Elvis has entered the building...and my wife has not left!

A funny thing happened on Saturday. My wife and I were down south of our house, and we stopped at a Walmart by our old apartment instead of our usual one. While there, we passed through the aquatics department, and I noticed an absolutely stunning male CT with deep blue, metallic blue and deep red coloration. He'd clearly just been put out for sale, as his water was pristine and he was fully flared. I commented to my wife how amazing he looked for a Walmart betta, but continued on because we'd just gotten Spud the day before and had no room for him.

Yesterday, I was down in that area again. I hadn't been able to get the CT off my mind at all, but I'd only seen a passing glance. I decided to go back to that Walmart while I was out and take a longer look at him, with the idea being that I'd find faults that ended my interest and got him off my mind. There's also the whole "no fish from Walmart" rule that I was hoping to invoke after seeing him again. Instead, I got there and barely recognized him. His colors had faded, he was sitting on the bottom of his cup and would not come off of it, instead swimming around in circles with his belly on the ground, and his water was yellow from neglect. I knew I couldn't leave him to die like that, but I also couldn't take him home, so I started a bit of an effort to get him adopted by asking friends and posting on Facebook with an offer to help anyone who wanted him get set up and getting some advice and counseling from Fried_Bettas (thanks!).

That's where my wife came in. I mentioned to her what I was doing, and she asked how the betta looked. I told her, and much to my surprise (and delight), she asked if we could bring him home and house him without having to buy another tank! So, without wasting a second, she and I raced back to that Walmart and purchased the betta, as well as supplies to divide Stormageddon's five-gallon tank so that Ace could become his roommate for a while. I was up just a wee bit late last night getting everything set up, at some point there was an "Elvis has left the building" joke made, and the name stuck. For me, anyway. My wife is still arguing that his name is not Elvis. She will lose this battle.

Elvis is still on the shy side, and doesn't venture out of his cave too often. Since he was rescued from a yellow water cup less than 18 hours ago, I'm not surprised. He is starting to flare out his fins again, he's swimming more strongly, and his colors are just starting to return. At this point, I couldn't talk my wife into another fish even if it was the last of its kind, but she and I both agreed that there was no way Elvis would be left to die there, or that he'd be allowed to go home with a family that would toss him in a 1/4 gallon betta "tank" and change his water once a month.

Here are a few pictures of Elvis. He's not fully flaring yet, but I'm a little bit surprised I got him to come towards the front of his cave at all!








I am completely done adding fish. There's no room left. We've agreed that if another tank is added, it will be for the express purpose of moving Ace back into his own home (the Evolve 4 that we're waiting on will solve that). I get the feeling that if I don't adhere to those rules, I just might lose the house and keep the fish in a settlement...

 

What a beautiful fish! I hope he recovers soon!

Have you had a Betta in an Evolve 4 yet? I wonder if the current will be too hard on Elvis. My daughter has had one in an Evolve 8 for the last few months, and we're still playing with a baffle on the out take. It's basically like a toilet for her Betta Lazo, and he gets really tired of battling the current. Before it got cold, the prefilter sponge I had on the out flow was fine even though it slowed the water down so much. With the cooler weather, however, the temperature gets uneven and can vary a lot from one cubic inch to the next. I tried switching to another type of prefilter sponge, but the current got to be too much, so now I'm back to the first one and am looking into a 2nd heater to get him through to spring.

 

Elvis is currently in an Evolve 2. He may end up staying there for a while. Quite a few Evolve 2s were shipped with the wrong filter pump--presumably the one for the Evolve 4--and mine was one of them. Getting the current to where it wasn't beating Ace up was a challenge, one ultimately solved by jamming the filter compartment with Fluval sponges, then cutting small pieces of Fluval sponges and packing the filter outflow hose and head with them. It's an ugly solution, but the end result is that the tank is comically overfiltered and has a very light current. Best of both worlds, right?

The Evolve 4 is currently occupied by a friend's goldfish on the other side of the country. Once the goldfish passes (and it's not doing well), he's going to ship the Evolve 4 to me. I'm almost looking forward to performing filter pump surgery on it

Edit: Also should mention that I'm testing the water in the Evolve 2 daily. So far, it seems that if I do a 50% change twice a week (hard to do much less than that in a tank that size), parameters stay golden.

 

Elvis is a handsome boy!

 

beautiful!

 

He's gorgeous! I'm glad you were able to save him

 

betta "Thank ya, Thank ya very much, for saving me!" - Elvis the Betta

 

Elvis moved into his new home, a Marineland Crescent 3 aquarium, late this morning. During his biweekly flaring practice, I was able to snap a few good photos--out of 200 attempts--of his form. He's fully flaring for the first time since we picked him up, and just generally looks so much healthier than he did at Walmart, and happier than he did in the Evolve 2. Moral of the story: Evolve 2 tanks are not suitable for bettas for any significant amount of time. He's also proving to be the most active betta I've got. Even when flaring, he never stood still long enough for me to get three quality exposures on my camera. No HDR for me this time.

I'm going to either pick up some aquarium backing for him or make some of my own later today, and will have a few pictures of his new tank later on today. For now, here are the very few good pics he let me get. All of these came from my phone, and not the digital camera:

 

He's gorgeous! Almost identical to my Lazarus