One of my guys seems to be sickish...

[Sapphoira]

The sick fish questionnaire should cover most of what I'm looking at so I won't be redundant here, but I have been watching him be kind of weird and maybe sick like for a couple of weeks now, just expecting the bloating to develop into dropsy but that has yet to happen but his behavior has gotten so strange I was hoping someone might have any ideas. I fasted him for a few days, and he stayed bloated, and he seems really skinny.



Housing
What size is your tank? 2.5g

What temperature is your tank? 78 regularly, currently moved up to 80 to help boost immune system hopefully.

Does your tank have a filter? no

Does your tank have an air stone or other type of aeration? no

Is your tank heated? yes

What tank mates does your betta fish live with? moss ball

Food
What type of food do you feed your betta fish? Hikari Bio-gold pellets, occasional freeze dried bloodworms

How often do you feed your betta fish? two pellets twice a day, fast once a week.

Maintenance
How often do you perform a water change? every 3rd day, which now that i removed his filter for being a crappy filter is the day that ammonia becomes detectable in the unfiltered environment.

What percentage of the water do you change when you perform a water change? 75% regular, 100 % every 2 weeks

What type of additives do you add to the water when you perform a water change? Seachem Prime

Water Parameters:
Have you tested your water? If so, what are the following parameters?

Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 20 ppm
pH: 7.5
Hardness: 30
Alkalinity:

Symptoms and Treatment
How has your betta fish's appearance changed? constantly bloated, even after fasting for several days. Pale color, stress stripes, maybe a hint of gray around his belly between there and his gills. Fins have lost color, and while not exhibiting signs of fin rot seem a little less somehow than they used to be. Not clamped, though. Maybe it's the color that makes them seem off.

How has your betta fish's behavior changed? Always a spazzy fish, now incredibly spazzy. When he moves he darts, and unless sleeping seems to spazz back and forth freakishly all the time. Acts always like he wants to be fed, when I put food in the water he sometimes has difficulty making it to the pellets because he hides in his plant a lot of the time and seems to spend a lot of time trying to get to the pellets but keeps running into the plant leaves and then spazzing out some more. Like I'm wondering if there isn't some kind of nervous system issue going on...


When did you start noticing the symptoms?
Have you started treating your fish? If so, how? Clean water, aquarium salt, soaked freeze dried daphnia to help with the bloating, steady temp.
Does your fish have any history of being ill? no

How old is your fish (approximately)? I've had this guy for a year about, so he's probably just under 2 years old

[LebronTheBetta]

That's odd... Do a 100% change and use EPSOM SALT instead of Aquarium Salt. AQ Salt is for external problems, and Epsom is for internal which is your case. Do 100% daily changes for 12-14 days and see what happens. It might be fluid build up or early Dropsy. :( Don't feed him until the day after tomorrow and see what happens. Add in washed dried oak leaves or IAL to add in some beneficial properties. I wish for the best.

[Sapphoira]

I shall try those, I have to get some more epsom salt since I can't find what I had... I wasn't sure if the grayness under his belly/gills was a fungus so in the meantime I thought it would be a good idea to do a couple days of aq. salt for him. Dropsy is really the only disease that I can find through extensive googling that exhibits most of these symptoms, except some of them are shared with TB as well. which is creepy. However, none of them report the same erratic behavior, but that could just be his personality I guess. But with dropsy he really should already be dead, unless his behavior getting worse is indicative of the beginning of the end.

[aokashi]

sometimes betta get a grey belly with age :)

[Sapphoira]

Update on my little guy : I fasted him Tues through today, and his belly did go down to normal ish size. I started epsom salt yesterday, and before that started he was feeling reallly poorly. Clamped, laying on the bottom and not doing the spazzy darting thing anymore. I totally expected him to be dead when I got home from class today, but he was actually up and active and begging for food. I fed him one pellet, which immediately made him bloat like crazy. Maybe it's partially because he's so skinny... should I be thinking about treating him for internal parasites? At this point, since he hasn't exhibited any signs of dropsy beyond the bloating, that's the only other thing that seems to make sense given all of the variables. The parasites would explain the weight loss, and why even when he's fed regularly he doesn't seem to put it back on. Either that, or his time in a dirty cup when I got him is catching up to him and his body isn't functioning as well anymore. Any thoughts?