The betta fish: no ‘betta pet

No kitty litter, no muddy paws, no shedding, squawking, barking, meowing or whining. For college students strapped on time, limited on space and regulated by landlords, a betta fish might just be the perfect pet.

Betta fish fit the bill when it comes to finding an animal friend for busy students. Bettas are something to love, spice up the dorm décor and keep company with all rolled into one. With little effort, even the beginner pet owner can keep a betta happy and they will return the favor.

According to Adam Wagner, store manager of PetSmart in Logan, betta fish are good pets for college students because they are relatively easy to take care of.

Betta fish only eat small amounts of food and can live in a bowl with as little as two pints of water as long as it is cleaned about twice a week.

“Bettas can live in almost any container because they can breathe surface air,” Wagner said.

Wagner said that bettas can do so because of a unique physical feature called a labyrinth, a sac-like organ located just above its gills.

He does suggest, however, that it is less maintenance to keep a betta in a tank with a filter so water changes will be less frequent.

Wagner said that both male and female bettas come in an array of bright colors, however, the male’s colors are usually more intense and they have much longer fins.

“Betta fish come in blue, red, white and mixed – pretty much every color under the rainbow,” Wagner said.

Wagner said male bettas are aggressive toward one another, so it is best that they are kept alone or in a tank with other species of fish. He said females can be kept together because they are not usually violent towards each other.

“If males are placed in the same container, they will shred each other’s fins; they will kill each other,” Wagner said.

Haley Keime, a senior majoring in international studies, has had her betta fish for two months. She said she got her betta because two of her roommates did, so she wanted one, too.

“I don’t really like fish, but my roommates each got one, so then I wanted one,” Keime said. “A couple of days later, I went and got mine.”

Keime’s betta is female, which she said she bought because the girls were a dollar or two cheaper then the males. She said she has enjoyed having a betta as a pet and her fish recognizes when somebody enters her room.

“I can tell it knows when I come into the room because it starts freaking out like it wants to be fed,” Keime said. “It’s like a little dog.”

Keime said that she didn’t realize how much she actually liked her betta until she almost lost it to the bathroom drain. Keime said she was letting it swim around in the bathroom sink while she was cleaning out its bowl when she accidentally opened the drain and her betta almost went down. In order to save it, Keime said she had to shut the drain on her betta to stop it from ending up in the sewer.

“I halfway shut the drain so my betta was kind of squished, then I scooted it out with my finger, shut the drain all the way and turned on the water,” Keime said. “I saved it.”

Keime said her betta has fully recovered from the incident and is as eager to be fed as ever.

According to Wagner, betta fish live anywhere from two to four years with good care. That’s just about long enough to earn a college degree, one final reason betta owners feel they are the ideal college pet.

-nnaylor@cc.usu.edu

Jasmin a betta fish swins in her tank as Marissa Taylor and Paul Kelly look on.