck and pooling somewhere it shouldn't so it's reoccuring infection. So doc prescribed active culture yogurt and cranberry juice. ^__^ Dog is gonna love that.