Ninja Dude's In Trouble! Help!

[Amour]

Something is seriously wrong with my betta. Starting last night he's been sluggish, and he had a swollen tummy and would hang out at the bottom of his tank, so I assumed he had constipation.

I had a thread about it here: Clicky.

His swollen tummy went down yesterday and I thought he was doing better. But today he was back to being all sad and stuff, and wouldn't even flare up or come to the front of the tank when we'd come visit him.

Then I noticed something really wrong. His fins have gotten torn up and are receding. His left fin he uses to swim with is even so deteriorated that he won't use it to swim with most of the time.

I don't know what's wrong. I was thinking maybe fin rot but I don't know why it'd be that since I keep his water REALLY clean, keep aquarium salt in the tank.

Also, we noticed that there's some sort of film on his right eye that looks like it might be blocking his vision or something.

Only thing really new to him are some live plants I bought from two different pet stores and an apple snail. Could any of them have bacteria or something that would effect his fins? One of the live plants was in the same tank in which two days previously I saw a betta laying on the gravel with dropsy. He wasn't there anymore when I bought the plant.

We have mostly live plants, and three silk plants, and everything else in the tank have soft edges. So I don't think he snagged his fins on anything.

This is really alarming as well because this all happened within the span of a day. He didn't have bad fins this morning.

My husband took some pictures of him for me. Is he gonna die?

I just did a water change today because I gave him a little Epsom Salt bath to try and relieve some of his constipation.

Here's some pics of him just a few days ago with the way his fins usually look, him being healthy.





Here he is now looking all sad with torn fins.







And here you can see that he's not using his left fin when he swims cause it's so torn.

[Amour]

Also I should mention, a few days ago when we were changing his water, he accidentally got a little bruised on his side and lost a few scales. That was about five days ago. But now the bruise is almost gone and his scales are growing back almost completely.

His fins look like they got torn on something. But what? Could it be on the stems of the silk plants? They're kind of bunched together. Could he have tried to swim through them and got all torn up?

I'm going to let him sleep tonight and see if he's better in the morning.

[Amour]

Since no one's posted their thoughts on what might be wrong, I've moved him to a 'hospital tank' which is actually just a big plastic tub with nothing in it but one tiny plant and a heater. His fins were worse today. Which breaks my heart. So I'm going to keep him in that tub and change his water 50% one day and 100% the next day and alternate between those. Is that okay?

[FireKidomaru]

i would contact Oldfishlady she knows alot of info. on betta fish emergencies.... hope he gets better

[Amour]

Thanks. I'll send her a pm.

[TheJadeBetta]

Is the tank cycled?

[Amour]

No it's not cycled yet but I've been doing 100% water changes pretty frequently. I've only had the tank about five days and I've done 100% water changes twice and a 50% water change once.

[TheJadeBetta]

What do you mean by it's not cycled yet?

[Amour]

Well my original plan was to cycle it with him in there, but since I'm going to be keeping him in the hospital tank awhile, I'm going to cycle it while he's away and not put him back until it's cycled.

[TheJadeBetta]

Oh okay. In the last picture, his eyes look enlarged.