Is there someone on your gift list this year for whom nothing seems quite right? Have you considered giving a betta? They are great company, easy to care for, inexpensive to maintain, and a thoroughly eccentric gift!
Now, I'm not so foolhardy as to recommend you run out and buy everyone on your list a fish. No, no, no. We all know -- there are people out there who do not do well with living things -- plants, animals, or people. Let's forget about those folks just now. No, we are talking rather about that particular person on your list (and, go on, it can be yourself) who would really groove on getting a little fleck of living color for the holidays.
Bettas are great for kids who love animals and can handle performing a small (and I mean really small) amount of care & feeding. I'm considering one as a gift for a 9-year-old boy we know who loves animals but can't have pets because his mom is alergic to all furry animals.
Bettas are great too for the kind of adults whom you you know would talk a the fish a the bowl when no one is looking. I'm that kind of person; I've been talking to a betta for several years now.
Here's a note: our betta has no name, but not because we don't care about her. Let's blame it on superstition; every time I gave a fish a name in the past, that fish immediately died. Our nameless betta has managed to escape the jaws of death for several years now.
We keep her bowl either at the center of the kitchen table -- where it works as a centerpiece -- or over on the counter nestled in with our other plants. The betta follows us around as we bustle around preparing or serving meals. She asks for food when she's hungry, and generally is good company.
Sound good? Here's what you need to get started:
1. A Betta: We bought ours for $1.00, when she was just a baby -- so small we could harldy tell what color she would be.
Not all bettas cost $1. A quick check of the Petco betta page shows you can spend up to $40 for an Elephant Ear Halfmoon Plakat Betta, but most go for about $3.
2) A Simple Glass Bowl: When we got her, I'd been recently inspired by the fish hanging out at our local coffee shop -- a goldfish in a glass vase, swimming around the root system of a spath plant. At the time I'd just gotten over closing down my 10 gallon aquarium, and the simplicity of a plain glass fish bowl appealed to me.
Our Betta lives in an octagonal plastic aquarium ($13 at Savers) that holds about two gallons. Anything that holds a half gallon or more would be fine.
Bettas prefer still water, so I didn't even set up the filter and all the other nonsense. I just filled the thing from the tap, and added enough Stress Coat to get rid of the chlorine. I also add Stress Zyme, which is friendly bacteria that keep sludge from forming in the tank.
3. Food: Betta food is $2.99 for enough to keep you going for months, if not a year or more for a baby fish.
4. Greenery: We added an aquatic plant, the Amazon Sword. Ours came rooted into a piece of driftwood, so all we had to do was place it on the bottom of the aquarium. This makes the betta feel safe from imagined predators, plus it's attractive.
5) Care: I refill the tank with fresh water every time it gets murky looking. Your fish can go several weeks without a water change, but I would recommend a water change once a week. With each refill I treat the water with about a teaspoon of the water-treatment chemicals. You can skip this step if have the patience to let the water sit there for a few days so that the chlorine has time to "cook out" of the water on its own.
There are plenty of sources on the internet that will give you lots of information on bettas. I'm hoping you consider giving one as a gift if you have a responsible, caring, and slightly eccentric friend on your list. Have fun!
By Gourami Watcher (talk) 18:27, 24 August 2011 (UTC) (Wikipedia (file log)) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons