my 1st bettas

i've been keeping fish for some time now. i wanted to keep fish because for me, who's not much of a pet person, fish are perfect pets. they are pretty, peaceful to look at, and are not noisy. of course their tanks need cleaning. which pet does not need cleaning?

it all started with ayesha coming back from a carnival with a bag in hand with 3 goldfish inside. i thought, oh, i finally have a good reason to start keeping fish. so i went and got the necessary. my fish keeping has since then evolved quite a bit. started with plastic bowls to plastic tanks to now earthen pots and a proper glass aquarium. the fish too, have come and gone. i thought the goldfish wouldn't last over a week since i had heard that it wasn't easy to keep goldfish. you got to have a proper filtration system and be ready to clean their constant pooping all the time. but they lasted for quite a few months, till we did some travelling and they eventually died. since then i've had guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies and bettas.

bettas are probably the easiest fish to keep, because you do not need an air pump to keep their water oxygenated since they go up to the surface for air. the only pain is that you can't keep more than 1 male together in the same vessel. unfortunately the females are not as pretty so one would tend to prefer to keep the male types.

this was my first betta. was, because it has passed on some time ago. ayesha picked this one out with grandma for me. it's purple with tinges of maroon, but does not have much finnage. it was ferocious. the other blue one was my favorite. again, was, because he too has passed on since. this one had a fuller finnage, which i love, and was a bright blue with shades of dark blue and turquoise. he was very beautiful. unfortunately, one day i decided to place the two together briefly to see them in action. the ferocious purple one in an instant took at nip at the blue one and it lost a few plumes of its finnage. i guess it was injured and since then began dying a slow death. i was quite sad really.