Desktop Pets: The Betta Way

The reality is that most of us office-hour types have very generic cubicles (read: boring!) as our work station. Some opt to enliven their space with pictures (kitsch), magnets (kitsch) and other sort of paraphernalia. Some place a pot of semi-indestructible/semi-unkillable plant in a suitable nook (guilty as charged) and some others have a desktop pet.

I love the idea of having a small active yet fairly low maintenance sidekick watching over my space and so I bought Betta (Fighting Fish) for myself.


Heya! I'm Senget. Pleased to meet you.

Senget is your run-of-the-mill long finned fighting fish that I got from a Kampong store near my home. When I first bought him, I never noticed that there was a slight defect with one of his fins. He was an impulse buy truthfully, but after having him live at my table for a few days, I realized that he was a tad lopsided on account of a gimp fin. This resulted in his awfully corny name of Senget.

See my Gimp fin? Tehehehe

He lives a glass vase home, with de-chlorinated and aged water and spent porous zeolite as habitat sand (it absorbs poisonous ammonia from the water in a chemical sequester process). He has a live plant for him to hide in and occasionally sleep on. The zeolite sand can be a tad scratchy on trailing fins, so I layered some polished pebbles as a physical barrier.

A few months later, I found another un-used glass container, this time in the shape of a large Brandy glass and proceeded to turn it into another desktop habitat.



Mottled Cream Blue fin Crown tail Betta a.k.a Chomot!

This is Chomot, for the simple reason of dressing up like a messy smudge! I fell in love with him as I felt that he had a tad more character than the others at the aquarium store. There were others far more attractive than him but I felt that he would make me happiest (he was probably psychically commanding me to pick him ya).

He lives in a similarly set up bowl of zeolite sand, but Chomot has a wood-bound water-fig plant as his primary decor cum R&R pit stop.

Both Senget and Chomot are bachelors living in their own pads (never mix Bettas together, ever! There is a good reason why they are called Fighting Fish). One lives at my office table while the other stays at home at my desk, both in well lit area with sufficient sunlight sustaining the plants.

They don’t need much in terms of care, regular daily feedings of 6-8 Betta suitable mini floating pellets, once a week change of de-chlorinated water and the very occasional plant trimming to tame wayward leaf growth of the water plants.

They both help me keep centered and balance as the act of feeding, playing (Senget seems to be quite interactive, wiggling a certain way when he wishes for food) and maintaining their glass pads offer me some semblance of calm and tranquility (which frantic ole me could always use having more, in spades where possible).

Update 7/9/2012
Came home on Friday and found Chomot belly up and stiff. Quite a shock really as he was doing fine in the weeks before :(.

To commemorate the short life of Chomot, I had a small service and buried him at the hedge in front of my room in the hopes that his body will nourish others.

I was in a funk over the weekend as was constantly aware of the vacant bowl that was Chomot's abode and so I went out looking for a new tenant, not so much as replacement as to bring some new life into my room. Carefully cleaned and disinfected the bowl to make sure no illnesses or parasites are transmitted, replaced all the gravel with new (and clean), and boiled the semi porous decorative stones just to be doubly sure!

Meet Nero.

Black Crown-tail Betta

 Nero was the only specimen with such dark colours and so I got him. Mainly because, in his own way having a wonderful dark colouration, he was as special as Chomot with his ragged appearance. Nero seems to have settled into his new home and is feeding well.

Hope it works out well this time.