Letters of a Betta Addict

Well I have good news bad news and news that makes me want to pull my hair out.

First the Bad news, sometime on March 27th while I was out of town for my Grandpa’s funeral disaster struck at my apartment. Three of my breeders, Blaze my red Male, Heels, my red female, and Munchkin the little cambodian girl from Ontario died, they were discovered on the 28th by my fish sitter.  When I got home that evening my green dragon male, Draco, was in rough shape and I wasn’t sure if he’d pull though. A 100% WC and a round of Tetracycline later he’s made it back into the land of the living. I wish that I could say that that’s the end of the losses however that isn’t the case. While I was gone home for Easter on the weekend RT, my Rosetail male from Ontario, passed away as well. All of the lost kids will be missed, RIP babies, I didn’t have you long enough.

Onto the realm of frustration now, onto of all the fish losses the lights in three of my tanks have decided to give out on me. The one I knew about, the whole hood is dead and will need to be replaced. Another I suspected as I’ve had trouble with it in some form or another for quite some time. However the light on NightHawks 5 gallon hood comes as something of a surprise. I’m hoping that a quick trip to Dollarama today to pick up a new bulb will fix that one at least. However I’m not holding out hope. Also with finals coming up (much faster then I’d like) I need to do something with the 56 gallon. The sound of running water is driving me totally and officially insane now. (At least more insane then I was before :p )

Moving onto to good news… I have a car, if only for the week, so will actually be able to do SOMETHING about these various fix it type projects. I also discovered (to my delight) in Micheals last night that they sell “project” plywood! Hopefully after lab today I can run around and pick up the various bits and pieces I need to get things back up to snuff. I may get fancy and sketch up some new designs for the hood of the 56, I’d like to set it up with plants running around or above it. I’ll look into setting up something to “suspend” the lights above it but we’ll see.

Until Next time take care,

A Betta Addict

Things are getting hectic around here now with finals starting to breathe down my neck so posts “might” be a bit scarce for a little bit. However I thought I should give an update since the move.

I’m learning that the 56 will need a few… modifications, the sound of running water is driving me up the wall so there will be some DIY on that in the next week or so as I finally start buckling down for finals and can’t take the noise anymore. I don’t know if I’ll do an upgrade on the whole canopy then or not. It’s tempting since I’ll working on it anyway.

All the Betta tanks handled the moves like champs, except for the hood on shimmers 5 gallon. For some reason I’m having issues with the light and if a new bulb (to pick up tomorrow) doesn’t fix the problem I may have to get serious and DIY a whole new hood and light for it. I know finals must be near because the thought of that is making me giddy with delight (dang procrastination streak). If I do decide to go the whole DIY route expect that I’ll just make 3 new ones since both Mama and Max have “faulty” lights of some sort or another.

Red is still in the 20 gallon though I’d hoped to have him back in his 32 gallon by now. The 32 is currently sitting empty and taunting me. Another finals project? Possibly, more likely I’ll push that off a bit more for now. As much as I’d like to get it up and running it’s too cold to work outside on it and I don’t believe that I have the ventilation in the suite necessary to work on it indoors.

On a happier note I’m working the quirks out of a design for a Betta Barrack system so by the end of april I hope to have that ready to go.

That’s all for now,

A betta addict

Well it’s every aquarists nightmare, but also a most unfortunate aspect of this hobby. I got back from a week’s holiday last night. Did a check and everything in the tanks looked fine. This morning I grabbed my book-bag (sitting on the floor beside the 32 Gallon tank) and the bottom of it was more then damp… but less then truly wet. A bit of snooping confirms it. The bottom seam on one corner of the 32 gal tank is leaking. In fact it’s dripping from the bottom down through the inside of the stand then down the leg. This is not making my day.

You see the 32 Gallon is my only tropical tank remaining, the 20 gal was converted to coldwater and will actually be taken down when I move into the new apartment. This means that I don’t have another tank to move my red tail shark to. This also presents another more complicated problem. I’m downsizing to a smaller apartment and I really hate to give up this tank. However with it leaking now… I don’t know. I love the tank and I hate to tear it down so we’ll see what can be done. Red is one of my favorite fishy babies and I hate to have to re-home him over something as simple as this…

So I have my awsome and amazing 65 gal sitting empty in my apartment. I’m still trying to decide what to stock it with but have stumbled across another issue… it’s kinda ugly. The paint is flaking off the tank frame and the wood is damaged and when I was taking a closer look at it I noticed that the hood is going to be a pain to work with. The lighting also needs to be updated. So since I won’t be able to stock it for at least another month yet I figured that I should maybe instead get a head start on fixing it up. First I’d need to scrap the rest of the paint off. Then I need to decide what color I want the stand/frame to be. I’m leaning towards black right now but silver would be ok to. And since I need to repair the wood cabinet I could always paint that while I was at it. Anyway I’ll post a couple pics here for you and then till later… tata.

Here you can see some of the damage to the wood on the front.

Full view of the tank prior to the fixing.