How Do You Sleep?

We have learned a few things about the Beta fish lifestyle. I've never had a fish at all, well, I had a goldfish for a couple weeks once, but that was it. My lovely wife has had large aquariums before, with multiple fish inside, even had little frogs to clean it. Her knowledge of these water creatures is that they don't sleep. At all. If they don't move, then they die. Apparently, this doesn't apply to the wonder Beta, as Dory is a lazy little fish. He'll just lie on his little fake plant and just stay there. No movement at all, no fins flippering around or anything. It's possible that we have a fish that gets seizures and has them frequently throughout the day, but I feel that this is unlikely.

The first time this happened, I thought we'd killed the little guy. Maybe that he'd somehow become trapped inside the deathlike grips of the plastic plant and simply could not escape. So I shook the plant a bit and he came back to life and swam around in his little circles. So for those of you who are considering a little neat-o Beta fish, keep in mind that ours has a tendency to sort of nod off. Of course, this could be a very common occurrence in these fish, but nobody at the pet store gave us the warning of, "Hey, these guys will sort of slip into little fish comas. So don't freak if you see it happen, they're fine and will resume movement."