#tycho the betta fish

[bettasaregoodfish]

Me: nice the oak leaves sank

Tycho:

[maryellencarter]

I can’t remember if I actually posted this before, but Rogue Podron’s listener question this week was “What is your mersona?” because… that’s just who they are, honestly. I can’t explain RoguePod.

I can’t actually draw, either, but I tried. ^_^ I didn’t have any ideas for my own mersona, so I did mer!Fab Four instead, with help from @camshaft22 figuring out who should be what.

Wedge is an orca because they’re badass and understand teamwork – I read somewhere once that pods of orcas can break ice floes by headbutting them in unison and dump polar bears (or people) into the water. Tycho is an angelfish because they’re elegant and pretty and blue to match his eyes, and also I just wanted to draw an angelfish tail (although Leia had to help me redesign it to look less like a Cinderella skirt, because design is not my strong point). Wes is a betta fish, because duh. XD Flamboyant *and* fierce, there was not gonna be a better option. ^_^ And Hobbie’s a shark, because he’s skinny and grumpy and really just wants to be left alone, but he can kick your ass if he has to. ❤️

[bettasaregoodfish]

Me: Wow, I sure can't wait for those oak leaves to sink

Tycho:

[bettasaregoodfish]

Pls do not talk to me ok I'm exhausted

[bettasaregoodfish]

I added water sprite to the betta tanks and I think Tycho likes it!!

[bettasaregoodfish]

Rescaped betta tanks!!

[bettasaregoodfish]

The Boys

[bettasaregoodfish]

Hey! I thought I should post an update since I haven't really been keeping up with this blog whatsoever. Sorry about that. I need to at least follow more fish blogs and reblog more fish pictures. Tycho and Spot are ok, but I haven't had much motivation to maintain their plants or keep their tanks pretty lately, as seen in the above photo. I am lazy and everything is overwhelming right now, including this. I promise that water changes and daily feedings are happening, but even those things are hard for me and my wife is helping me a lot, which I am so grateful for. I can't be bothered to change the light intensity or timing, and I am almost never adding ferts or flourish excel. Due to the relatively high light and lack of Excel, Spot's tank (right) is completely overrun with algae and it is hideous. Tycho's tank (left) has excess algae too, but it's not completely out of control like Spot's. I believe this is because Tycho's tank has a larger ramshorn snail population, which is because Tycho is not good at eating his pellets, and the excess ramshorn snails are eating the algae. That's my best guess, anyway, since the tanks are completely identical in size, light intensity and duration, and amount of plants. (This is also the reason for the generous layer of snail poop in Tycho's tank. Just in case you were wondering about the poop disparity.) No plants have died completely as far as I can tell, but most of them are pretty well coated in algae, many of the Amazon sword leaves look pretty sad, and the frogbit is surviving but not propagating. The java moss in particular looks absolutely strangled by all the algae. I know I need to scrub the hell out of the algae, remove the driftwood and rocks etc. to thoroughly clean the algae off them, then do a large water change and probably repeat that a few more times, and start at least dosing Excel regularly again. I've been lazy and I find that all extremely overwhelming and it seems more impossible the worse it gets. About Tycho being bad at eating his pellets - I think he is getting old. I have had him for about a year and a half, but I know pet store bettas are typically about a year old when you buy them, and their lifespan can be as low as 3 years total even with proper care. (Please let me know if I'm wrong about the lifespan.) He does eat a healthy amount of food, but it takes a lot of tries. He has slowly gotten more and more lethargic, and he usually won't swim very far to get his pellets - I always pre-soak the pellets so they sink anyway, so he just waits for them to fall, and if they fall too far away from him he won't swim for them, but even when they fall close he sometimes misses them and then can't find them once they fall on the ground. I do the best I can to siphon them out with a turkey baster, but sometimes they fall in hard-to-reach places, and sometimes if they fall under or behind something I just straight up can't find them, so I definitely don't get them all out. And if we're being 100% honest here, some days I don't bother. Some days I am like fuck it, the snails will eat it. But most of the time I at least try. I aim to do small water changes once a week, but more often it's medium water changes every two weeks, and sometimes large water changes after 3. I do check the water parameters occasionally, and they are always 0 ammonia and nitrite, and 10-20 ppm nitrate maximum right before a water change. I know that nitrate could stand to be a little lower, but I don't think it's high enough to actually make Tycho sick. As far as I can tell, he isn't showing any signs of illness other than lethargy, which is why I think he is just old. Spot is 100% healthy and very fit - he zooms all around his tank all the time. He is my first short-finned betta, and it's fun to see how active he is. I think at some point in the future I would like to upgrade him to a bigger tank, since he would definitely use all the swimming space. Maybe I should abandon the goldfish idea and put him in the 55 gallon instead, lol. I just said lol, but now that I think about it I might actually consider it. Speaking of the supposed future goldfish tank, I have been 100% neglecting it - fishless cycling was the idea, but it's been literal months since I have added ammonia, tested, or done a water change on that tank. People come over and are like "where are the fish" and I'm like um.... yeah....... about that. tl;dr: I am a lazy piece of shit doing the bare minimum to care for my two bettas. Their tanks are ugly, the 55 gallon has zero fish, and the bettas are doing ok except that Tycho is an old man now. Maybe this post will resonate with people. Maybe my honesty will be reassuring to other fishkeepers who are not perfect and fuck things up. Or maybe I will get called the fuck out for being a horrible fishkeeper who should never have pets ever, which would probably not be unfair. I would honestly appreciate an outside perspective on this, because I can't tell which it is. If anyone has any questions or feedback or advice, feel free to send an ask or message anytime. I don't mind talking about personal shit if anyone wants to know, but I wanted to keep this post as free from excuses as possible. Thanks for reading.

[bettasaregoodfish]

I brought up the idea of putting my plakat betta Spot into the 55 gallon and my wife didn’t like it lmao

She was like “why would you waste all that space on just a betta” but how is it wasted if I KNOW he would swim around and use all the space?

Like I agree that it would be a waste to put Tycho (lazy old delta tail) in there, since he spends 95% of his time lying around anyway, but Spot would take full advantage of every square inch of that footprint. He would fucking love it, and I would love watching him enjoy the shit out of his life. How is that a waste.

Fish minimalism. People don’t get it.

[bettasaregoodfish]

no dad i can’t find the pellet wat r u talking

[bettasaregoodfish]

invisible

[bettasaregoodfish]

how dare u come into MY house and u get a siphon and DRAIN the WATER out RUDE

[bettasaregoodfish]

SIP Tycho. He was beautiful as fuck and a very good boy and I miss him so much already. 💔

Tycho

[bettasaregoodfish]

Being a fish is exhausting ok

[bettasaregoodfish]

Baby snels enjoy feeding time Asshole fish photobombs

[bettasaregoodfish]