Betta's + Children=CHAOS my horror story.

[bear78]

i just thought that this would make a pretty good topic. i know i look back on it now and just wonder what my son was thinking. but anyway, we had 4 males and 4 female bettas in various tanks but my females and one lucky male were in a 10 gal. all went well for many months. well then we moved and i had to move the fish we all moved into our new apartment and my son had watched me move the fish. before i would make changes and what not when my kids were asleep to try to keep them from trying to pet the pretty fish. well i had them all moved in jars and setup the main tanks and bout a week later after all the tanks were established i put the bettas back in their homes and once again my son watched (keep in mind he is 4) he said good night to his fish named Joe (well he kinda named all of them Joe) and we all went to bed. well when i got up in the morning i seen my son standing in a chair w/my net in his hand i ask him what hes doin and he just looks at me and smiles and said daddy joe wanted to play. my heart sank cuz i just knew what he had done i glanced over at my other 3 tanks all empty. i look into my main tank and sure enough all 4 males where fightin it out. well to make along story short due to all the stress and god only knows what else my son put in the tank i was left w/2 males one white and one dark red.
i guess id just like to hear that im not alone when it comes to children and betta's.

 

[ploughking]

My solution - I keep one betta! I have no intentions of getting any more till I get my own house - cant have a 4 footer in my bedroom. Would smash the floor. My plans for the future -

1 four footer (tropical)
My 17 gal one will become a reef
The other will become a split betta reserve. Will have 1 male and one female in each side. Will only split in half, I know how much these guys love space!
My mini tank (1 or 2 gallons at the most) will stay a shrimp tank.

 

[TankGirl]

You are right about kids and fish in general - I have heard about people installing locks on their tank lids. I never had any trouble with my oldest daughter, who is 11, but the twins are 3 1/2 now and have been nothing but trouble!

When they were smaller I would let them help me feed the fish, but I soon realized this could only mean they would take it upon themselves to do it so I did a 180 and suddenly the little girls are not allowed to do anything when it comes to my tanks. They can look at them of course and watch me, but I stress to them that only Mommy is allowed to feed or otherwise do anything with the tanks, and now they seem to have a healthy respect for them (fingers crossed).

When they were about 1 1/2 I was setting up a 10-gal and using a small tack hammer to tap in wooden shims to level the tank. I had the tank about half-full of water, no fish. Of course the phone rang and you can probably guess - a very tiny child with a hammer and a very tiny tap - crack, and that was that. It is a good idea to do tank maintenance when they are asleep! Lesson learned...

 

[oscarbreeder]

Well NOW my kids are great with the tanks.
Always willing to help clean them(mostly watch me) and run and get different things for me.
But a few years ago I came home from work to find that they had feed the fish for me.

A WHOLE CAN OF FISH FOOD!!!!!

What a mess!!
They got in big trouble that day and wont even think about feeding them now.They even come ask me to feed thier fish now...LOL

 

[Mr. R]

From what I remember I think I was a good child when it came to my mom's tank. I remember she had a 29 gal community tank when my younger brother and I were about 5 and 7. There weren't any incidents with fish getting hurt or having food dumped in because of us. Though, there was that time my dad used her bucket to wash the cars. 8O You can imagine how that turned out.

I'm a rare exception, most kids and tanks just don't mix. I can't stand it when we have any younger kids over and they go into my room and see them. Kids just insist on poking the tank every couple of seconds when they see something. Which drives me nuts trying to stop them since I'm kind of impulsive about keeping the glass spotless.

 

[QuietDusk]

When I was about 3, my mom had a 10 gal tank with goldfish in it. One of the goldfish came to be know as Super Fish because he survived so much of my torture. I know I emptied at least one tube of toothpaste and one tube of hand cream into the tank, on separate occassions. And I was constantly trying to "pet" the fish. On top of all that, I was always eating the fish flakes... LoL
Poor little fishies.

 

[krap101]

my parents never had tanks in our house. our uncle or great uncle had one though. my mom said it was gigantic and he had tons of fish in it. she said some of the fish glowed in the dark 2.

anyway if my parents did have fish i woulda probally tried to eat them

 

[oscarbreeder]

Sushi!!

BLAH!!

LOL.

 

[mortiss]

My 2 1/2 year old has an eclipse in her room with 3 white cloud minnows that she seems no to think about bothering. However - she loves the 3 tanks dowstairs and this morning I caught her putting a baby wipe in the water to "clean the fishies." So far they're unaffected - I'll keep my fingers crossed.

 

[Punkymom]

When I was small, I would pick fish out of the water of people's tanks and hold them for a while. Never killed any of them, though.

 

[jennymit21]

we took the blue backing off of our 75g that houses an 8" red devil. when my boyfriends son came to visit he noticed that the water didn't look blue anymore and while we weren't looking poured blue puffy paint in to "fix" the water. 8O

needless to say, 1 whole bottle of puff paint later and alot of freaking out on my part, we did a HUGE water change and everything's cool. Christopher now knows to come show us when he thinks something is wrong and not to try to "fix" anything.

 

[ploughking]

we took the blue backing off of our 75g that houses an 8" red devil. when my boyfriends son came to visit he noticed that the water didn't look blue anymore and while we weren't looking poured blue puffy paint in to "fix" the water. 8O

needless to say, 1 whole bottle of puff paint later and alot of freaking out on my part, we did a HUGE water change and everything's cool. Christopher now knows to come show us when he thinks something is wrong and not to try to "fix" anything.

Painful - I trust the fish didn't get painted. Kids - useless. Gosh, I shouldn't say that - I just realised 11 year olds count as kids (gasps) thats me :d. My fish seem to be OK - I'm not worried about myself or my 9 year old sister - but my little bro is just an extreme waiting to happen. Like him randomly saying "I thought the gouramis were lonely in the breeding tank, so I put the babies in with the oi.. pi... pirahnna!" He's a dead guy waitin to happen.

 

[jennymit21]

wow...you're 11? you don't write like an 11 yr old!! good luck with your lil bro....poor lil gouramis 8O

 

[Diva]

When i was a kid we had a 20 gallon tank and lots of livebearers in it. And lots of babies.

My mom always tried to catch them and put them into the net - tank. (it was made for babies, but really was made of netting except for the frame)

When I was about 10 a cousin of mine was visiting and I wanted to show him the babies. So we walked over to the tank and I pointed. He sid he couldnt see them. He suggested I take the tank out - which I thought was briilliant.

So I did.

Once I got the net-tank thing in front of us, all we could see were little black spots hopping all over the place. And right at that time I could hear my mother coming.

In a panic, I dropped the net back into the tank and slammed the lid shut.

She walked up to the glass to see the babies and was shocked to see the netting upside down and molly babies racing around.

But she blamed the giant goldfish (they were always dislodging the thermometers...) and I was saved!

Never touched that tank, or any other, until this year (18 years later) when I got my own for my birthday.