Hi everyone,
I have a male crowntail betta, Jim. He was fine and healthy all the the while till I went on holiday and told my brother to take care of him. Unfortunately, he forgot to clean the tank or change the water AT ALL so when I came back, my poor betta's tail was about 1/3 gone, his fins were in shreds, and there was an ulcer on the side of his body near his tail. I was really really upset because I love my fish and I gave proper instructions on how to take care of him.
I took my betta to the vet and he prescribed a week of antibiotics which I gave to my betta, and his tail and fins started growing back a bit, there's about 1-2mm of transparent growth on his tail now and it's starting to fill out. His ulcer also started to shrink and eventually just became a grey-ish lump. Recently it started to flake off and become smoother, and I thought it was getting better, but then it started turning white and lumpier and his anal fin started getting holes near the tips and now I have no idea what to do. Besides that, he was starting to get fat so I fasted him for a day and he went back to normal but nowadays he just lazes around on top of his cave and doesn't swim as much as he used to. He still does his fish dance when he wants food or wants me to put on his favourite piano songs, but he's gotten much tireder recently.
I can't take the betta back to the vet because I haven't any money left, and since I live in a country where there are only 2 vets who treat fish, I have to travel about 3 hours by bus to the nearest vet who charges a lot of money and my poor fish gets horribly stressed out by the bumping. The aquariums here don't sell antibiotics or any proper fish medication besides herbal stuff that doesn't do anything, the filters and test kits cost exorbitant amounts of money, and the worst of all is that I got into a lot of trouble when my dad found out I paid a quarter of my monthly allowance to get the fish treated since he only cost $3 and came from a marketplace and now I'm not allowed to bring him to the vet anymore. I had to smuggle him out the first time, but now my parents pay very close attention to make sure I don't do it again.
Before everyone starts yelling or getting upset at me, I would just like to explain that where I come from, bettas are a native species, and most adults here were brought up catching them and pitting them against each other in fights. So they think that spending any money on a fish that can be caught in a murky pond for free is absolute rubbish, even though crowntails and other ornamental types of bettas are VERY different from the ones we have in the wild here and it's horrible that anyone can make them fight each other.
I can't fill out most of the list everyone does because I don't know much about the water parameters.
I can say that
1. My fish is in a 2 gallon tank,
2. There is no filter.
3. The water is dechlorinated because I have a water filter and purification unit in my home that removes all the chemicals and things from the tap water and oxygenates it.
4. I put in about 3/4 a teaspoon of salt in the water (NO IODINE don't worry).
5. There isn't a need for a heater because as mentioned before, bettas are native here.
I know it's terrible that the tank is so small, and that there isn't a filter or a test kit, but my parents would absolutely skin me alive if I got a filter or a bigger tank. To get my fish in the current 2 gallon, I already had to buy it without telling anyone and pretend the old 1/2 gallon one was spoilt.
I do 50% water changes every other day and syphon the poop and detritus out with a (needleless) syringe. I got the vet to test my water parameters for me and he said they were fine. Since I've been doing the same thing all the while, I hope it still is.
I've also been keeping lots of bettas since I was 7. I've had 15 of them so far and they've usually lived 3-4 years but they were all veiltails, most stayed very healthy, and I've never had a crowntail before. I'm pretty much the only person in my family who cares about animals and I would love to do everything I could for my fish but right now I can't and it just makes me feel terrible.
Please help, I don't want my fishy friend to get sicker or die
I have a male crowntail betta, Jim. He was fine and healthy all the the while till I went on holiday and told my brother to take care of him. Unfortunately, he forgot to clean the tank or change the water AT ALL so when I came back, my poor betta's tail was about 1/3 gone, his fins were in shreds, and there was an ulcer on the side of his body near his tail. I was really really upset because I love my fish and I gave proper instructions on how to take care of him.
I took my betta to the vet and he prescribed a week of antibiotics which I gave to my betta, and his tail and fins started growing back a bit, there's about 1-2mm of transparent growth on his tail now and it's starting to fill out. His ulcer also started to shrink and eventually just became a grey-ish lump. Recently it started to flake off and become smoother, and I thought it was getting better, but then it started turning white and lumpier and his anal fin started getting holes near the tips and now I have no idea what to do. Besides that, he was starting to get fat so I fasted him for a day and he went back to normal but nowadays he just lazes around on top of his cave and doesn't swim as much as he used to. He still does his fish dance when he wants food or wants me to put on his favourite piano songs, but he's gotten much tireder recently.
I can't take the betta back to the vet because I haven't any money left, and since I live in a country where there are only 2 vets who treat fish, I have to travel about 3 hours by bus to the nearest vet who charges a lot of money and my poor fish gets horribly stressed out by the bumping. The aquariums here don't sell antibiotics or any proper fish medication besides herbal stuff that doesn't do anything, the filters and test kits cost exorbitant amounts of money, and the worst of all is that I got into a lot of trouble when my dad found out I paid a quarter of my monthly allowance to get the fish treated since he only cost $3 and came from a marketplace and now I'm not allowed to bring him to the vet anymore. I had to smuggle him out the first time, but now my parents pay very close attention to make sure I don't do it again.
Before everyone starts yelling or getting upset at me, I would just like to explain that where I come from, bettas are a native species, and most adults here were brought up catching them and pitting them against each other in fights. So they think that spending any money on a fish that can be caught in a murky pond for free is absolute rubbish, even though crowntails and other ornamental types of bettas are VERY different from the ones we have in the wild here and it's horrible that anyone can make them fight each other.
I can't fill out most of the list everyone does because I don't know much about the water parameters.
I can say that
1. My fish is in a 2 gallon tank,
2. There is no filter.
3. The water is dechlorinated because I have a water filter and purification unit in my home that removes all the chemicals and things from the tap water and oxygenates it.
4. I put in about 3/4 a teaspoon of salt in the water (NO IODINE don't worry).
5. There isn't a need for a heater because as mentioned before, bettas are native here.
I know it's terrible that the tank is so small, and that there isn't a filter or a test kit, but my parents would absolutely skin me alive if I got a filter or a bigger tank. To get my fish in the current 2 gallon, I already had to buy it without telling anyone and pretend the old 1/2 gallon one was spoilt.
I do 50% water changes every other day and syphon the poop and detritus out with a (needleless) syringe. I got the vet to test my water parameters for me and he said they were fine. Since I've been doing the same thing all the while, I hope it still is.
I've also been keeping lots of bettas since I was 7. I've had 15 of them so far and they've usually lived 3-4 years but they were all veiltails, most stayed very healthy, and I've never had a crowntail before. I'm pretty much the only person in my family who cares about animals and I would love to do everything I could for my fish but right now I can't and it just makes me feel terrible.
Please help, I don't want my fishy friend to get sicker or die