My water dragons

For lack of a better title.

Before I found Fishblr, I used to be apart of a fish forum that was FULL of know-it-alls, agism, and decade’s old info.

A lot of it actually pissed me off, and I thought I’d post some of the nonsense here, and see what you all think?

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-I was told that aquarium salt is one of the worst things you can use for a betta, and if water changes don’t suffice, you should skip right to antibiotics. Salt does nothing for your betta, except damage it’s liver and kidneys.

*I honestly think this is utter bullshit. I was totally taken aback when I read this. Salt does have healing properties, and has been shown to be beneficial in fin and gill health. I’ve personally had great results with salt, and would never skip right to antibiotics. As a matter of fact, if kidney damage is as much a concern as it is with salt, I wouldn’t use antibiotics either!

-Bettas can’t recognize their keepers by action or gesture. All humans are humans to them.

*My bettas know me, they know my hands, and the way I move. If you get anyone else poking around their tanks, they go wild and hide. With me, they actually come up to my hands and try nibbling on them.

-The only reason bettas greet you at the side of the tank, is because they felt the vibrations of your feet, walking towards their tank.

*Bullshit. I weigh 100 lbs soaking wet, and my house is built on a solid concrete foundation. I could be wearing lead boots and stomp around, and I bet my fish wouldn’t feel these said “vibrations”. I could see them becoming accustomed to the sound, and your arrival, given you didn’t have a concrete foundation, but it’s not essential, and not the only way they know of your presents.

-Bettas have terrible eyesite, and cannot see more than a foot or two in front of them.

*I am currently about 12 ft from my furthest tank, and Peaches is doing her food wiggles for me. The closest tank is about 8 ft, and Nanners is staring at me. :p

-They are incapable of feeling pain and fear.

*The amount of bull with this one, makes me want to scream! The person who posted this said that betta/fish in general, are incapable of experiencing pain as humans do. I.e., they only “react” to uncomfortable situations, because they’re prey animals, and don’t want to be eaten. (Idk how the hell they came up with that). A fish will swim away from pain, because that’s all they can do. Humans will pull their hands back from a burning flame. It’s the same thing! Not to mention, fish don’t always swim away from these annoyances, they’ll actively try to dislodge parasites, such as the Ich! They do feel sensations, and they know when they don’t like something.

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A lot of fish have pretty good eye sight. I mean some are pretty bad like eels and bichir. But for the most part it’s good. Now we don’t know how detailed their far vision is, but at minimum they can recognize shape and movement.

Bettas haven’t been studied for facial recognition. Goldfish and Oscars have though and their skills are quite high even acting different with certain people present in the room. I assume betta are higher themselves.

I’ve trained this open-source neural network framework on a variety of datasets, including recipes, Pokemon, knock-knock jokes, and pick up lines. 

Here’s the latest: a list of 365 different spells you can cast in Dungeons and Dragons. 

It’s a really small dataset, actually - so small that in almost no time at all, it learned to reproduce the original input data verbatim, in order. But by setting the “temperature” flag to a really high value (i.e. it has a higher chance of NOT going with its best guess for the next character in the phrase), I can at least induce spelling mistakes. Then the neural network has to try to recover from these, with often entertaining results.

I give you: D&D magic spells, designed by neural network

The ancient Chinese did not keep goldfish in bowls.

They were kept in ponds. With flowing water. And moved to small bowls for display purposes for a short time when guests were expected to view them. They did not live in the bowls. Because the bowls would cloud and the fish would die of poisoning from their own feces. This is why your pet goldfish when you were 6 died in 3 days.

I love fish, and I hate people enacting animal cruelty on them because “they’re just fish!”. Imagine making your dog live in its kennel all it’s life and never cleaning it? That’s the life you’re dooming that fish to live. Just because it’s a fish doesn’t mean it deserves this kind of treatment.

“It’s about your pet, not about your pride”

Everyone makes mistakes, nobody is born knowing everything, but it’s a choice to remain ignorant and it’s a choice to accept new information and do things in a better way.

hey guys, i’m new on here c: and would like to stalk  i mean uh follow some more blogs to get me started!! so if you post

-reptiles

-rabbits and rats

-betta fish

-reef and freshwater tanks

-animal welfare/care

-wildlife education

-frogs/amphibians

- any pets!!