Bettas as Gifts

November 26, 2010

Seeing that today was Black Friday I thought for a moment about all the people who went to pet stores, and I wondered how many of them bought or are thinking of buying a betta as a gift for someone. To be honest, it's kind of a scary thought for me. It would be ignorant to think that all of the recipients of bettas would really take care of them. Even they had a little bit of interest in the first place, considering that a betta can live for five years, that's asking a lot of your recipient to take on responsibility for a living thing for that much time. I feel like people often think of fish, especially bettas, as "disposable pets," and while I can kind of understand that people would feel this way about fish as opposed to something like a dog, I still don't like it.

I guess this leads me to a bit of a plea. Please don't give a betta as gift unless the recipient has specifically asked for a betta and has done his/her research on how to take care of it (maybe by reading this site, potentially?). It's cruel to both the fish and the new owner; I mean, bettas are easy compared to some other fish, but they still require weekly or daily maintainance and can actually be expensive to care for in the long run. You also can't trust that people will actually do the research and find out how to properly care for their fish; this is when I find frantic people on Yahoo! Answers yelling HELPPPP MY BETA IS DIEING WAT DO I DOOOO, going on to say that they received the poor creature as a gift and now he's inside out or something terrible like that. It makes those of us who answer quite sad when we think about our own bettas and that they're lucky to be in our homes and not in the homes of some other people.

If you've received a betta as a gift, congratulations. I hope that you're looking at this site trying to gain some insight into betta keeping. If you don't want your betta anymore, leave a comment on the home page, and we'll see what we can do to put that betta in a good home for you.

Now on to happier things...for us bettaholics, Christmas can be a rather perfect time to ask for all of those supplies that we've been too stingy to get ourselves but that

would be great to have! Let me share with you my Betta Fish Wish List (it can be a tongue twister...):

1. A five gallon Eclipse Corner tank: I want to start a sorority tank and this is what I need to get started with that!

2. Some Melafix. I really need some of this stuff. Have you seen how beneficial it is? I talk about it on my First Aid page.

3. A new Java Fern...my fish miss the live plants that they used to have.

4. A complete water test kit. The pages that analyze the results of mine got wet and stuck together...the kit feels kind of useless without them!

5. Some more silk plants and such for the sorority tank...colorful would be fun! I might also need some hiding places for them.

6. This exercise mirror...in the summer it's easy to move my betta bowls next to each other for flaring exercise, but with heaters plugged in and such it's harder. A clip on mirror makes it easier.

7. This set of three kinds of treats for the fishies...they need a varied diet and love a nibble of something different!

(By the way, I'm liking these creative products from ZooMed Betta Products. The only thing that I don't approve of is that they sell plastic plants; as you all know plastic plants rip betta fins, and we don't want that! If you saw my post day before yesterday you know I got a leaf hammock from them that I really like, and I think they have some cool new betta toys!)

I'll update this list as I find more!

What's on your Betta Fish Wish List?