Lily + Vase = Fishbowl

My mother had one of these.  I'm not too sure what happened to the fish.  I'm thinking that she brought the fish to our house to watch it for her when she went to Italy and from there I don't think things ended so well for the fish.  I think his name was Fred.  Well, that was a few years back...  Steel wanted a fish.  I am so not doing a fish tank, no way!  This fish vase is pretty easy.  I already had a vase and marbles, I just needed to insert fish and lily.  I did a bit a google-ing on the subject because I wasn't sure what the plant was called and it turned out that you can actually buy kits to make these.  I didn't bookmark any of the sites because I am pretty sure you can do it cheaper on your own.

Materials
Vase - Nice one with rounder bottom - (We had one from a flower delivery)
Marbles, Rocks, Gravel or Shells - (Marbles from same flower delivery)
Plastic planter tray, the size of your vase neck - (Found one at garden center for $0.15)
Peace Lily plant, smaller size - (Lowes $2.00)
Betta Fish - (Petco $3.00, had coupon)
Betta Fish Food - (Petco $3.00)
Water Conditioner (optional)
Fin repair (optional)
Ribbon (optional)

Steps
1.  Take the Lily out of it's container and do your best to remove dirt from root ball.  Do this over a garbage can to eliminate the use of a vacuum!

2.  After removing as much dirt as possible, take it to the sink and use water to clean the rest of the dirt off the root ball.  I even soaked it in water for a while as well.  I didn't get all the dirt out but I was impatient.  I figure it will work it's way out in time and it didn't look too bad to me.  

3.  Prepare vase for fish:  Place items of your choosing at bottom of vase as gravel and fill with water.  Be sure to allow enough room to dump the water from your fish container or bag.  Use water conditioner to remove chlorine and other harmful chemicals found in tap water.  You can also use bottled water and skip the conditioning part.  I also added fin fixer because our little buddy looked like he could use it.

4.  Add your fish.  We just dumped him in, water and all.

Oops, forgot pic...

5.  Cut hole in the bottom of plastic plant tray.  I poked a hole in the bottom with a pair of scissors and then cut my circle out.  I was lucky, my tray had a circle that I just followed while cutting.

6.  Push plant's root ball through the whole in bottom of plastic plant tray.  The roots going down when tray is in upright position.

7.  Add plant to vase, the correct size tray will catch in the neck of the vase.

8.  Add bow, if desired.  We had to skip this part.  (I thought I had some ribbon but all I had was Christmas ribbon so we will have to add that later.)

9.  Display.  We are using it as our table centerpiece.

See Fishy...

(Okay, so, I'm not too sure if that name is going to stick but...

I think Steel has a problem with naming our animals.

We have Puppy and Fishy.

Just call Steel...Mr. Original!  LOL!)

Betta Fact:

Their natural habitat is in rice fields with lots of roots so this is what makes it a great fish home for Bettas.