u/_gloomshroom_

Hello everyone. I'm posting as a member right now, not as a moderator.

As some of you may have known, I own an avatar betta, Tsu'nari. His name was inspired by the Na'vi language, and roughly translates to "Aquatic flame". I used to call him my Boy Named Tsu, lol.

This evening Tsu passed away after a long battle with antibiotic resistant fin rot and swim bladder infection. Truth be told, I saw this coming, but of course it hurts.

I want Tsu to be remembered as he was in life. He was a vibrant fish with a funny, fiesty personality. His eating habits took out $45 worth of shrimp in my desperate attempt to include them in his tank, lol. He would come up to the glass to greet me, and moved across states with me.

I'm thankful to have so many memories of him, and I am sharing some pictures as well. I will still be active as a moderator, but of course may be in the background for a bit while I grieve.

Tsu was and is dearly loved and missed. I hope there's a big ole betta pond in the afterlife I can meet him in someday.

FINAL EDIT/UPDATE: I am officially a moderator! Thank you all for your support of me and this community!!

Hello again everyone. I want to provide an update on my end as to what's been going on, just to my knowledge, with the sub's mod status. It's a rather lackluster update, so my apologies.

r/redditrequests has received too many requests to take over this sub. As such, even though I have all my materials in line, I cannot request ownership yet myself.

I'm going to copy paste my planned response to their bot here. Maybe I can try again in a few days. Currently there has been no change at all in leadership or moderation.

***I wish to moderate this subreddit for a number of reasons; the most pressing of which is the lack of moderation on a subreddit I frequent and love. This lack of moderation led to a troll spamming animal torture videos to the sub, which I am sure you are well aware of. The owner of this sub is no longer active and has expressed interest in handing off the reigns previously, and has not replied to my private message or modmail. Please see images below for proof.

https://ibb.co/xSJLsphP

https://ibb.co/0Vn89TdS

https://ibb.co/1GcKMJ7X

I also want to build this community into something better. At the current point, it's not much different from other aquarist's subreddits. If I am chosen to own this subreddit, I intend to implement some unique additions, such as opportunities for cross-platform partnership, specific flairs for tank ecosystem types, world regions, natives, and more. I want to take this community and bring a positive shift to what fishkeeping is actually about; caring for the fish and it's needs over specific aesthetics. On that note, I will also be implementing a more specific ruleset and making sure it is enforced properly. It may take time to fully establish, but I do have a plan in mind for mod recruitment. I plan to implement a mod team using techniques I have employed in larger discord servers. I am currently drawing up a list of mod recruitment requirements. Once this mod team is in place and an automod is set up to filter new or low karma accounts, we can slowly start to overhaul the subreddit's appearance based on community wishes.

Overall, I want what's best for this community, and despite my lack of experience, believe I can learn the skills I lack and use the ones I have to make this a better place. I hope I am able to be considered for the position.***

Please comment if there is anything you want to see from this subreddit, or if you have any ideas as to how I can get my post on the request subreddit to go through. I am open to all ideas as potential future undertakings after the cleanup is done!

EDIT: The subreddit has a new owner! Thank you to u/ackley14 for taking over and good luck!!

These flowers will be given to the Asst. Police Chief of our city, who is advocating for cats at the local shelter we adopted our boy Sparrow from. After a FIASCO during the adoption process, they forced the city's hand to allocate funding for new kennels, a revamp of the cat room, a deep clean, and better overall standards of care, as well as extra funding and oversight. There will also be a reimbursement for our initial emergency vet bill and vaccinations. I don't have the money for a fancy arrangement, so I went to walmart and found $15 worth of flowers and a dollar tree vase and ribbon to make this. I also wrote a letter expressing my gratitude.

This arrangement is made with sunflowers, limonium, dyed carnations and dyed baby's breath.

I would love any critique or tips, this was so fun and I may start a new hobby or side business, lol. But I also just wanted to share the amazing story with this arrangement.

Basically the title! I originally got these little jars to make a "jar of dirt" charm for a cat named Sparrow (CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow!) and since I have leftovers decided to give this a shot! I've always wanted something alive to wear. We'll see if they work out, lol.

There's some decayed moist bark and some moss tendrils in each. Fingers crossed that this works!

I have some flourishing frogbit and salvinia needing cleared out!

Assorted Floaters (duckweed/snails are present in the tank) - $5 plus shipping per sandwich bag, $10 plus shipping for gallon bag

Sorted Floaters

Assorted Floaters (with attempt to seperate duckweed, no guarantee) - $6 plus shipping for sandwich bag

Frogbit (will attempt to seperate from duckweed but no guarantee) - $7 plus shipping for sandwich bag, $13 plus shipping for gallon bag

Salvinia Minima (attempt will be made to seperate from duckweed, once again, no guarantee) - $2 plus shipping per ounce (I don't have very much, sorry! If it proliferates I may have more in the future.)

Hardscape

These were used in a tank with black diamond sand and do still have some grit on them, but I am happy to clean them off before shipment. They are dry and haven't been in a tank in over a year.

Slate - $7-$10 per piece plus shipping. Feel free to screenshot a specific one and ask for more angles and pricing. Price based on size!

Seiryu - $2-$20 per piece plus shipping. Same as slate, please feel free to ask questions about specific pieces.

Petrified wood - due to size, I am not willing to ship this. $75 for the piece. Willing to meet within reasonable distance at a public place, preferably a police department parking lot, to make the sale.

I accept paypal only!

Willing to trade for other plants, plant packs, or live food cultures. Feel free to ask questions and offer trades of your own as well, I may be willing to negotiate.

Been growing out my marble queen props for a bit and wowie they're looking good!!! Yall think she's vareigated enough to call a snow queen yet?? (It looks alot greener in this photo than IRL, but those bottom leaves that are more mature really show off those true colors 💚🩶)

I want to get an Njoy, P&J, or Glacier next, but there are none around here. Anyone know a good place to find some?

Hello! Our shop sold us 6 pea puffers for our 20gal tank. However, three look QUITE different from each other. I've done my best to snag clear photos. They don't seem to like shoaling with each other either. I've provided a 4th pic of two of our other "normal looking" peas, for comparison, but they are hiding from the rest so it was hard to get a clear picture! They're being dewormed as we speak, and any other advice for us newbies will be very much appreciated. 5th pic is tank tax! Thanks in advance!

This is a start to finish of a mermaid I threw together in a couple of hours on my phone's Ibis paint. I can tell I need some improvement in the proportions section of things, but wanted to hear what you guys think of my approach as a whole as well.

I hate drawing line skeletons. For whatever reason they never make sense to me. I'll use a basic backbone and some shapes here and there, but for posing I do much better imagining muscle groups- maybe because of my medical background? I also lowkey suck at legs but keep fish and study their biology obsessively as well so that's why halfway through I said "fuck the knees, I'm making a tail" lol.

Oh, and I swear this isn't meant to be ragebait, but I only used two layers max at any point and merged them frequently. I find organizing layers fucks with my head too much and I lose motivation. I'd rather erase and redraw.

Any tips for coloring my monstrosity? Any other notes? Happy to hear anything you've got.

NSFW for exposed breasts.

This is Olaf. He was listed in the shelter as a German shepard mix. I'm not totally sure what all he is, but he is incredibly sweet and was less than a year old when we adopted him. We're approaching the year old mark now, and I've done my best to train him with input from a professional who's trained dogs for 20+ years. He has issues with hyper-independance, and while he knows his basic commands (sit, lay down, stay), will not always follow them unless he wants to. The trainer reccomended a pinch collar for walks so he doesn't pull me down. We only use it during walks around others or leash training, as advised. He is also, by far, the most anxious dog I have EVER interacted with. I've trained puppies from a young age and this poor fellow almost gave me a nervous breakdown on day 3. I've never had this level of difficulty before.

On top of this, I have an ankle injury. I broke the bottom of my fibula and am currently scheduled for an MRI due to worsening pain after the initial healing. I'm not strong and steady on my feet and this dog is nearly 80lbs. Walking him is a challenge. We used to go on hikes and they seemed to help him manage his stress and overall behavioral issues, but now of course I can't do that. We live in an apartment, which is normally fine since with all the exercise he was lazy. However now it's become an issue where I can't exercise him.

And, to top it all off, a cat joined the mix this memorial day weekend after literally following us home and through the door. We think she belongs to someone, so we're trying to locate her home. The shelter is full and she is not chipped, though she is spayed and behaves like a domesticated cat. She has a safe setup in the bathroom away from the dog where he cannot access her. The biggest issue is, Olaf has a STRONG prey drive. I'm just now seeing this, as with other dogs and adults he is fine. If we cannot find the cat's home, we're stuck with her. (By we, I mean my fiance and I.) Olaf has NOT interacted with children and we do not know how he will do. My fiance and I eventually want kids. The resources I have at this time are slim.

I just need some advice. He's a sweet, intelligent, loving dog with the capacity to fit in. I just don't know if it's with my fiance and I. Does anyone know about dealing with prey drive in such a small space? It caught us completely by surprise and now I'm afraid we'll never be able to train it out of him. I don't want to risk my future kid's or pet's lives but I want to do right by Olaf. Please, please help, I love this dog. I'm sorry if this post is a ramble. It's been a long weekend handling them and wrangling apartment management to help us locate this cat's home. Of course if the cat finds her home then most of this is temporarily mitigated, but in the long run... I'm not so sure. I don't know how to determine if he needs more than we can give currently. Ask me the right questions and I can answer them, maybe insight from outside will open my eyes to something I am not seeing.

We live in OK, so any resources in the area would be appreciated.

(10in pot for scale!)

Hello all, a friend has graciously gifted me a massive mint plant from his yard. (We can all guess what happened there, lol) It seems to be a cross between traditional mint and chocolate mint, both of which they have grown before and the taste is definitely reminiscent of the chocolate mint I grow as well! My main question is, what the hell do I do with this monstrosity?

She's a bit leggy at the bottom, so I think I'll chop and prop some stems. However, if anyone has any uses for the mint, please let me know. I have a feeling that I'm going to have a ton of leftover leaves. Green tea seems like a fun idea, or maybe an extract for baking? Could I dry it into a powder to mix into espresso? Tips for propping this are much appreciated as well. I have some fishtanks and some glass bottles so I can use that, but all I've ever propped before is pothos. I don't know the exact methods of mint propogation. Overall, I'd just love to hear some opinions of what you'd do with this, as my friend calls it, super mint. Lmao. Thanks in advance!

Hi all! These pics are of a dog my fiance and I adopted, named Olaf. He is approx. 8-12mo old in these photos and weighs 75lbs. The shelter listed him as a "German shepard mix. We've been told by many people that he could have lab, mastiff, or anatolian traits as well He has very stretchy skin and a LOT of it, it can be grabbed and stretched into "wings" on either side of the body, lol. His face is also very squishy and soft. He is currently shedding like a beast and the shedder brush takes hours to show any effect. I suspect he may have an undercoat despite being short haired. He has cream colored "stripes" on his shoulders, if you look at pic 1 you can sorta see them in his rolls. He also has a cream colored belly and neck floof. His tail is tan with the TEENIEST white tip. No back dew claws. Ears do not show signs of strengthening cartilage, sol assume they will remain floppy. The dark spots on his face and snout have gotten darker over time, with the "eyeliner" especially adding more shape. He has one patch of swirly fur on the base of the tail, where it attaches to his back. . Personality traits: He's definitely a velcro dog, but does have a strong independant streak showing now that he's comfy in his home. He loves the outdoors but is rather mellow and moderate-energy. He's a heavy chewer and likes to tear fabric. He's very smart, and training has gone very well, despite some of his best efforts to ruin the carpet(lol), and is very praise oriented in addition to food oriented and very much values being told he's doing well, Som ieu" ue inn th an treat training wel, sometimes even doing better with positive feedback training than treat That said, if he really doesn't want to do something, he won't and you can't make him. He has to choose it. And he seems to listen to me (the one primarily training him) better than my fiance or others, though he will still take commands from them. He's incredibly friendly, and will take initiative to approach other people and animals. I'm trying to teach him to wait for me to approve first, lol. When he eats food and treats, he has to be very gentle with it, often using front teeth to pick it up and then shifting to his molars to crunch it. (He has very healthy teeth according to the vet!) There is a moderate prey drive especially towards birds and lizards. . Sorry if TMI, just want to be thorough! I'd appreciate any insight, and recs for reputable genetic testing. Thanks in advance!