Dropsy, maybe?

[Chimerae]

Hello, everyone. It was around four or five days ago that I started noticing that Pixie was acting a bit odd. She's normally the most hyper fish I've seen, and she was hanging out by a corner under the filter, not even rushing for food. (It was hell to even get her attention.) Then when I managed to get a closer look, I noticed the deadly pineconing. So, first thing I did was get her out of there.
I put her in a .5 gallon bowl and added Betta Revive in day after. I continued on doing daily water changes with revive, and since then I haven't seen her leave any droppings or anything. I've also been giving her three epsom salt baths a day as of yesterday.
I've been feeding her some flake food, since it's easier to munch on (she's been rejecting pellets). And I managed to get some daphnia in her, too. (Green split peas were rejected, too.) And thing is, she isn't really that bloated, either. She looks completely normal except for the pineconing and lethargy. Behavior-wise, she's obviously a bit slow, but she still flares out at the males and strikes her food as if it were fresh kill.
I've been pretty sure it was dropsy up to now, but when I realized that she really isn't bloating, I got kind of skeptical. Any ideas?

Housing
What size is your tank? Regularly, 10 gallons.
What temperature is your tank? 78 degrees.
Does your tank have a filter? Yep.
Does your tank have an air stone or other type of aeration? Nope.
Is your tank heated? Nope.
What tank mates does your betta fish live with? She gets her own tank to herself.

Food
What type of food do you feed your betta fish? Flakes, and two different kinds of pellets.
How often do you feed your betta fish? Three times daily.

Maintenance
How often do you perform a water change? In the tank, it's been months. Not sure, though.

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

Haven't tested.

Symptoms and Treatment
How has your betta fish's appearance changed? Pineconing, some scales seemlingly flaking.
How has your betta fish's behavior changed? She's been lethargic and not really responding much.
When did you start noticing the symptoms? Five days.
Have you started treating your fish? If so, how?
Yes, mentioned in the summary above.
Does your fish have any history of being ill? Not at all. She's the healthiest little thing I own.
How old is your fish (approximately)? I bought her a year ago, and she was young. So around that.

[Sapphoira]

reading through the forums here I have noticed a few users sometimes reporting issues with pineconing that don't turn out to be dropsy, and possibly are some type of allergic reaction. My personal thoughts would be that you should keep her under QT and observation, with just clean warm water. Perhaps she has some sort of weird external parasite, since you mentioned the scales flaking off?

[Chimerae]

Could be! I've actually caught her twitching once or twice. Let me try to grab some pictures...

[Chimerae]

Here we go:

[Sapphoira]

hmm, that pineconing sure does look bad! In the "treating betta diseases" sticky they recommend giving an epsom salt bath, maybe go that direction for now. It's hard to tell if she's bloated or not with the pineconing...

[cjconcepcion]

epsom salt wont help at that point.. i would start going the direction of heavy antibiotics.
Tetracycline, or maracyn, if you can manage to get your hands on kanaplex that would probably be best at this point
i hope she pulls through

[Sapphoira]

Originally Posted by cjconcepcion

epsom salt wont help at that point.. i would start going the direction of heavy antibiotics.
Tetracycline, or maracyn, if you can manage to get your hands on kanaplex that would probably be best at this point
i hope she pulls through

So you're thinking it's probably dropsy then? He mentioned that she didn't seem particularly bloated, does dropsy sometimes only present symptoms as pineconing?

[cjconcepcion]

yes it does, it has a wide variety of symptoms, its good that she is still active though, does she hang around at the surface of the water alot?

[Chimerae]

I managed to pick up some Maracyn-Two just now. I've actually been doing some Epsom salt baths, but I've been keeping them short, like 10-15 minutes three times a day. Any other suggestions?

[Chimerae]

And I can't say for sure! Like I said, she's still in movement every so often. So it really varies.