Ever Expanding Beta!

[melon44]

Our beta,Lester Blu, looks as if he has swallowed a balloon!
We use salt in his H2O, and give him a shelled pea every other week.He is in a 1 gal tank with an air stone, turned down low, and I change his water every week. Even though he is so bloated, he seems to swim ok and comes to the top near the feeding hole in the lid whenever we come close to the tank. We feed him once a day, only 2/3 small pieces of a Freeze Dried Medley (bloodworms,brine shrimp & daphne)
Does anyone have an answer, we are worried that we will see a dead exploded fish some day soon...

[iamntbatman]

How much salt do you put in the water? Do you add more salt whenever you do a water change? Salt doesn't evaporate with water, so if you keep adding salt to the water lost through evaporation you're increasing the salt content of the water by quite a bit. Have you seen him pass waste? If not, you might want to rethink the diet you have him on. A pellet food should be used as a staple with that freeze-dried food used only as a once or twice weekly treat. Also, you should be rehydrating that food before you give it to him by placing it in some aquarium water. Eating the freeze dried food before it is rehydrated could cause your fish to bloat. Some thawed frozen daphnia might also help him to pass waste. Are his scales sticking out like a pinecone? If so, your fish most likely has dropsy, which can be treated by using Epsom salts.

Do you have a picture of the fish that you could post?

[Haeclark]

I like this site...makes things clear....plus her advice on beta food different from any other Ive heard.
betta food

[dramaqueen]

I like bettatalk.com, too. There is a lot of good info there.

[iamntbatman]

Hmm...I read that betta food link, and I've gotta say I disagree with some of the things said there. Brine shrimp are not at all a well-balanced food for bettas (or any fish, really). Fish can't resist that salty goodness, but they're best as a treat. As for live worms: I've used live blackworms (what the author refers to as brown worms) for a long time without problems. I don't think it's very likely that the problems she had in her fishroom resulted from "contaminated" worms. They make great treats for fish, but be careful not to overfeed because fish really pig out on these worms. Also, I don't think any bacteria can survive the freezing process frozen fish foods go through, so as long as the food is kept frozen you should have no contamination issues. As with the live worms, I have used frozen foods (mostly bloodworms and brine shrimp, although I have also fed my fish frozen tubifex and mysis) without ever having problems. As the author stated, freeze dried foods are a good choice but need to be rehydrated before being fed to your fish. Just like the live and frozen foods, freeze dried foods should really only be offered once or twice a week as treats. I believe that high-quality pellets are the best option as they're the most nutritionally complete food you can feed your fish. Also, pellets have the nutrition information listed right on the package, which gives you a much more accurate picture of the protein content being fed to your fish than feeding things like mosquito larvae.