He died...

[FlareBettaGuy]

Well, it finally happened. I knew from the start that this sad moment would come the day I released him from that little dinky plastic cup, and it did. He did not die of old age, nor a parasite or anything like that. I killed him by accident. I was pouring new water into his bowl, and the stream of water hit him several times. Hard. I stopped, and he was swimming around on his side, and fell on the bottom. He jetted up, but slowly sank back down again on the ground upside down. After struggling a lot of times, crashing into the gravel, his glass, and his castle, he finally fell on his side, and stopped moving. His whole face turned black after a few hours. It could have been blood, and i'm thinking he burst a blood vessel in his gills. He was still on the bottom. Then, it turned pale again. The next day, he was floating on the top of the bowl and started to rot. I didn't have the heart to flush him yesturday, but I did it today. I flushed the dead betta along with his rotting water. It seemed appropriate, because he was already dead. Goodbye, Firebolt, have a nice life in fish heaven or something...

 

[platypus]

Sorry you lost him FBG. Do you know why the water could have had such a bad effect on him? Was it really cold or something? Had you treated it to get rid of chlorines/chloramines? It seems such a horrible way to lose a fish, maybe if you can figure out what exactly it was that did it you can make sure it never happens again.

 

[FlareBettaGuy]

No. It was not the water condition. It was warm, and tap water. And besides, nothing besides pure force could have killed him that fast. The water was around two inches high when he got hit by the jet of water pouring down. My guess is that he got hit, and crashed into the gravel hard not once, but several times. He burst a blood vessel in his gills, thus, suffocating him, not allowing him to breathe. That could explain the blood in his face, and the darting around sideways thing. He suffered a lot. Imagine YOU being suffocated, not being able to take a single breath until you passed out. In fact, try it right now. See how long you can hold your breath until you pass out. See how much pain my betta felt before dying. It isn't pleasant, huh? And he couldn't even get to the surface to take a gulp of air directly, because he was too weak and damage to swim properly....