help!

[Tobythefish]

We got two fish from some friends recently. They were neglected, and wouldn't even eat when they were fed! When we got them, they started to eat, and the veiltail is great:). The second one, who appears to be a doubletail halfmoon got sick with something that looks like columnaris. We started treating it with pimafix, and in a week he looked better. That was a few days ago. Yesterday, he got really bad looking, lost almost all his color. We got bettafix, and started that. He looks a little better now. We have a 2-5 gal. heater made by Hydor, but are reluctant to use it in his small (1.5 Liter) bowl. We are using a hot water bottle to heat him, and the heat varies from 67-74. He still looks bad and is very lethargic. He is eating though. We need help:(!

[tf1265]

A couple issues here:

1.5L is unacceptable for a betta. That is less than half a gallon. There are many schools of thought on how much space a betta needs, but you will be hard pressed to find anyone knowledgable (and no, pet store retailers don't count) who will give you the go-ahead on a half gallon bowl. Please upgrade, your fish is miserable.

Second, 67-74 degrees is both too cold and too much variation for your betta. You want the temperature to stay fairly constant, and between 78 and 82 degrees farenheit (i apologize - you clearly live somewhere with metric measurements but I just don't know the conversions well enough).

If I were you I would invest in something larger to keep your betta in. YOu can get Kritter Keepers pretty cheaply that are about 2 gallons (~7.5 liters) and I would recommend this as the minimum size. That way your heater will work and you will eliminate both problems.

Good for you for coming here to find out what's going wrong, and for attempting to rescue the fish - I hope that you will heed the advice you're given.

[mjoy79]

there is already a thread on this here:
http://www.bettafish.com/showthread.php?t=85947