fishy suicide

[joflasher]

Yep, I guess life just got to be too much for him. He was there eating at breakfast, by dinner, he was gone. I searched all the normal places for him. I even uprooted one of the plants to see if he got stuck somehow. No luck. The Boy eventually found him laying in a little brittle mass on the carpet about 2 feet from the tank. His eyes were all sunken in, his body was dried out and hard and his beautiful fins broke off when we scraped him off of the carpet. I have to wonder what made him to it.

For those of you who somehow missed it, I am talking about one of my fish. My male betta decided to take a great leap into the unknown yesterday. I don't think he found heaven, not unless fish heaven is a lint covered carpet.

Comments

[rhiamon.livejournal.com]

I once had a betta that did the same thing. There he was, happily swimming about in his bowl when I left for the theatre. When I got home about 3 or so hours later, he wasn't in his bowl, but on the carpet next to the table the bowl was on. I thought, "right, that's it for that creature", and picked him up to give him a proper burial in le toilette, and he MOVED! He was quite dry (but not yet brittle), and covered in fluff, but he moved. Shocked me so bad I tossed him in the direction of the bowl on reflex - he landed in it, and floated to the top, looking pretty dead. Having had enough weirdness for one night, I decided to deal with it in the morning, and went to bed. Next morning, he was swishing around his bowl with a definite "feed me, dammit, I've had a rough night" attitude. So, yeah...I fed him, and he lived for another few months before dying in the usual manner.

[kasra-c.livejournal.com]

Unless I'm mistaken, hasn't this sort of thing happened before with your bettas? I seem to remember a specific instance back at CMU...

[flasher.livejournal.com]

oh, sure, bring that up...beside, one of those came out of the bowl when the dresser it was on fell over on top of me.

actually, betta's in general seem to be very suicidal.