Brianne's Brain Space

zakniteh:

storysnob:

wickedclothes:

Hanging Fish Bowl

A creative way to let your pet fish… hang out. Ba-dum-tsh. Sold on Opulent Items.

Guys. Don’t do this to your fish. Here are all of the reasons.

(a) 1 inch of fish requires 1 gallon of water (for fishes 3” in length or less. For fish over 3”, 2 gallons per inch). Betta fishes require 2.5 gallons minimum.

(b) There isn’t really a good way for this fish to hide, because there’s not enough room for sufficient decor. (Decor displaces water, too, leaving you less water than you started out with.) I mean, that cute little plant is SOMETHING, but put yourself in the fish’s head: he’s surrounded on all sides, he can’t find a place to put his back to. Fish like small dark places: tight masses of plants, caves. Just like you want to hide in your room sometimes, fish (prey animals) need to feel secure too. Long-term stress does horrible things to fish immunity systems.

(c) I can’t tell if the screw-on top is hollow or not. But if it isn’t hollow, that means that somewhere, some dipstick might fill it all the way to the top, preventing the betta fish from even breathing. Which would suck for obvious reasons.

Furthermore, note how there are no air holes in the top of the screw-on top thing. That means that your fish is now locked in the equivalent of an air-tight box. YESSSSS

(d) Betta fish are like all tropical fish: they require heaters and filtration. “Oh, but my fish lived a long time in a cramped bowl,” you might say. Well, my dear invisible friend, I know what “long” means to you (probably 1-2 years). Bettas should live to be 6-10 years old. You buy them at the age of 6 months to 1 year. Most bettas I heard of from my customers only lived 1.5 years in bowl setups—3 years max. I only heard of 2 that got their bettas to live a full 6 (this in a year and 3 months of working at the pet store). There are plenty of reasons for this, the short answer being that without filtration there’s a buildup of a particularly toxic chemical called “nitrite.” Also, fish have evolved to take advantage of very large, stable bodies of water, and huge, rapid changes in water chemistry can have terrible effects long-term—not to mention that the less water you have, the less stable the water chemistry is, the more stress you subject your animal to.

Long story short:

If you think of your fish as a decoration that can’t suffer, do this shit to them. And whatever you do, don’t research fish care at all (and if you do, ask your brother’s roommate’s cousin and don’t read a book or something work-intensive like that). Also, assume that if the animal does not die at once that this means you are kickass and everything is hunky-dory.

Love,
A Disgruntled Fish Snob

Boosting because proper fish care, yo!