bubblybettas-blog

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it's the same as last year

Hurricane Irma... probably coming up the coast the same was Matthew did. But this time we have a dog in the mix...

Fish tanks will be prepped and ready. Starting their fast and doing water changes today before the chemicals hit the city water. Batteries are in the emergency pump.

From what I can see, we will likely be evacuated again. Too close to the Intercoastal Waterway not to be. With two cats and a dog... we are thinking of camping out in Adam's office building. Brick, few windows, and on high ground. And he can work until the power goes out haha.

Stay safe y'all. Praying for everyone effected by this Hurricane.

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A few last photos of Hammy before he goes to his new home. He is doing very well in recovery, having gone from being entirely upside-down in his hiding place, to upright and active. Dark, very oxygenated water with methylene blue probably saved him. Someone local will be giving him a 55 gallon tank, with no aggressive fish to compete with, after he recovers in a hospitals tank. I’m gonna miss this fish like crazy, but Cheddar will kill him, and we don’t yet have space for more aquariums. Maybe next year, in a bigger apartment. Just kinda recording all of this for myself... I love these memories, as tough as they are. I love the lines of pearls he’s covered in, and his red eyes. I hope his new owner sends me updates, as his color comes in. Hes going to be spectacular with those blue pearls over red. He is 4″ long, and very round. I wonder how large he will be? 55 Gallons is a lot of room to grow. Side note. We are putting Alduin down with Clove Oil today. His tumor, which is about 1/3 of his mass, seems to have burst or imploded, and he is having a rough time. I’m impressed he has lived this long, but we can’t prolong suffering for him.

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😍

I think my bf wins the name battle - I’ve started thinking of him as Pongo. We have a beautiful koi female named Cruella, that may have affected our decisions.

So, beautiful boy is going to be known as Pongo!

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Dodger, the pup whose owner died, seems to have settled in at my grandparents' home quite well over the past few months... and as far as I can tell, has found his new forever home there. My grandpa is just so in love with him. Updates on fishes... Hammy was beaten to near death - likely because he started to turn orange, and apparently posed a threat to Cheddar. He is recovering in quarantine and may have to be re-homed after that. Alduin is finally showing signs of slowing down. Likely because his tumor is almost half his current mass. I'm trying to ascertain the best time to put him down. I hate, hate clove oil. Fuji Sushi is still the sturdiest Betta alive. Go figure the Walmart Betta is thriving....

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Baby axolotls look like they should grow into huge river dragons.

LOL giant lotl coming at you. I’d want to domestic them like horses.

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ya’ll. 

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local club member's photo of baby lotls for sale. SO CUTE IM DYING And maybe I will get one next year.

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PSA Don't mess with wildlife 😐 Don't catch it for the heck of it. Especially if you KNOW it's a venomous snake. Or even just a regular snake. If it's not invasive and not in danger, leave it alone! My friend is now internationally famous for getting bit on the tongue by a rattlesnake. And he is not having a fun time. He gets to keep his tongue, though. Somehow. And the diamondback made his way home where he belongs. We left the guy with some good music 🎶 because healing can be boring

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Pretty lady is out and about

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What a stunner. Hybrid Betta by Be Betta 😍 (FB/Betta Breeders United)

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super sad about Alduin's tumor. It's growing so quickly on an otherwise young, healthy fish. Ugh.

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Oh I need to order one 😍 why do artists have all these amazing things to buy?!

Hey folks! The last weeks I’ve been working on these watercolour bettas. I did two of them for comissions and they were pretty fun to work on. If you also want some watercolour bettas, please just message me.  One Betta will cost you 30€ (35$ / 30 £) (shipping not included)

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Mod @thebrackishtank

Just venting a little, but I get a little frustrated that fish sold in stores too often have relatives which would be easier to care for, but for one reason or another the more difficult one to keep (for size, sensitivity, or aggression reasons) became more common. Some thoughts…

Archerfish: Toxotes jaculatrix instead of T. microlepis. The latter is half the size (6″ compared to 12″)  and is fine in freshwater, while the former needs brackish water to thrive.

Guppies: The fancy versions are super common but are very sensitive. Wild type Guppies and Endler’s are both much easier to keep but harder to find.

Though Thick Lipped and Banded Gouramis are easier to find these days, many stores only seem to carry the sickness-prone Dwarf Gouramis instead.

Bolivian Rams are next to unseen in chain stores, compared to German Rams, despite being much healthier fish as a whole. The fact that they don’t need super soft water to thrive is a bonus.

There are occasionally traded Scats and Monos (Selenotoca papuensis and Monodactylus kottelati) which look exactly like more common species (S. multifasciata and M. argenteus) but only get up to half the size.

Channel Catfish in the trade is a travesty when there are Madtoms (genus Noturus) which would have been perfect home fish. Compare the maximum size of 46″ to the 4-8″ most Madtoms reach.

Most Butterflyfish have a narrow feeding strategy and do poorly in captivity. There are a number of species which do well, but the poor choices are much more numerous than the good ones. The closely related Moorish Idol also does terribly in captivity.

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okay, so strange dream. I was at a water park, celebrating my friend's newborn. I got her a glass of orange juice, and when I returned, Adam had vanished. I asked a man nearby if he had seen a redheaded guy wearing a green shirt, and he points and says, "Oh, you mean my son?" I look up and, to my horror, the pool is surrounded by 20+ redheads, all wearing green shirts. Then I woke up, thank God 😐

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Before I start this little spiel, I need you all to know: I’m not hating on people who don’t vaccinate their kids, and while I know for a fact BASED ON facts that vaccines don’t cause autism or other “defects”, I’m all for continuing research to make them even better and safer.

But you know what really, really scares me about the anti-vax movement? As a future Public Health Professional, the thing that scares me most about this is the fact that our cultural mindset has become so CHILL about vaccine-preventable/”childhood” diseases that there is even room for such a movement. Let me explain.

Do y’all know what an R0 is? The R-naught, as it is called, is the basic reproduction rate of a disease. It tells you how many new infections can come from one existing infection. For example, an R-naught of 3 (R3) means that, on average, one sick person will infect three other people. Every disease has an R-naught, some greater and some lesser.

Do you remember when everyone was freaking out about Ebola? Everyone was terrified of catching it, because it’s SOOOOO contagious and deadly, right? Ebola has an R-naught of 2. That’s it. R2. One person with Ebola, on average, will get 2 more people sick. And we were freaking out about that.

Well guess what? Measles is the most contagious disease known to mankind, and it has an R-naught of 18. 18. One person with measles will give it to 18 new people, and those people will give it to 18 new people EACH, and so on. That’s what happened with the Disneyland outbreak; it’s so ridiculously contagious that just ONE sick child was enough to start an epidemic.

And yet very few people are as scared of measles as they are of Ebola. Why is that? One reason could be the nature of the disease, sure; Ebola is terrifying in its progression and symptoms. But I would suggest that a major reason is that measles has been so well-contained by vaccination that people no longer fear it. It’s not a part of every-day life anymore; this disease is no big deal because nobody gets it, because so many people are vaccinated against it. Let’s put this another way.

What are the diseases that scare everyone the most: Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and SARS are pretty high on the list of terror diseases. But let’s look at the R0s, shall we: Ebola-R2. HIV/AIDS-R5. SARS-R5. 

Now let’s look at diseases that people are voluntarily rejecting vaccinations against: Measles, Pertussis, and Diphtheria are the major ones. Their R0s? Measles-R18. Pertussis-R17. Diptheria-R7.

Everyone focuses on the former set of diseases– rightly so, I suppose– because they’re more dangerous at the present time. What makes them more dangerous? Not their R0; it’s the fact that there is no viable treatment, and NO VACCINE. Seriously, that’s why the medical community is worried about them. There’s no way to treat or PREVENT their spread biologically. Well guess what? There’s no viable treatment for Measles or Pertussis, and only limited treatment options for Diphtheria. That’s why the medical community doesn’t focus on them as much, because we can prevent them at the biological level, safely and effectively.

But now that the Anti-Vax movement has taken hold so firmly, the medical community is now being forced to once more worry about diseases it had almost eradicated. And not only that, it’s endangering herd immunity for the people who can’t receive their own vaccines due to compromised immune systems. I’m allergic to eggs, so I can’t receive the flu shot, but I’m also asthmatic so I can’t get the inhaled vaccine. I rely entirely on the people I associate with to keep me safe from the flu by getting their yearly shot. This made public school a living nightmare, because almost NOBODY got their shot. They caught it, and while it didn’t affect them TOO terribly because they were generally healthy, when I caught it, it was very dangerous because of my asthma. And then there’s that time when I caught the flu, and then right after because of my weakened immune system, I caught Whooping Cough from someone who hadn’t been vaccinated. I HAD been vaccinated, but my body was so fatigued from the flu that it couldn’t keep up with immune demands. And so I caught it.

Have you ever had Pertussis (whooping cough)? It’s hard enough on someone with full lung capacity; it can break ribs, it makes you cough so hard. You cough until there is literally no air in your lungs, and you have to inhale so forcefully it makes the “whooping” sound that gives it the name. It’s painful beyond belief, and it can last for weeks. Some people will survive it. But add that to asthma, or to a young child, or to an elderly person, and you are looking at either permanent damage or death, no exceptions. When I had it, I was about 6 years old, and asthmatic; I spent 81 hours awake because the coughing was so violent I physically couldn’t sleep. I tore abdominal muscles. I vomited during coughing fits and aspirated the vomit. I was actively dying. The doctors could barely suppress the cough enough for me to breathe at all. My inhaler wasn’t helping, none of the cough syrups or breathing treatments were helping; I was getting pneumonia on top of the virus. It was Hell. I was LUCKY that I didn’t die.

Who would wish that on their child? Nobody, I hope. And if you KNEW you could keep your child from ever experiencing that, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to ensure their safety?

Or would you look at the safeguard and say, “Nah. I’ll take my chances with my child’s life.”?

That is what the anti-vax movement is doing. Perhaps not purposefully, but that’s the end result. These aren’t just names on syringes designed to make a child cry; the diseases are real, and real threats to health and life, and the vaccines are how you prevent them. Yet we are so far removed from the impact and effects of these diseases BECAUSE of the peace brought to us BY vaccines that people now feel no qualm about refusing vaccines.

That’s what scares me about the anti-vax movement; people have become so complacent that they no longer worry about these very real, very deadly diseases. They’d rather risk their child’s life than get a shot? The side effects of vaccines are unproven (nonexistent), but the efficacy of vaccines are very much proven.

When the pertussis vaccine first came out, people jumped on it right away. They were so grateful to have it, and for a while everything was smooth sailing, and whooping cough was on the decline. Then, in the 70s, some groups started claiming the pertussis vaccine was causing brain injury in young children. Less than 50 in 15 million cases were reported, but it was enough to scare people away from the vaccine. And children began dying again. It was later discovered that it was NOT the vaccine, but the result of infantile epilepsy, that caused the brain damage. People began once more vaccinating their children, but not before hundreds if not thousands had died.

And that’s what’s happening now. A falsified claim scared just enough people that time-tested, lab-tested, fully-proven, totally safe vaccines are being rejected, and we’re already starting to pay with lives. And I’m scared it’s going to get worse. People don’t really grasp the full import of these diseases and the necessity of the vaccines until they have experienced the disease. I’m scared that it’s going to come down to new epidemics before people will realize the mistake of not vaccinating.

Right now we’re still in the semi-safe zone. Enough of the population is immunized that we could probably keep most pandemics of these diseases at bay. But if this movement keeps gaining momentum, there might come a day when measles and pertussis could once again destroy thousands of people yearly. Imagine if some terrorist group weaponized Ebola and used it against this country; so many people would die, because we have no vaccine for it, no way to prevent it. That is what could happen with diseases like mumps, rubella, measles, pertussis, Diphtheria, and polio. Except it wouldn’t be terrorists using a disease as a weapon; it would be some kid in your child’s class, or your neighbor across the street, or the guy who delivers the mail to your office. That’s how life used to be, and if someone from the pre-vaccine era could see us now, they’d weep for joy at the idea that we can prevent these horrific diseases; and then they’d weep in sorrow at the idea that people are voluntarily turning down that safeguard.

It’s true, vaccines aren’t always 100% effective; I was immunized, but still got Whooping Cough (lowered immune function, if you recall). But you know who didn’t get it? My baby sister. My big sister. My cousins. My mother and father. My classmates, the other kids at my doctor’s office. The nurses at the hospital. The pharmacy workers. Their children. The kids my mom taught at school. All those people were safe because of vaccines. And you know what else? When I was in India, I was exposed to polio. Didn’t get it. Know why? I was vaccinated. I was exposed to chicken pox in 5th grade. One unvaccinated kid got it, and the other 4 kids in our class who weren’t vaccinated got it. But you know who didn’t? The rest of us who WERE vaccinated.

Vaccination may not be perfect, and the only way we will improve them is by continuing research. But the fact remains that as they are now, vaccines cause no lasting side effects (injection site pain goes away), and are extremely effective at preventing dangerous, painful, debilitating, often deadly diseases. Let’s keep researching, yes, but in the mean time, PLEASE vaccinate. It’s not worth your life, or your child’s, or anyone else’s. Vaccines save lives, not destroy them.

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Alduin has a tumor -_- he hasn't even been with us that long, and is doing super well. Long fluffy fins, king of the low-tech cube. I'll have to get photos before he gets bad. Dragons and coppers are my favorite. But I can't support buying these fish if they are doomed for this.

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Fuji Sushi, King of the Tank 👑 With the SAE out of the tank, he is now dominant and free to floof and flair as he pleases! Which leaves the bathroom tank... totally empty. Hmmmmmn