Another Betta Bites the Dust (exits the tank)

That's right. Another betta fish is gone tonight. Flushed down the toilet after I pissed on it, but it was barely moving at that point.

Let's backtrack, and I'll explain how it happened. First of all, I decided that I wanted to damage its eyes. I took it out of the tank, and poked its eyes repeatedly with toothpicks on both sides.

It seems like it could still see after this, as its eyes I think have some sort of a liquid inside, when you poke the eye, it really just moves around.

So I went to the next step, and pushed its eyeballs out with a toothpick. First I took one eye out, and let it swim around. I went to check if the fish could see me from its other damaged but still intact eye, and it seemed like it could not. So, I took its other eye out, too.

Then, I let it swim around. It seemed to be doing pretty good, aside from the fact that it could not see. This, of course, was not enough for me. I had to continue. So, I started playing with it, holding it under water, etc. I used a long tweezers to cut its fins, the fins it uses to change directions in the water. I succeeded in cutting most of its fins.

At this point the betta was kind of on one side, swimming for the top of the water. When I pushed it down with a plastic spoon, it would very quickly swim for the top of the tank again. I practiced holding it down by its fins and by using the spoon several times.

To cut its front directional fins, I put the betta in the top of the water, holding it by its fins. When it tried to move its fins, I pulled out my long tweezer and used it to clip the fins. Finally, I got most of both of them. It still had a little, but not much.

As I said, by this point the betta was mostly flat, always swimming for the top of the water. I took a toothpick and stuck it in its mouth. Then I put it back in the water. I did this several times, but it seemed mostly functional. I put the betta right next to a pellet of food to see if it would eat, but it would not, or was not able to.

Finally I took a toothpick, stuck it in its mouth, and poked it out the other side of something. I would think this would have caused some pain. At this point, the betta was really barely moving around, barely alive. It was at this point that I decided the best thing to do would be to flush it down the toilet, I didn't think it would live much longer.

Such is the end of a betta's life. Some of the things I thought it was doing wrong:

1) Sometimes it stayed in one place for too long near the top of the water.

2) It didn't swim that much towards the middle of the tank.

3) It always stayed towards the sides of the tank. Maybe this is a normal behavior, I don't know for sure.

4) It swam vertically slightly when it was coming up for air.

Other than that, it was a good betta, really, it had a right to live longer than it did. I just couldn't take it. And it was eating its food, too. Maybe I should have had more patience with it. That's one of the areas that I could use some work in.

I'm thinking of getting another fish tomorrow, but I'm not 100% sure. Maybe I'll do better without one. When I have one, I definitely focus on it too much, and spend too much time watching it swim around, noticing always what isn't to my satisfaction. Sometimes you don't know you know until something is gone.