Seeking New Pet Advice

I wouldn't mind a rat, but I live with strange people right now, so can't have one of those until I finish school. Cupcake_warrior, don't worry I won't get a Grow frog and i was thinking about getting a frog too. Beta fish are cool, I had one before, it was blue, and I loved to watch it puff up when it saw it self in the mirror.

My first pet of my own was a Betta fish, I did a lot of research on him, and then I bought him. I can tell you what I know:
Never have more than one Betta Fish in a tank together, because Betta fish are known as Japanese fighting fish, and will attack any other fish that they find as a threat, or any fish that is bigger or prettier than your fish. (They will never attack you though, only other fish.)
You can feed them flakes or pellets that you buy at the store. Anything that says 'for tropical fish' on it. But I don't feed my fish flakes because it clouds the water. I feed him Pellets. Pellets are also better for him. You can also feed him freeez dried blood worms that you can buy at the pet store or sometimes at Wal*Mart.
If you have a small tank it should be cleaned once a week, but with a working aquarium that has a filter, you can clean it once or twice a month.
Betta fish like to have a lot of room to roam and places to hide. You probably shouldn't put your Betta fish in a tank smaller than 5 gallons. My fish loved me when I bought him a 5.5 gallon tank.
I wouldn't suggest putting live plants or anything along those lines in your tank, because every live seed or plant I tried to put in my fishes tank molded.
They like to be trained tricks, like follow your finger, and floating to the top of the tank when they see you with their food. My fish is a bit skittish, but I thought him those tricks. Eventually he forgot the follow the finger thing, but that's because I never kept up with it.
A cool thing to do is to hold a mirror in front of your Betta fish, and they will try to puff themselves up and look prettier. Don't hold it there for more than about a minute though, because it can stress out the fish.
If your fish gets bloated, boil a pea, and cut it in have too give it to your fish. That should help.

Anyway. I think that's about all of the kowlage I have on my Betta. I hope it helped!

I'll try and upload a photo of my fish with this post:

Cute pic of your Betta Karma. My Betta was blue and I had a 10gal tank because it was on sale at Wal-Mart and I had a few plastic plants in the tank. Thanks for sharing the Betta 411.

Stick insects? Unless that counts as too buggy

I love the picture of the fish! It's so cute!

You should totally go for something like a tropical fish tank, low maintenance -Only need to clean out the filter once or twice a month- and occasionally clean the glass. I like to keep a few smaller fish in my tank like Neon Tetras -which descend from the Parana family but are adorable and completely harmless- or white clouds, and some sort of agile eating fish to help keep the tank clean like a Pleque (or 'sucker fish') or something like a Loach. I usually have one larger fish in my tank, I have had a Siamese fighter and also a Angel fish (Not at the same time) along with a few rocks and plants. If you have real living plants you will need to maintain those too, I have had grass in my tank before which has just overrun the tank so I now just use plastic ones which the fish seem to love just as much.

My tank is a 20 Liter tank I got from Tesco a few years back when they had a huge promotion on pet products I think it only cost me about £20 and its worked really well. it has a inbuilt light in the lid and the pump system is all built in also. The filter is above the water so it makes for easy cleaning and means that I don't disrupt the fish too much.

The only thing with those types of tanks is maintaining a level water temp with a heater but most have a thermostat which you can set to keep at a constant temp.

If you end up getting a fish my two goldfish died in a week so don't get cheap ones from petsmart.also out of my three coy fish,two committed suicide by jumping out of the bowl and the other one got so big we had to donate it.good luck and tell us what you get in the end!

Ok, guys I still haven't settled on a new pet yet. I will post when I do decide on which pet fits my life styles best. Thanks for all the input too.