u/KingKRiggz

I got this Betta 2 days ago from my LFS. He was labeled as a Blue Marble Plakat and much larger than the other Bettas around. I've usually had a mix of Bettas throughout the years (mostly rescues) from flowy finned males, to a sorority of shorter finned females, but never a Plakat and it's one fish I've wanted to keep for a few years now.

He's relatively chill aside from constantly trying to find things to hunt and peck at rather than accepting commercial fish food but so far hasn't harassed the m/f pair of RCS I added and the larger snails. He moves around a bit slowly which I find surprising since Plakats are better swimmers and are more closely related genetically to the original Bettas bred for fighting.

My questions are:

Roughly how old would you guess he is? He's pretty big (has a 5G too himself for scale) has a beard, and most of his coloration seems to have come in.

What could I do to keep him stimulated? He seems to be a pretty active hunter searching for micro fauna in the tank, but aside from that I'm not sure how to keep him from getting bored when he seems relatively indifferent to human interaction unlike my previous fish.

Does he seem healthy overall? His fins are a little torn up in some spots but I'm hoping that being in a clean tank will encourage them to regrow rather quickly (assuming he's not just experiencing symptoms of old age.)

And before anyone says anything, I kept a sorority of 3 females in a very heavily planted community 29G and never had issues with fighting. I do not recommend this for beginners or people without experience and multiple tanks. Also I know 5G is the bare minimum size but it's all I have to work with right now as my apartment is small and I'm sure the fish is happier here than in a tiny space.

So I've had a pretty stressful time with this new cat.

I started fostering a cat from a rescue that turned out to be pretty sick. He had a URI and was lethargic/not eating or drinking. Yesterday we got him to the vet and they gave him antibiotics, fluids, an appetite stimulant, and cleaned him up. I've been hand feeding him the last few days as he hadn't eaten in 4-5 days since I got him last Saturday.

Last night I went to go feed him again and he got spooked and ran away from me. I figured ok he must be feeling at least a little bit better if he's leaving the crate so I left him alone in hopes he'd eat and drink on his own.

Well I got up today and this cat is nowhere to be found. He's not in his fenced off area I set up for him and I assume he got out into the full apartment (minus my bedroom where my original cat currently has been staying as they adjust to the new one) and is hiding somewhere.

For reference I live in a 550sqft 1 bedroom apartment with a tiny bathroom, a small kitchen and bedroom and a decent sized living room.

So he's obviously not in the bathroom or bedroom which leaves the living room and kitchen, and I don't see him anywhere. I've checked every nook and cranny, I've checked high and low, I've checked places a 13 pound cat probably wouldn't even be able to fit just to cover my bases. I flipped the couch and unzipped to check inside even though there were no tears in the fabric. I'm completely stumped.

I'm worried since I've been hand feeding him, haven't seen him drink anything and he literally just got treated for a pretty bad infection, that he's going to hide and refuse to come out until he's deathly ill or even come out at all to eat or drink. The last thing I want is for him to suffer and to have a de\*d cat on my conscience or in my apartment walls somewhere.

He's new and already had a very stressful experience coming from the rescue to here so all the typical things like shaking a treat bag or putting wet food out simply aren't going to work with this skittish fella.

What do I do? Do I wait it out to see if he'll show himself? I keep looking around every hour to see if I missed something but again my apartment is tiny and I haven't found any holes or crevices he could have escaped into. I'm getting really concerned given the stress and illness this cat has already had to deal with.

New Betta, curious about his age