Officially giving up, throwing in the towel and quitting

[demonr6]

I am not sure, that is what I am trying to determine. If you look from up top it is not smooth and both my wife and I agree that it appears there is something going on with his head but not quite sure what to peg it at. Poor guy still has clamped fins but he is eating and this morning his caudal fin looked a little more relaxed than before. I am still performing 100% daily water changes with 2 tsp AQ salt per gallon like I was advised. The temp is maintained with a non-adjustable heater at 76.

[vaygirl]

I agree with Fuulie. That looks like grizzled coloring to me. Is there actual fuzz or any sort of skin sloughing off? Some fish have lumpy, bumpy scales on their heads. And they have those sensory holes that people sometimes mistake for wounds. I'm putting a pic of Logan up who is also somewhat grizzled so you can make a comparison....


I'd finish off his treatment (if it has a set time) and just keep his water clean. He just looks like he's got some tail damage. Clean water should clear that up in no time.

[demonr6]

Thanks for the advice. I am keeping him on the treatment as he appears to be better. Lets just cross fingers for speedy recover. I am really beat from all this QT. We had our other fish Marco on QT since Dec 23 up until we had to euthanize him a couple of days ago and Polo has been on QT since we got him two weeks ago. Add the four legged pets we have to the mix and good grief. LOL

[Aluyasha]

Whatever is wrong with him, I hope he pulls through. He is stunning!

I also do not see anything wrong with him...

[Thunderloon]

tricks and tips and tools, medication:

Walgreens has both kids medicine marked 5ml/cc dropper/10ml scoop AND .1 to 1.0ml syringes, if you're really young you can have a parent ask for one of the tiny medical .1-to-1.0 syringes or ask them to damage the tip so it won't take needles. Tell them why you want it.

Art supply stores often have little pipettes which are usually 0.5ml or 1ml total volume and allow for very very fine material control.

Dust type and tablet type medications can be dropped into a 20oz bottle!
Use warm treated tap water or warm up the actual shipped water in them under hot water in the sink Do not exceed 92°F. Add the medication then cap it and shake it a while. This gives you half gallon gradation per ounce on treatments using the kids medicine scoop/dropper kit. Medications prepared this way are good for up to six days when stored cool but not refrigerated. Just put em in a paper sack on the floor out of reach of kids.

Tablets can also be broken, especially so with the Jungle brand. They can also be shaved if you're really good at geometry or have a small balance scale. I shave Lifeguard into betta cups all the time to treat fin-rot before I main-tank the girls.

Dust type envelopes can be shaken up then laid flat and then worked to evenly spread the dust out, then you simply drag the packet over to the edge of the tabletop and fold at 1/4 or 1/2 across without tipping up the remaining portion. Finish the fold then cut along the fold line and dose with the proportion needed. If you're having to do four quarters of the dust medication I advise using the water bottle method instead but if you carefully gather the dust in the quarter packet to one end, you'll see how much is a quarter packet and you can pour out just that much from the rest next time.


Cutting medication with purified water is common in livestock and vet. daily use. Most of the chemicals we use on fish were actually originally intended for human consumption either by injection or oral dose. This means they all work in temperatures of up to 104°F but since you need to store them you don't want to over-do the water temp. Warmth helps dissolve them into the water.

one milliliter is twenty gravity drawn drops from a one millimeter hole but varies a little on fluid consistency, many of the smaller tank chemical bottles will have droppers so for "5ml" you need one hundred drops from them. Generally the dropper tip on the bottle will be designed specifically to meet or exceed the dosage-per-drop value of the material inside.

please don't "tl;dr"! Go back and skim over it even if you're not interested.

[Creat]

I got to agree with it looks like his coloration is natural however your probably right about something else being there, maybe fin rot but I cant tell from the photo's. I have a female with almost the same coloration when I got her and it looked like fungus but wasnt although the QT and salt cant hurt especially after being though the pet store system. Best of luck!

[dramaqueen]

Healthybetta.com has a list of meds and dosages for gallon containers. I found it to be very helpful when you need meds in smaller doses.