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feeling: eerrrrgg
listening to: Utena Movie - Abraxas [Hikari Sasu Niwa]
Ok, so last night around 2 a.m. I looked at my betta fishie Mitsu and discovered that his right eye is bulging and cloudy. Diagnosis: pop-eye. Not usually fatal but looks really painful (imagine if your eye swelled to triple size) and can result in loss of the affected eye. Well, when I first caught it I couldn't do anything about it because 1) it was 2 in the morning, 2) I didn't have enough water to change his vase (tap water is bad for these fish), and 3) I didn't have medicine. So I researched 4 or 5 possible medications for pop-eye, then went to bed having done nothing to help and worried sick. Then this morning I got up early and found that, luckily, mom had planned to go to town today anyway, so I hitched a ride with her to get 2 gallons of water and this medicine called Melafix, probably the most strongly recommended of all the medicines I researched last night. It was expensive and the smallest bottle I could find has enough liquid to heal over 2,000 gallons worth of sick fish. But I got it anyway, then when we got home, I posted a query about Melafix and pop-eye at a betta help forum, then I spent abour an hour thoroughly emptying and cleaning his vase, finally got it refilled with the Melafix mixed in, then had to let it sit for hours to get to the right temperature for him. I just now put him back in. And immediately after that I checked the forum I posted at earlier to check for replies and help. One person has responded. What did she have to say? That Melafix doesn't work and that I need to go back immediately and get an even more expensive antibiotic. If she's right and all the other half dozen websites I read were wrong, what does this mean?
1~ I've wasted a FULL day between diagnosis and giving him Melafix. 28 hours.
2~ I've wasted about 10 bucks on a bottle that contains more medicine than I and every other betta owner I know would EVER have use for and that apparently doesn't work anyway.
3~ I've wasted a full gallon of water cleaning and refilling his vase, and will have to repeat the process yet again tomorrow if this medicine does dud out on me. Too frequent water changes really, really stresses fish, and that is not what my fish needs when his eye already looks like the lightest touch could explode it.
4~ After all that and over a course of 3 days I'll STILL have done absolutely nothing to help him. This disease can reach a point of no return within just 2 days. Which I have just officially wasted if that person was right about Melafix.
AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG!!!!
If his eye falls out I'm suing every freaking betta website I've ever surfed through.
comment! (0)
dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 8/13/2002 06:45:00 PM
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