I see these in more and more offices. While the fish can survive for considerable periods in these conditions it seems kind of cruel to the fish. Now, I can’t precisely quantify what should pass as “cruelty” to a fish, but given the tiny dimensions of the vase it does seem like the fish is leading a very sub-optimal fishy existence.
I have seen a lot of these, and while I think they look nice, I do worry about the bettas. Bettas don’t need a lot of room and male bettas have to be the only male betta in the environment, but the general consensus is that a vase doesn’t have enough water area at the top for the fish to breathe. Bettas don’t need a bubbler, they come up to the top for oxygen, as I understand it.
But it’s probably more pleasant than being in one of those tiny things stacked up with 100 other bettas in the fish store.
My betta is in a five-gallon tank with lots and lots of plants. I originally planned to have him in a vase, and I think there is probably a way to get the setup right, but he seems to like it there and has been there for a couple of years.
I would think that if it’s big enough and the fish has access to air and food (I have heard of fish being sold with the plant with instructions to not feed the fish because the fish will eat the roots of the plant…not true!) it’d be okay, but really it’s not a good setup. I wouldn’t do it, though a big vase without the plant might make a pretty betta home.
My guy’s in a three-gallon aquarium, though I don’t have as many plants right now as I’d like to have. I would never keep a betta in any tank that holds less than a gallon of water.
FYI, it should be “betta” with two t’s. Some people say 5gl tank is minimum and that some might jump so 1/2 inch of space between water top and hodd is required. In the photograph you link too it seems there’s no way that fish could breathe at the surface. Maybe the plant introduces additional oxygen to the water? Seems like a “fishy” set up. :smack:
We had a betta at an office where I worked. One of my jobs was to clean and refill his tank twice a week and feed him every day. He was in a vase setup, but with a fake plastic plant that sat on top just to keep him from jumping out. He was a JUMPER.
His tank held about a gallon of water. He lived for almost 6 years. He used to smack his body into the rocks at the bottom of the tank to make noise when he was hungry. Then he would stare out the side of the vase until we fed him. That was awesome.
So there was space between the fake plants and the top of the water?
Six years? That’s a long life for a betta! He sounds like he was a fun fishy to have around.
At the risk of sounding callous - is it even possible to be cruel to a fish, of any sort? As I understand it, they’re no more sentient than the average housefly. There isn’t really a mind there capable of suffering - so how could one be “cruel” to a fish?
It’s pretty cruel to the plant, too, when it comes down to it.
That’s the truth! My coworkers who have this vase/plant/betta setup keep lamenting that they have such black thumbs as they stare at their yellowing, wilting, stunted peace lilies. Well, DUH! If you had half a lick of plant sense you’d realize that leaving them soaking in water for six weeks without any real feeding or air to the roots isn’t ever going to be good for the plant, unless it’s actually an aquatic plant. While spathiphyllum is a plant that tolerates consistently damp soil, it’s not an aquatic plant.
Well, they are living creatures, if fairly brainless. Keeping them in bad conditions just doesn’t seem right.
I feel bad when I forget to water my houseplants, too!
I really don’t get this fairly commonly held opinion that ‘suffering’ is some sort of a higher mental function. The average housefly might not be able to express it in a way that you can empathize with, but anything that is capable of perceiving negative stimulus and has some sort of programming to try to avoid that stimulus can be said to be ‘suffering’ if it is put in a situation of negative stimulus it cannot avoid. Human, betta, housefly or intestinal worm.
Here’s a great link about the care, feeding and natural habitat of Betta fish.
“Seem” is the issue here.
*Betta spp. *have been known to breed in water buffalo footprints. The biggest problem with keeping a Betta splendens (the most common species in the aquarium trade) in a small container is not space, but temperature. One of the reasons they developed the ability to breathe air at the surface is that the evolved in very warm water, which tends to hold less oxygen than cooler water . . . especially in a water buffalo footprint. Most Bettas don’t last very long because of underheating and overfeeding. Ideally, they should be kept at a consistent 80dF, and fed only every few days. My longest-lived Betta was fed only once a week for five and a half years.
Huh? They’re fish, right? Fish have gills… why would they need to come to the top? I thought the only marine life that needed to come to the surface were aquatic mammals like dolphins, whales, and merfolk!
Bettas live in puddles in the wild and have an organ called a labrynth which allows them to directly breathe air from the surface. This is an adaptation which was necessary because the oxygen can become depleted in the small pools they live in naturally. They actually need to breathe air from the surface in order to survive. Bettas who have their labrynths remove suffocate even in fully oxygenated water.
They don’t do it constantly, but you see them go up every so often and get a quick breath.
Thank you. You put it better and more succinctly than I could have.
Also: when you bring a pet into your life, whether that pet is a dog, cat, fish, or millipede - you are taking on responsibility for that animal whether you do so consciously or not. Putting the animal in a living environment that you know is inadequate is failing that responsibility.
(This is a bit of a sore spot for me because I keep rats, one of whom has had several episodes of respiratory infection, and I’ve gotten hints from nosy parkers that it’s madness to pay vet bills for an animal that costs about twenty bucks. Well, besides the fact that we’ve bonded to the goofy little furball, there’s that whole responsible pet ownership issue, see…)
From the article I linked to:
From where, and more importantly how, do a male and a female betta manage to get into the same water buffalo footprint after it fills with water?
They jump.