HCA: Hermit Crab Association

so i didn't know whether or not to put this in activism since it's not about crabs but i just had to type this out to vent my feelings, and i'm not a member on any betta fish forums, just this one.

So this alcoholic guy who lives down the hall from me in my dorm building(we live on a college campus) has been keeping a betta fish in a VODKA BOTTLE since september. I first gently explained what he was doing wrong to see if he would change anything, but nothing changed. I then offered to buy him a tank with the proper set up but he refused. My roommate(who is friends with him for some god-knows reason) suggested to wait him out because he would get bored of it and probably just hand it over. So I waited.....and waited....and waited. And this entire time, i had never seen the fish, id only heard about his status from friends, so i couldn't evaluate the fishes health or anything. Over thanksgiving break my betta unfortunately passed away from a bacterial infection in her swim bladder, so I offered my betta's old supplies to him. This time as I was offering it, i was in his dorm room so I could see it. I started tearing up because I felt bad for the poor fish, I immediately noticed he had red gills(a sign of ammonia poisoning) and he obviously had fin rot, and that was just from a glance. He also had a distended stomach so I suspect he has been overfed. His exact words were "Does it really mean that much to you?" "Fine, do you want him." I have tears streaming down my face and I put my betta's tank back in my room, and I go back for the fish. Then, when I'm in my room trying to set up the tank so the fish can transition, he knocks on my door, and he takes the fish back and leaves! At this point I was balling through tears. My roommate's boyfriend comes in and tries to figure out why I'm crying and I start thinking out loud while i'm crying. I'm sure it just sounded like gibberish and sobs but my roommate's boyfriend somehow heard me asking if the aspca would care about fish abuse if i reported it. After the boyfriend leaves, about 5 minutes later the boyfriend and the alcoholic guy show up at my door and the boyfriend convinced him to take the tank and set it up! Now, I'm still crying but i think it's tears of relief. I just hope he lives up to his promise.

Hopefully he'll listen to your advice and do better with the poor fish. Thank you for speaking up.


( btw, chit chat is the right place for this thread. )

I love bettas, I have 10. good job!

I've got two males a blue crown tail and a blue half moon tail each of them are in their own aquariums complete with filtration, heaters, silk plants to hide or rest in so I couldn't imagine seeing one of them in a vodka bottle that would make me very upset.

I've kept betta's since I was about ten years old and I'll be thirty in three days so I've been in the hobby for quite a while and I've never seen a betta in the condition you described that one in ever, the guy who owns it clearly doesn't care that what he's been doing to it has been killing it slowly and painfully and that kind of person doesn't deserve to have any kind of pet in my book.

I paid seven dollars and some change for my crown tail and fourteen dollars for my half moon, I consider these fish to be more than pets they are my pride and joy as each one of them has a special meaning to me so I treat them with the same care, love and respect as I do my little dog so they are all very spoiled.lol

I'm glad you spoke up because far too often people see this kind of thing and think Oh its a stupid fish it doesn't have feelings so who cares and they just walk away.

Would your RA step in and make sure he's using the tank? I would hope they would regulate animal abuse, but some RA's are better than others.

I doubt it. Bettas are recommended in the hand book as a pet for students at my school. So really its the school encouraging it. I heard of 2 more betas on the second floor of my building in soda bottles and one more in an empty milk container in a building near mine. Its becoming an epidemic of keeping beta's in drinking containers instead of tanks or even those stupid mini-fishbowls they're sold in. Ugh.