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Seraitsukara

The Druidic Dragon
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Though it does start off on a bit of a sad note. In my 40gal community tank, I always keep a male + female pair of bettas. Not once has this every been a problem aggression wise. A few weeks ago my male betta passed away from old age. My female was seriously looking depressed. She wasn't eating, wasn't flaring at the guppies, and was hiding in back corners.

Yesterday I went to Petsmart for mouse bedding, and took a look at their bettas for sale. My rule for purchasing pet store bettas is to buy the sickest looking one there to try and save them. That's where this poor little guy comes in;

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Dull colors? Check. Fin rot? Check. Emaciated? Double check. The only betta worse than him was literally dead.

I got him home, floated him in the tank for a bit, then let him go. That's when I found out how damn thirsty my female betta was. She sought him out immediately and tried to get him to wrap her.

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Poor guy, whose never seen another fish in his life and who no doubt felt like crap, was completely overwhelmed. I quickly got him back out and into a hospital tank. He was not moving, barely pumping his gills, fins even more clamped up. Now I was worried I accidentally stressed him over the edge.

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He's in a critter keeper bin, with only ~2 inches of water so he can surface easily. At this point the only way I could tell he was alive was the slight movement in his gills.

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He made it through the night! I added sand from the tank for biological filtration, and did a water change, adding in water from the established aquarium. I also moved him to my desk so I could keep an eye on him. My room is ~76F, the warmest in the apartment since I can't heat such a small volume of water.

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Look at that belly!! I noticed him striking at the duckweed and attacking the frogbit roots. Crushed up some food and added it. Just swimming the 2 inches to the bottom to eat is a struggle for him, but he did it! You can now see the red-orange color of the food through his skin!

He's improving rapidly now that's he out of that awful pet store cup. Never again will he deal with ammonia burns and fin rot. Once he's stronger he'll be reintroduced to the main tank!

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Notice his cup up top there. That's the biggest source of water he ever knew up until yesterday. His world will soon be much bigger!

I'm really excited to see his true colors once he's all better! Expect future updates on him!

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Some of you may remember when I first got a group of mice to start a breeding colony back in Feb of 2019. I wanted a good source of whole-prey for my ferrets that I knew were raised well. Three girls, one boy. The boy, T'puuli (silver mouse above) would be the ruling buck of the colony until....today.

Mice don't live long. Maybe 2 years. Mice with feeder quality genetics even less. I estimated T'puuli was born early November 2018, so he was nearing 2 years old. All at once his age hit him at the start of June. His eyes were clouded, his face was losing fur, he was mostly sleeping. A few months before this I'd held back one his sons anticipating his passing. It was just in time too. T'puuli has fathered HUNDREDS of children. He was a doting partner and father, always nesting over new pups to keep them warm when mom wasn't feeding them.

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This is the last photo I have of him. Hard to tell here, but you can see some of the balding on his face. Early in July it became clear his son, Tril had taken over breeding and was becoming aggressive to his father. T'puuli and my oldest doe, Gul, were moved into their own bin for retirement.

Over the last few weeks, their health has worsened. T'puuli was hunched and lethargic. Gul was showing breathing problems and a tumor had sprung up on her arm. Today I made the decision to put them down.

As much as I loved them, they were still part of the colony. I had more of a bond to them than the rest of the mice, but their ultimate purpose was to be food. I intended to feed them to my turtle. The ferrets likely wouldn't touch them at this age. The following will be a description of what I found when skinning/gutting T'puuli so do not read if you're squeamish.


T'puuli was....bad. I have NEVER seen so much wrong internally with a mouse as I did today. I should have put him down weeks ago at least. The first clear issue was the amount of fluid in his abdomen, likely ascites from a failing liver that was dotted with tumors. His stomach, intestines, and one kidney were encased/crushed in what I think was tumor? I've never seen anything like it. It was thick, fibrous tissue that was encasing everything and trapping it up against his spine.

Gul was normal aside from a second black tumor on her leg along with the fatty tissue one on her arm.

I decided not to feed them to any pet but bury them in one of my container planters on the balcony.

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In happier news, when out shopping today (with a mask) I went into a petco that happened to carry female mice. With T'puuli gone, my current colony was edging away from line-breeding and into inbreeding. Tril is the son, grandson, and father to my current does. It was the perfect time to add a freshbloodline! I picked up these 3 girls who have been paired with a male from Gul's last litter. I can't put them directly with Tril, Korit'al, Tona, Isto, and Molo. They wouldn't tolerate strange females, especially being pregnant and nursing pups. I can introduce their future pups to Tril's colony though when I want new females there.


These girls will now get to experience being in a spacious enclosure with real food of oats, sunflowers, eggs, beans, bones, and cereals. They'll never have to choke down rodent blocks again. I'll be looking forward to there first happy mouse zoomies!

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We are just under a month left till DA officially switches over to Eclipse and retires the old site forever. I'm still not very happy about it and I know many others aren't either. Figured I'd take this time to link to my pages on other sites. I will eventually be active and easily reached on all websites but am updating them one at a time with old work and getting into the habit of checking them regularly.


Instagram


FurAffinity This is currently the best alternate site to contact me on. I'm in the process of uploading all my 2019-2020 work. I will most likely start offering NSFW commissions there at some point.


Wysp


Weasyl

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