Betta Fish: dealing with an unexpected betta death. not sure how to stop feeling guilty (no graphic images, just descriptions)

hi all, this is gonna be part vent, part advice, part farewell. i apologize for this being disjointed and vague, as it is an ongoing case. i want to preface this saying that i am okay aside from some injuries that will heal with time. i am fortunate enough to live within an hour of family who are letting me crash with them until i can get back on my feet and my safety has been ensured by police involvement. i am no longer in active danger.

i was subletting a studio apartment directly through a landlord with a few personal properties in the area. an incident occurred that resulting in her physically assaulting me, damaging my property, and evicting me with no notice. part of her attack included an aerosol and a lot of it got into my 10 gallon betta and shrimp tank.

with police intervention i was able to safely leave the property. the next day, a little over 24 hours later, the police were able to give me 15 minutes with a deputy on guard to get the essentials from the apartment. i didn’t have anything to transport him in and there was still the matter of shrimp and my nerite snail, so i ended up draining the tank to a few inches of water and throwing it with all the supplies into my car and driving back to my family’s home. he was alive at this point but did not look good at all, with bold stress stripes and alternating between violent, seizure like thrashing and floating lifeless on his side. i filled the tank with warm tap water treated with seachem prime using airline tubing so the shock wouldn’t be as bad. my family took me out for dinner to cheer me up, and when i got back he was gone.

i know i couldn’t have done anything realistically. even if i had gotten to him sooner, the amount of chemical that i suspect got into the water and was coating the outside of it was nothing short of a death sentence. i just can’t shake this bone deep guilt that i failed these creatures who were relying on me. between this eviction, the medical bills, the fact that i just lost my job because the business i was working at abruptly closed, and that every last dollar to my name just went to paying rent (it’s due on the 15th), i am in such a bad mental space. how do you cope with a sudden loss like this? has anyone else gone through anything remotely similar?

i cope with humor and i don’t want this to end on such a sour note, so ill end with a farewell to my little man. his name was billy, short for baby billy’s bible betta, a reference to one of my favorite TV shows. he was the sassiest little thing. completely non-aggressive towards his shrimp and snail tankmates, but would parade around the front of the tank flaring and fluttering his gorgeous fins like a peacock whenever i walked past. he was an absolute fucking glutton, and once ate an entire algae wafer and several large bites of cucumber intended for the shrimp. he slept on the big anubias leaves or in his little flower pot and would always wake up to greet me. he was gay. i can’t prove it and also he was a fish but i know it in my soul. i would get home and talk shit about my coworkers and it felt like he would listen and agree. if he was a person, he would tell you how cute your outfit looked to your face, then immediately turn to a friend and go on at length about how fugly he actually thought it was.

i wish i had taken more photos. i don’t take many in general and i think this will change that. attached are the only good two i have of him and from when i first brought him home so he was really skinny, plus some of the cool funky wild types from my skittles mix of neos, a close up of my nerite snail, and the character he’s named after. i didn’t see any corpses but i can’t imagine they survived either, they’re probably buried in the sand, so this is a farewell to them too. i’m going to keep the tank running in case there are any survivors, but will probably end up scrapping it all. going to have a hard time returning to this hobby, i think.