Baby fish!

Hi! I am sorry I have not updated sooner, but we do not have internet and it is hard to find the chance to post. As you are probably wondering I do have a baby fish!!! (singular) It is only one, and it is a guppy! Now you are probably wondering why I have guppies. It turns out meijer had a great deal on them and I got them a month ago. The baby is definitely not new, because it is already about a centimeter long and has no fear of the other fish. It has no coloration and I can not tell what gender it is, so as badly as I want to, I will not name it until I know if it's a girl or boy, and I would like to see what color it is, too. I will try to get some baby bettas into this world soon, all I need is a tank stand, and I also need to order a microworm culture so that the babies can have food! I am almost nervous to start, because I feel like I still don't know what I'm doing! I guess I'm just worried about what to do with 200 baby fish!! ☺ I will probably wrap up, but I hope to get to you soon with pictures, news, etc. Bye!

Moved!

I am so excited for a number of reasons! We've moved! I am happy to announce that Sunga and Tigris are now properly conditioned, and are ready to breed! I have $483, which is more than enough to start breeding bettas. I am very excited. By the way... I am officially a teenager. My birthday party went well, and one of my presents was a $20 gift card to V.I.Pets, and my grandparents are taking me there today or tomorrow. I have also caught an interest in breeding guppies, and I am interested about fiddler crabs. Guppies... well, there's not much to talk about there. Fiddler crabs are about as big as a baby's palm, and they are very neat. V.I.Pets sells them, and when I go I am going to try to find out more about them. Also, I may break an important thing. My fish in my tank may be sold. All of them. Never has something like this happened before. I have had Angel, who knew Sharp, who knows Leopard. I hope Sharp went to a good home... Leopard is getting big, and I hesitate to say he must be sold sooner or later. They can grow 24" long! Though Yip, Jip, and Kip have been very good, I am not emotionally attached to them to the point I would do anything to keep them. As for Weatherman... he's strange. You don't get emotionally attached to strange fish, . That period meant "period".
About my birthday... I had a cheesecake from my Cheesecake Treasury. It was delicious, as well as easy to make. I would rather have that than any other food. Again, I WOULD RATHER HAVE THAT THAN ANY OTHER FOOD, IT WAS SO GOOD!!! We had it after roast, homemade egg noodles, and mashed potatoes. Everyone make this cheesecake, I beseech thee! Eat it! I'll have the recipe at the end.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to post much about how the betta breeding is going because we don't have internet at the new house. I will try to post every library trip. After I post this, our computer is going to be moved over there. Attention! Anybody who will want some of the young, leave a comment indicating so. They will sell for $4 to $10. They also come with a care sheet, cause believe it or not, I don't want your pet dying! For those that want pictures and stuff, we will have to communicate by email. This all depends that the spawn survives! :o\ If I have three or more people wanting a fish, the highest bid gets it. You won't know the other bids, and you only get to bid once. I will ship for something around $30. Do not be alarmed if it changes. I'm just getting you all ready now, 'cause in 4-5 months, I hope to have some ready for you.
Here's the best recipe in the world. Use it wisely. It is a five-star recipe, and that's a fact!
New York Cheesecake
1 1/4 cups HONEY MAID Graham Cracker Crumbs
1/4 cup butter, melted
5 (250 g) packages PHILADELPHIA Brick Cream Cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 cup sour cream
4 eggs
1 (19 ounce) can cherry pie filling

DIRECTIONS
Heat oven to 325 degrees F if using a silver 9 inch springform pan (or to 300 degrees F if using a dark nonstick 9-inch springform pan). Mix crumbs and butter; press firmly onto bottom of pan. Bake 10 minutes.
Beat cream cheese, sugar, flour and vanilla in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add sour cream; mix well. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition just until blended. Pour over crust.
Bake 1 hour 10 minutes or until centre is almost set. Run knife or metal spatula around rim of pan to loosen cake; cool before removing rim of pan. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight. Top with pie filling before serving. Store leftover cheesecake in refrigerator.

He Has Arrived!

Hello everybody! I am happy to announce that Sunga, my male betta has arrived! He is very beautiful, not to mention colorful. But will he be a good match for Tigris? find out in this all new, exciting post :oP!!

He is a nice color, and the picture does not show well that he has a pale face, almost an opaque. He is healthy and has a good personality, and has no curled fin rays. The extensions are a bit uneven, but he is after all, a $6.00 fish from Meijer. I actually got him on sale, two dollars off. I was scared at first that he might be carrying an unknown illness, and die soon, but I am happy to announce that he is doing extremely well, and actually seems healthier than when I bought him.

The poor fish at meijer though... at the Lowell Meijer, there has been a betta there for quite a while, and has a great personality. He is a great fish. He is a blue veiltail free in one of their ten gals. He is in the right wall of fish tanks, in the middle row, tank closest to the end, near the new betta set-up. He's been there for quite a while, as I said before, and is hard to spot. I hope he goes to a good home.
Back to Sunga... he is a tad bigger than Tigris, and I am wondering if they will be okay. You want similar size in your betta pair, or the bigger one may kill the smaller one. It is usually an accident if the male kills a smaller female, because he's harassing her so much her small size might not be able to take it... On the other hand, the female may quietly seek out revenge for all the harassing later, if she was able to handle it well. She may just rip his fins off, or if she's really big, she may even kill him. Tigris is a fiesty little gal, but could she stand up to Sunga? I keep leaning different ways. If I watch them closely, then maybe I could separate them if it gets rough, but that would be a long time watching! Spawning can take anywhere from 1 to 10 hours! I'd need a good audiobook, loooong movie, as well as a waitress for lunch if I want to make it through ten hours! I suppose if they're doing well, I could leave them for small periods of time. And another thing: Spawning may occur at any time. If they drag it out till one in the morning, I'll be in trouble. luckily I've had some other kids that have said they're willing to help me. Willing to help me stay up till one, I hope! At $390.00, I think I'm safe moneywise. So all I need to do is move, and finish up conditioning, then next step: spawning! Pray that Tigris will grow! I am very cautious with the whole size thing, and I am very attached to Tigris, and would prefer not to condemn her to death by introducing her to Sunga! Lots of hiding places will be a must too. Tigris will benefit from those.

I did go to the betta show, and it was amazing! My favorit was a mustard gas halfmoon, a dark blueish body with yellow fins, and don't worry, it was nothing like Michigan colors. There were also some nice reds, but I've never seen a gray betta! Does white work? :o)

Birthday Money

Hi. I got birthday money, 50 buck, and now I have $360. That's only $15 away from my goal. This is good!
I love birds. I would get a pet cockatoo, but they are too noisy for my parent's liking, besides, they live to be 60 years old. So I might be able to have a dove. They are so pretty. There is a connection between doves and discus fish. I don't know what. But there is.
I want to also say: An IBC show is coming up, hosted by the MiBC. You might be thinking: what? Well, An International Betta Congress show is coming up, hosted by the Michigan Betta Club, which is a chapter of the IBC. Normally an international show (which is what this is) is hosted in big places like Dallas, Singapore, New York, etc. But this one is hosted in Walker, Michigan, at a hotel right next to Alpine! (They do shows in hotels, for the ease of the bettas and for non-local people. Best part: It is August 22, 2009. I am not sure what time the show starts, but the betta auction following the show starts at 4:00 PM. I hope I can go! Details at http://www.ibcbettas.org/. In the upper-right hand corner, there's a list of upcoming shows. Click on it, and there will be a page of details and directions. We should be moved in soon, and I hope to have posts coming up with news on Tigris's mate, supplies, cute little babies, and how to purchase them.
P.S. The Three Musketeers, a.k.a. Yip, Jip, and Kip, are doing fine, as well as Weatherman and Leopard.
P.P.S. We are babysitting Larcon and Oceanes right now, and I put Oceanes next to Tigris, and wow! It was like you had put a nuclear bomb in their bowls! Oceanes thought he was hot stuff and Tigris was flaring back at him as if to say: Oh no you don't! You wanna piece o' me? She eventually calmed down a bit, but I think they would've beat each other up badly if they could. Poor Oceanes would get the worst, with his long fins hindering his swimming as well as being an easy target for biting. I have never seen Tigris flare like that!

She has arrived!

She has arrived! Huh? What? Who's She? Tigris has arrived! Yes! She's here! She's mine! Who exactly is Tigris? Hint: I went to Petco today. Okay, now you now.

Anyway, here's the 2nd cheesecake recipe.

Wait! You can't guess who Tigris is? Wow.

She's a betta! Tigris will be the female use for the practice breeding. She looks healthy. After breeding, (if she lives that long :oP) I will auction her off to her fans!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Just kidding. Most likely, I will end up keeping her unless someone wants her, then they'll get her, but not without heavy counseling on how to take care of her. She may be a $3.99 crowntail betta from Petco, but I want her to have a good home loving owners...

sniff! excuse me.

Sorry. I don't usually get emotional when talking about bettas. Not even with Archie, May he R.I.P.

Oh, I see! You want a picture of this beautiful, stunningly beautiful, amazingly stunningly beautiful, crowntail female from petco! Stop laughing!! Yes, I know! Any petstore betta will give the seasoned betta-breeder chills and nightmares for ten days! But Petco's bettas might bring that down to nine days and blah blah blah...

Here's the picture.

And now, the recipe.

Chocolate Irish Cream Cheesecake
12 oreos, crushed
3 T. butter, melted
18 oz. cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup sugar 5 eggs
2/3 cup whipping cream
3/4 c. Irish cream liqueur
1 1/4 tsp. instant coffee crystals
12 0z. semi-sweet chocolate, melted
Powdered sugar for garnish
1 tsp. vanilla extract
To make crust:
In a small bowl, stir together crushed oreos and butter till well combined. Press crumb mixture evenly onto the bottom of a 9" springform pan.
To make filling:
In a large bowl, combine cream cheese and sugar. Beat with an electric mixture until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in whipping cream, then add Irish cream liquer and vanilla extract. Stir together hot water and instant coffee. Stir into cream cheese mixture. Stir in melted chocolate. Pour cream cheese mixture over crust.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Lower temperature to 200 degrees and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until center no longer looks wet or shiny. Remove cake from oven and run a
thin-blade sharp knife around the inside edge of the pan. Turn oven off, and return the cake to the oven for two hours. Chill uncovered overnight. Place a decorative stencil, such as a doily, over the top of the cheesecake. Sift powdered sugar over the stencil. Carefully remove stencil. Chill until serving time, then let temper about 1/2 hour.
Note: The original recipe suprisingly did not contain measurements for vanilla or hot water! I think we used approx. 2 cups hot water (a mugfull), and we automatically used 1 tsp. vanilla because that's about the only way vanilla is measured! You must try this awesome cheesecake!

Correction

I am sorry to report the mistake in the last post. I have decided it would be unwise to breed Oceanes and/or Larcon, for private reasons. This information was confirmed last night, so I thought I would correct it in a separate post instead of just editing it out of the last post. My plans are unstable at the moment, but my thoughts right now are to buy my own set from the pet store, and practice with those, get rid of the young and get a high-quality pair from the Internet, and start again. Since this is a shorter correction post, I will not post the next cheesecake recipe, but stay tuned! It should come up within the next week!

Here's pictures of Larcon and Oceanes. Pictures taken on our kitchen table!

Hi!

I am happy to say that we are possibly going to move soon! The basement of our new house should be ready to move into in 1-2 weeks! In reality, it may still be 20 years. But this info is extremely cool for bettas!
What does moving into the basement of a half-finished house have to do with bettas?
1. Moving will give me enough room to start breeding bettas.
2. My birthday's coming up, and that will give me a boost on dough so I can start.
3. I want to breed bettas in this house! :oP
I am planning to use Oceanes/Larcon for a practice breeding, then I'm going to set up a website and do some higher-quality breeding! I hope to get Oceanes/Larcon's line crossed into the higher-quality line, but I am going to consult some experts before proceeding. I will be shipping only in the U.S., and will be selling fish off this blog, as well as other places on the internet. This blog will be used for my spawn logs, so keep watch during that time! To see what my spawn logs will be like, go to www.bettysplendens.com and click on "spawn log" on the left side of the page. I will probably get bettas for my high-quality line from that site.
My plan for the first spawn is to cross Oceanes to a female, and Larcon to another and then cross their young and try to enhance the strain with plakats, halfmoons, and crowntails to produce half suns with strong rays and a lot of branching. The half suns will then be crossed into my higher-quality strain. The goal: A show-worthy, lemon meringue half sun betta that has won an award at an IBC show.
Now, about cooking! I have compiled a cheesecake treasury of the best cheesecake recipes. All have been tasted and approved. The treasury is now worthy of publishing, so I will start by doing one recipe on each post. The first:

White Chocolate Cheesecake with White Chocolate Brandy Sauce

4 (1 ounce) squares white chocolate
3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups finely chopped white chocolate
2 fluid ounces brandy

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Wrap the outside of a 10 inch springform pan with foil. Grease the inside of the pan. Place the cream cheese, sugar, and flour in a mixing bowl and cream until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape bowl. Melt 4 ounces of the white chocolate. With an electric mixer on low speed, mix melted white chocolate into cream cheese mixture. Keeping electric mixer on low, slowly beat in the vanilla and 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Blend well. Pour mixture into the prepared springform pan. Place cheesecake pan in a water bath filled with warm water. Bake at 300 degrees F
(150 degrees C) for 50 to 60 minutes, or until center of the cheesecake is just firm. Cool at room temperature for 1 hour. Refrigerate until set before removing from pan.

To make White Chocolate Brandy Sauce (optional, but very good!): Place 1 cup heavy cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Watch carefully so it doesn't boil over. Pour hot cream over 2 cups of finely chopped white chocolate and stir with a wooden spoon until melted. Add brandy and continue stirring until incorporated. Pour over chilled cheesecake and serve.

You'll love it! The sauce adds the greatest touch! I had it for my 12 birthday, and we served it with whipped cream and a mint leaf.

Still not in

We're still not in our new house yet, and I'm $60.00 behind in my $375.00 goal. Oh! Didn't talk about that much did I? Well as I mentioned in the last post, I am hoping to start breeding bettas once moved in. My "business" will be King's Creatures. Nathanael pointed out that the name does not refer directly to bettas, so in the future (years) I'm thinking about also breeding fancy goldfish, angelfish, bristlenose plecos, etc.
I was wrong, Anne's pet shop is after all a bit more expensive than I thought. The sinking pellets are still a great price. Liveaquaria is better, Kribensis cichlids for $4.99. (Don't forget $30.00 shipping though) because of the gigantic shipping costs, I may stick to Anne's Pet shoppe. With a kuhli loach and a pleco in the tank, I am sad to report I have seen zero baby fry in over two-and-a-half weeks! (They hatch in approx. 36 hrs.) :o{
I spent a few hours reading, while simultaneously watching birds outside on the feeder. A chipmunk kept coming and stuffing itself with what seeds fell on the ground, until it started eating our strawberries. I immediately scared it away from my, er... our strawberries. Boy, those are good! I don't blame the chipmunk for trying to eat my, er, our strawberries.
Back to bettas. I'm thinking about breeding crowntails or plakats (pronounced
pluh-COT). I don't know why, but, after all, it is Thai). I couldn't decide, so I decided to breed a crowntail female to one of my friend's bettas, than breeding a plakat male to one of the female offspring. I also want a strain of yellow cambodian color, in any tail form except plakat and veiltail. Well, I'll be going now. Bye! :oP

Glowlight tetras

Hi, I don't know if anyone's reading, but posting gives me something to do. Anyway, I got a batch of glowlight tetras and love them. One boy and two girls. Yip is the boy, and Jip and Kip are the girls. Yip and Jip have already laid one batch of eggs, and Jip is already fattening up again! This time I'll be ready. Some of their hoped-to-be offspring will make me some money at the pet store! Grandma's always joking about me being a "father" now.
I also got a Kuhli loach that is now named "WeatherMan" as he tells me when it's about to rain. He is lacking his orange color, which is extremely weird, as orange is usually their base color.
I am still preparing to start breeding bettas, though I'm lacking one
thing, and that is MONEY. I still need $104.00 according to my goal of $375.00.
Has anyone heard of Anne's Pet Shoppe? Cute little place in Greenville, just checked it out yesterday (for the first time). It's great! Good prices (don't faint when you see the sinking granules price), not wide range of fish, but guess what? THEY HAVE KRIBENSIS CICHLIDS!! Those are very rare in my area and previously I could find them on the Internet only. $7.99 a piece definitely beats liveaquaria! (Liveaquaria is still awesome though). A small number of nice as well as not so nice bettas, puppies, and more.
Check it out if you're interested. I only got a glance so my view on it might be a bit skewed. Bye!

The beginning

Hello? anybody there? I thought I'd just get this started. The page looks so blank without a post. I will start being serious once I know people are reading Toodaloo!