Getting along swimmingly with new betta

I went out for a walk last week, and a blue fish with flashy fins followed me home.

Sounds incredible, but I bought a fish to put in a bowl and not to eat — the first pet I’ve ever adopted that I couldn’t pet and scratch its ears.

link Karl Terry

I didn’t intend to buy a fish; in fact, I hadn’t even thought of it until a couple of minutes before I owned one. I made an impulse purchase and bought a betta at Peanut Valley Festival.

The little gal minding the booth when I walked by immediately saw me as a chump and launched into a sales spiel that had me mesmerized — how could I say no to that sweet kid?

She said the little fish would be no problem at all, just change his water regularly and feed him a few pellets of fish food every day. Nothing special needed.

As I packed the piscine pet home, I figured I needed to come up with a good name. That way I would avoid having a long drawn-out naming crisis in which my wife would eventually win and the pet would be stuck with a really dumb name.

By the time I pulled into the drive I had decided on Jebediah. I liked it because it sounded like a mountain-man name. When I introduced him to the wife, the Republican in me had a different story though.

“His name is Jebediah, could be Jeb Bush,” I said. “Everyone likes him but he’s way too quiet for his own good.”

So Jeb settled into his new home in our dining room.

I thought it might be good not to completely trust Jeb’s care to the advice of a 12-year-old sales whiz, so naturally I researched bettas on the Internet.

The first thing I learned was there are two Ts in the species name. They’re also called Siamese Fighting Fish, but I have to say the video of the two fighting bettas I watched online was pretty boring, and I couldn’t understand a word the two gentlemen were saying about the contest.

I purchased Jeb more spacious quarters, a shark sign and plastic seaweed along with colored glass pebbles for the bottom of his tank. Oh, and a little shaker of the tiniest fish food pellets ever.

He immediately took to the pellets, or so I thought, as he immediately rose to the top of the tank and sucked one down — a few seconds later he blew it back out. After doing this a few times I decided he’d actually eat one when he got hungry enough.

So far Jeb and I are getting along swimmingly. They say bettas can be trained, so I’ll work on that in our spare time.

“Get in the truck Jeb. Come on boy. It is boy, right?”

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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