Housing
What size is your tank? 8 gallons
What temperature is your tank? 80
Does your tank have a filter? Yes
Does your tank have an air stone or other type of aeration? Yes
Is your tank heated? No, live in florida, maintains its own temp. in summer
What tank mates does your betta fish live with? mystery snail
Food
What type of food do you feed your betta fish? top fin betta bits and freeze dried blood worms
How often do you feed your betta fish? 3 pellets twice daily
Maintenance
How often do you perform a water change? 50% weekly unless parameters call for more
What type of additives do you add to the water when you perform a water change? Prime conditioner and aquarium salt
Water Parameters:
Have you tested your water? If so, what are the following parameters?
I only have a test kit for ammonia and the levels are at 0
Symptoms and Treatment
How has your betta fish's appearance changed? white patch on top of head between eyes and white patch under body between gills, not fuzzy, just patches of missing scales
How has your betta fish's behavior changed? slightly stressed and erratic
When did you start noticing the symptoms? this morning, the day after adding a mystery snail
Have you started treating your fish? If so, how? No, just continuing aquarium salt and did water changes
Does your fish have any history of being ill? Yes, had ammonia poisoning a week ago
How old is your fish (approximately)? probably about a year
So basically, my betta JUST recovered from ammonia poisoning about a week ago and was behaving totally normal. Yesterday I added a mystery snail, when it came out of its shell he displayed his fins at it and followed it around but that was the extent of the aggression. This morning I noticed he had a patch of scales missing off the top of his head between his eyes, and a patch missing from under his chin. One scale was even hanging off still and eventually fell off as well. It's not fuzzy so I ruled out fungus, and the ammonia levels are at 0 so what could it be?
I have a few theories:
Did the snail bring in a disease?
Can snails actually hurt a betta?
Is this a stress reaction to a new tankmate?
Did he bump his head checking out the snail?
Has anyone else experienced these issues after adding a tankmate?
What size is your tank? 8 gallons
What temperature is your tank? 80
Does your tank have a filter? Yes
Does your tank have an air stone or other type of aeration? Yes
Is your tank heated? No, live in florida, maintains its own temp. in summer
What tank mates does your betta fish live with? mystery snail
Food
What type of food do you feed your betta fish? top fin betta bits and freeze dried blood worms
How often do you feed your betta fish? 3 pellets twice daily
Maintenance
How often do you perform a water change? 50% weekly unless parameters call for more
What type of additives do you add to the water when you perform a water change? Prime conditioner and aquarium salt
Water Parameters:
Have you tested your water? If so, what are the following parameters?
I only have a test kit for ammonia and the levels are at 0
Symptoms and Treatment
How has your betta fish's appearance changed? white patch on top of head between eyes and white patch under body between gills, not fuzzy, just patches of missing scales
How has your betta fish's behavior changed? slightly stressed and erratic
When did you start noticing the symptoms? this morning, the day after adding a mystery snail
Have you started treating your fish? If so, how? No, just continuing aquarium salt and did water changes
Does your fish have any history of being ill? Yes, had ammonia poisoning a week ago
How old is your fish (approximately)? probably about a year
So basically, my betta JUST recovered from ammonia poisoning about a week ago and was behaving totally normal. Yesterday I added a mystery snail, when it came out of its shell he displayed his fins at it and followed it around but that was the extent of the aggression. This morning I noticed he had a patch of scales missing off the top of his head between his eyes, and a patch missing from under his chin. One scale was even hanging off still and eventually fell off as well. It's not fuzzy so I ruled out fungus, and the ammonia levels are at 0 so what could it be?
I have a few theories:
Did the snail bring in a disease?
Can snails actually hurt a betta?
Is this a stress reaction to a new tankmate?
Did he bump his head checking out the snail?
Has anyone else experienced these issues after adding a tankmate?