New Fish Sick

[SwimmyTheBetta]

I added the new females to my sorority about a week ago. Everything had been going great until last night I discovered a few of them had ich. Thankfully, I've discovered it early and only 4 out of 15 have it. Only one is really bad though. Anyway, I know how to treat the ick, but one of the 4 females that has ich is acting very lethargic. She won't eat and she stays near the bottom of the tank then darts to the surface for air. She is VERY bloated. She will swim around occasionally but usually stays at the same place at the bottom of the tank. I think she may have dropsy. I've never had experience with dropsy, does this sound like symptoms of dropsy? If so how do you treat it? Can you treat it? Is it dropsy or is it caused by the ich?

Please don't post anything saying she's hanging around the bottom because the water is too cold. I'm not trying to be rude but I know it has nothing to do with temperature. I have a heater, thermometer, and all of my other fish are very active. The tank is at about 79 degrees.

[Oldfishlady]

I got a few questions: how big is the tank, how much and how often are the water changes and when was the last one, any live plants, filtration, additives used, treatments used, food and feeding schedule, any other fish/livestock in the tank beside the Bettas?
On the lethargic Betta-how long have you had her and do you have her QT and any treatments tried, how long has she been looking and acting this way?

[frogipoi]

^ same here ^

[SwimmyTheBetta]

The tank is 20 gallons. I perform 50-75% water changes once a week, the last one was Monday. The tank is filtered, I don't have any live plants. I use Stress Coat, Amquel and aquarium salt after each water change. There are no other fish in the tank besides the bettas. I feed three Hikari Betta Bio Gold pellets to each betta in the morning and I feed a few freeze-dried Hikari blood worms in the evenings.

For the Ick treatment, I raised the water temp and added Parasite Clear by Jungle so that the Ick would be killed once they become free swimming.

I have had the lethargic betta for about 5 or 6 days and she has been acting fine until yesterday evening. She wouldn't eat at the second feeding yesterday and she won't eat at all today. I do not have her in QT because I wasn't sure if it was a side effect of ick or if it was something different. I was going to wait to QT until I knew if she needed a different type of treatment than what the others are getting for ick.

[frogipoi]

I always believed 15 females in a 20 fallon is too much but idk
Not sure... Get Oldfishlady on the case!!!

[Oldfishlady]

I would QT her, since she was the new fish that most likely came from poor water conditions (that you had no control over) and stressed and then with the added stress of a new and clean tank, she could have had a bit of shock, low immune response etc.....

If her scales are sticking up and then it is most likely dropsy and recovery is rare once that symptom show up and can be a sign of system shut down.

I would try Epsom salt 1tsp/gal with 100% daily water changes for at least 10 days, hold food for 3 days and then feed half of normal feeding every-other day, the Epsom salt can help with the edema to relieve the symptom but it won't reverse the damage, you can also go the antibiotic route with broad spectrum to cover both gram neg and pos, I don't use OTC medications so I can't recommend any.

Frogipoi:
IMO/E-15 females in a 20g tank is just fine with proper water changes like this poster is doing.

[SwimmyTheBetta]

Thank you so much! I will QT her and use the Epsom salt and see how it goes.

Thanks again for you help!

[SwimmyTheBetta]

Well this morning my fish in QT was still alive. She was swimming around a little bit, but she stayed right at the surface of the water and kept gulping air. I left to go to the petstore and when I came back she was dead. :( I guess i caught the dropsy too late.

I was wondering how to properly disinfect the QT tank? I already put boiling hot water in there and let it set for about 5 minutes. Do I need to do anything else to disinfect it?

Thanks for all your help!