Good bye, Holly

From my Livejournal:

"When I woke up this morning, I knew one of my fish was dead. I don't know how I knew, but I just sat up and thought, "I'm going to go out into the living room and find one of my fish dead. And it'll probably be Hugo."

So I went out and checked, and sure enough, one of them was dead. But it wasn't Hugo. Holly was laying diagonally (tail up) in the corner of her tank, eyes abnormally bright. She's dead.

And I don't know why. I've had her since mid May and she's never been sick, not even once. No symptoms of anything. Her colors were bright, she was swimming around her tank like normal when I went to bed. She'd grown so much since I bought her, but she wasn't swollen or fat. Just proportionately larger because she was young and I was actually feeding her unlike the pet store. No scales were marred, her eyes and gills were fine, and she was happy. But now she's just dead. Like she had a heart attack or something stupid like that.

What's really sad about this is that Cuba will probably die now. Holly was his best friend. When I found her this morning Cuba was at the bottom of his tank, just looking at her. He'd go up for air, and then come back down and look at her again. It seemed like he was trying to say, "Come on, get up! Let's play!" But soon he's going to realize that she's not going to play with him anymore, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he gets depressed and dies.

I asked mom to bring me home one of those very small milk cartons from work. The kind kids have in their elementary school lunch. I want Holly to be buried in water, because she wasn't a dirt dweller in life and she shouldn't have to have dirt on her now. Hopefully a milk carton is biodegradable enough that I won't be polluting by burying her in it. It'll hold just enough water for her. And then I can put some of her gravel on top of her grave."

That's how it happened. My baby girl is dead and I'm pretty upset about it.

Hugo is the purchase mentioned in my last post. He's a tiny (as thin as a pencil) sick betta I discovered at PetCo. They were going to flush him when the new shipment came in, so I bought him. He's in the half gallon hospital tank, no toys yet, being treated with Tetracycline because he has inflamed gills. He's eating very well already, and stretching his fins by flitting around the tank constantly. He even blew a little bubble nest already. I'm glad I rescued him. He's very pretty for a VT. His body is a strange gradient blend of yellow and pink, his face is mostly white with yellow speckles, and his fins are streaks of fuschia and violet. He looks like a ribbon.

I also must reveal now that I've purchased a huge CT male on Aquabid. I didn't really mean to... I bid just a few cents more than the asking price of $15, thinking I'd be outbid because such a fish could easily go for $40+. Apparently no one else noticed him though, because I ended up being the winning bidder with the original $15 price. I'm shocked, but happy. He's amazing, and I'll have him within the next couple of weeks. He's coming from Thailand by air so I have to wait for the rest of the stock coming to America to be packed with him.

So I've lost one betta and gained two more in just three days. I never thought Cuba would outlive Holly. I thought for sure he was going to die when he got sick after the floor incident. Strange how things work out.