Meet Lila, my darling lil rescue girl. I've had her since October, and her colors have really popped out!
She is a female half-moon betta, found along with several dozen others in a Petsmart dumpster in their shitty little cup containers. 18 of these bettas recovered and most have also since been adopted out--a large number by the same betta breeder since, uh... they were mostly fairly unusually-colored plakats and other "expensive" bettas that you would not expect a chain store to abuse in this way. Even Lila here, a more common half-moon, still definitely did not deserve to get thrown away like garbage. It was very lucky for all of them that a vigilant dumpster diver was consistently checking the bin for wasted aquarium supplies--and had the quarantine space available to get these poor guys into some decent cycled water and start on medicating and feeding them properly.
Nowadays, Lila enjoys her own personal 5.5 gallon, aquascaped with driftwood, christmas and java moss, anubias and crypts and a wetland-y layer of dwarf water lettuces and salvinias (with a little feeding porthole). She has her own pet assassin snail too, to clean up her scraps when she decides she doesn't like a particular bloodworm or brine shrimp chunk. XD She loves her mossy jungle, and she loves to come up to the glass and pose for attention. Soon I've got to try and get some more good pictures of her exploring.
