Infection or parasites or missing scales? Help please!

[fishel]

Hi guys, so last night I noticed that my betta Gimli had what looked like scratches on his back. This worried me, but I thought maybe he had gotten himself between his filter and sponge baffle and scratched himself against the sponge somehow. Well I moved the baffle so it's harder for him to get to, but this morning I checked on him at he has a big, shiny whitish silver spot on his head. I have no idea what it is. I can't tell if he's missing scales or has some kind of disease, so I was hoping some of you knowledgeable people could help me identify and treat it...He's in a filtered 5 gallon with a few live plants and silk ones, and I just recently added a snail to his tank, if that means anthing. Also, no heater right now since I live in AZ and it's still warm enough to keep the tank at 81-83 degrees with no heater.

[ZackyBear]

With how it looks like there is an indent in the second picture where the marks meet his scales, your boy scraped himself and lost some scales.

Keep his water extra clean with some stress coat, and don't panic when you see stringy white later on covering the marks. It will be his slime coat trying to help it heal.

However, if the white stuff seems fuzzy, please post another picture so that we can make sure it's not a fungus~

Hope this helps~!

[fishel]

Thank you for your reply! It does look more like an indent than something growing on him. I'll watch him carefully and put in some new water with stress coat. Is there anything else I should do? Remove the snail maybe? I just put him in yesterday and I have no idea if he could be carrying something from the pet store that could infect Gimli's wounds.

[ZackyBear]

Seperating the snail sounds like a good idea for now. It'll give you a few days to QT it and clean anything off of it before you realize it too late.

Another thing you should do is watch him and find out how he is hurting himself~