Swim bladder?? Asap help

[meganlbetta]

- Tank 2.5 gallons.
- Full water changes weekly.
- Not currently heated but will be shortly.
- No filters or additives aside from typical conditioner.
- He is on pelleted food that is only available at the moment at my local pet store so he will be on higher quality food when I hit the store.
- Fed 2x daily two pellets

* I have another betta in the same type of bowl and plant and is perfectly happy and healthy so I believe the enclosure is not the issue aside from getting the heat started up for this guy.

- He is floating on his side and looks dead
- still wingling and moving so he is alive
- HAS a appetite
- a bit swollen tummy so may not have passed stool.
- Noticed it a day ago and now worried.

My question is is this a swim bladder problem? I have treated him before for bloating so i do have epson salts on hand that I will treat a 1/2 gallon tank with. (hospital tank).

I just need confirmation. Please Help ASAP :0

[callistra]

Sounds like likely SBD. I would fast at least 3 days, maybe even a week on epsom salts at 1 tsp per gallon. You don't need to move to hospital tank for epsoms, but if you want to I would do daily 100% changes in something so small.

[meganlbetta]

Ohh so I can keep him in what he is now and do his water change tonight and add the salts then? and no food and that should help?

[callistra]

I would do that. I would increase changes to 50% every other day and 100% weekly as well. Only add back as much salt as water you replace.

As long as the belly bloat isn't an actual infection he should recover within the week.

[Azurelove]

No food will help, most definitely.

I also like using peas a lot, mostly because my bettas find them delicious. If you have frozen peas, just boil some up for dinner or something, shell one and feed a betta-bite-sized piece of the inside to him. Peas are notorious for helping clear a blocked digestive system in bettas.

[meganlbetta]

It says in the diganostic sticky 2 that i found for swim bladder or bloat and its says to never use peas. I did do some reading so now i am just confirming.

Callistra, I just am going to use the .5 gallon to make it easy for him so its shallow and then easier to do water changes and moniter closely. Thanks for the help, I am so bad at second guessing lol

[callistra]

I would only feed peas as a last ditch effort and not as a first approach as they are very hard on the digestive tract. It is very effective so if you're desperate I wouldn't rule it out, but I wouldn't jump to it either. I had one boy I fed 1/4 pea weekly for a couple months and now he is incapable of moving anything normally. I'm not sure he ever will be able to again but it's been a huge battle just getting him to the point where he at least poops a constipated ball weekly without the pea, and he eats special pellets with fruit and veggie extracts just so that his tract moves that much.

If you were to do this, you can only use frozen or fresh (never canned) with no other additives in ingredients label. I also highly suggest organic. You take one pea in a small dish/cup with dechlorinated water and nuke it in the microwave 10 seconds. Take the shell off and you will be left with two halves. You can feed one of the halves or half of a half (1/4) of the pea broken up into tiny bits and fed one at a time.

[Azurelove]

I used frozen organic peas nuked in the microwave as Callistra described. I've only ever fed them when one of my fish was experiencing seemingly constant bloating. My normal method for that is simply no feeding for two days.

Once I fed him a few small bites, he didn't bloat again and hasn't since. (This was actually Azure).