Sep 04 2008
This Is A Deceased Betta… Bereft Of Life… It Breathes No More…
There are certain things, like plants, that die almost immediately upon being placed in our care. Chrissy has never met a houseplant that she hasn’t killed. As it turns out, we can add fish to this list of doomed items. Today, Aiden’s pet fish died. I’m not sure if, at age two, he comprehends death, but he seemed pretty unhappy about his unmoving aquatic compadre. We pulled it out of the tank, and bagged up the corpse.
Clearly, the betta was defective when we bought it. Aiden picked it out himself, but it was white. Chrissy wasn’t happy with the white color, saying that bettas turn white just before they die. A red one, or a blue one, would have been better. Aiden’s pet fish lasted about two weeks, just under the fifteen day return policy. Petco was pretty good about letting us exchange the dead one for a new one.
We announced a “fish malfunction” to the girl at Petco, and she showed us to the “Wall o’ Bettas” to choose a replacement. There were about twenty of them in their own little plastic containers, and they all looked healthy. Aiden wanted to hold each container himself, so I let him peruse a bit before making a choice. Eventually, he got distracted by a bunny and walked off with a nice red fish with a fanned tail. Let’s wish this one luck!
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Aiden, bettas, fish, Petco
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Although they’ve been really popular recently, I’m really not sold on Bettas as a good pet. And it’s really less an issue of having them at home than it is an issue of what they have to do to get them to the pet store before you ever see them.
They’re shipped in those tiny little bubbles that are barely big enough to hold one, much less give it any room to swim, etc. (Which of course is because they kill each other if they’re kept together the way the other fish are transported.)
I’m not sure what really happens to the fish in particular with regard to atrophy, etc. I know the bubble isn’t aerated which means that from the time they’re put in the bubble to the time you get them home they’re slowly running out of oxygen. And I’ve heard that a lot of them die in shipping. I’ve seen a few dead ones in the bubble at the pet store myself, though I imagine they have a routine of checking for that before the store opens.
So long story short I really don’t think it’s anything you guys did… I just think the practicalities of selling Bettas in pet stores SUCKS and causes lots of problems.
I’ve seen the same thing in some stores. Aiden and I look at the fish at Meijers every time we go grocery shopping. The few bettas that they have there look like zombie fish (back from death, but just barely). Meijers is obviously not a pet store, however.
I was surprised at how well Petco took care of their bettas. The guy there told me that they change the water every night. Each fish had its own little tupperware bowl with an air tube molded into the lid. The type and gender was on a sticker on the side of the bowl.
The bettas at Petco looked really healthy. The colors were bright and there was no deterioration of the fins at all. The ones at Meijer had little crumpled stumps for fins. We’ll probably end up buying another betta at Petco at least once in the near future. We keep them fed and change their water, but we can’t rule out another fish-related death.
If I had a nickel for every dead fish we returned to Petco during the year we had our fish tank… oh wait… that’s right… they refunded our money for each of them.
Petco was always very good about taking back dead fish, though if you decide at some point to get a full fledged tank, they’ll want some water from your tank so they can test it. It’s not a make or break for the refund, but if the water’s off, they won’t let you buy another fish at that time… a wise move.
My least favorite moment was when we added a compound that a clerk suggested to help us lower our pH and ended up killing our Plecostomous. They’re like catfish, no scales and very sensitive to pH changes in the water. Well, now we know. Poor Pleccy. And they’re not cheap; $7 for a baby. Luckily though, he was within the 2-week window and the clerk should never have recommended the stuff in the first place so they gave us a full refund. They even covered an old Platy that keeled over the next day, presumably due to the crap we’d dumped in the tank.
Good luck with the Betta. Let me know when you’re ready for Oscars…
Carl