I’m going to tell you a story, and although it is absolutely 100% true, you’re not going to believe me.

My fish almost drowned.

No, seriously. My fish almost drowned.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

In January 2017, I decided to start my spring semester off on the right foot by buying a fish. It was a spontaneous decision really, a decision made after a long shift of cashiering at Walmart. I bought an adorable little beta fish who I promptly named Dog.

Lifehack: If you can’t have a dog in your college dorm, you can buy a fish and name it Dog.

Anyway, I had Dog. Dog had me. We hit it off right away.

About two weeks into our lives together, there was an incident. It was a typical Saturday, and just like a typical Saturday I came home from work and made my way to Dog’s aquarium to make googly eyes at him.

Right away, I noticed something was up. Usually, Dog would swim up to the top of the tank at the slightest sight of me, hoping for both attention and food. This time, however, he was nowhere to be seen.

I peered into the tank and studied every nook and cranny. And then....ah ha! There he was, in a plant near the tank’s corner.

I got to his level. No movement.

I tapped on the glass, a big no-no in the fish community. Nothing.

I was freaking out. Was my fish stuck?? I stuck my hand in the water and jiggled the plant until he came loose from the plant’s grasp.

Slowly, Dog made his way to the top of the tank.

“L-O-L, only my fish would get stuck in a plant,” I joked.

And then I noticed.

My BEAUTIFUL, dark royal blue fish was the color of a cloudy Kansas day: gray.

His eyes were large and buggy, his movement was sluggish. As I sat watching, his characteristic color slowly returned, as did his charm and proper eye size.

It was in that moment that I realized that my fish, my FISH had almost drowned and would have had I not walked into the room at the time that I did.

GUYS, MY FISH ALMOST DROWNED.

Here’s the thing: beta fish are fish, but they possess a unique organ called a labyrinth which allows them to access oxygen directly from the water’s surface in addition to converting oxygen from the water through their gills. This is why you’ll see beta fish in aquariums without systems: they don’t need them!

(However, you should always have a filter/aeration system in your tank for all your fish, labyrinths or not! Also, please keep your beta in a tank no smaller than five gallons!)

Anyways, when I first bought Dog, I didn’t have an aeration/filter system set up. When Dog got stuck in his plant, he had no way to breathe in oxygen (no fish can breathe through their gills in still-standing water). By the time I got to Dog, he was on his way to the little fishbowl in the sky!

Happy to say, that was over a year ago and Dog is better than ever! He reigns over a 10-gallon kingdom filled with plants, caves, a heater, and yes, an aeration/filter system. Moral of the story? Fish CAN drown, and fish tanks should ALWAYS have aeration/filter systems.