Post by crimsonbutterfly on Apr 4, 2004 7:34:59 GMT -5
Yesterday was not a good day, I lost my dwarf flame gourami. Although nameless in life, for this post I will christen him Big Red. He was euthanised by the friendly guys at my most trusted aquarium and suffered no pain. Big red was my first and most favourite fish. He put up with 18 months in a 5 litre tank with a quartet of rascally barbs before moving to premier accommodation in the shape of an 85 litre tank with built-in lights and filter, (heated of course), but lasted only 3 months in the fish Hilton. In that time he blossomed from a weedy 4 cm weakling the colour of watered down Fanta, to a gorgeous 9cm long deep orange show stopper with beautiful powder blue fins which he always raised to me in greeting when I came home. Although a fairly retiring little guy, he’d never scoot away from me when I wanted to examine him. One day he hid from when I fooding up the tank and when I finally got a closer look at him, he was swollen up like he’d swallowed a golf ball. No pine-cone scales, so I knew it wasn’t dropsy. Maybe bloat? I don’t know. I isolated him & made the first of many frantic calls to every aquarium even vaguely in the area, hoping someone would have an idea of how I could treat him. Salt baths, antibiotics and iodide treatments to no avail, I took him into Adelaide Aquariums yesterday so they could tell me the bad news face-to-face. They put him down humanely for me, I couldn’t have done it. Then I went home, thought about the pets and people I have loved and lost over the years and howled like a baby for a couple of hours. Today I bought a beautiful blue-green betta who resides in Big Reds old tank. I love him desperately already & as I already have a pair of females in the community tank I’m hoping one day to breed them. I still miss Big Red terribly though, and in some small way he will live on through this posting. It’s the least he deserves.
RIP little fella.
RIP little fella.
