Help please! He is lethargic and pale.

[luluo]

Housing
What size is your tank? 6.6g
What temperature is your tank? 78F
Does your tank have a filter? Yes.
Does your tank have an air stone or other type of aeration? No.
Is your tank heated? Yes.
What tank mates does your betta fish live with? A couple of tiny mystery snails.

Food
What type of food do you feed your betta fish? Frozen food and flakes.
How often do you feed your betta fish? 2x per day

Maintenance
How often do you perform a water change? Now it is 2x per week.
What percentage of the water do you change when you perform a water change? approx 50%
What type of additives do you add to the water when you perform a water change? Used Prime the other day. Used Stress Coat today. Using Vitachem.

Water Parameters:
Have you tested your water? If so, what are the following parameters?

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite:0
Nitrate: 5
pH: 7.2
Hardness:
Alkalinity:

Symptoms and Treatment
How has your betta fish's appearance changed? He was fine until about an hour ago, he looked pale around his face and his eyes are very pale. He has a stress stripe.
How has your betta fish's behavior changed? He has become very lethargic in the last hour. Was behaving normally before then.
When did you start noticing the symptoms? About an hour ago and then about 30 minutes ago I found him laying on his side on the bottom of the tank. I scooped him into a refugium so that he could breathe.
Have you started treating your fish? If so, how? No.
Does your fish have any history of being ill? He has had what I believe was fin rot. His dorsal fin was desintigrating. I treated him with tetracycline. That treatment ended on Tuesday and at that time I moved him to a new cycled tank. He's been doing great until just a little bit ago. I even saw some regrowth in his fins.
How old is your fish (approximately)? Probably less than a year. I got him in April.

I did a water change at about 7pm this evening. Everything was fine until about 10:30pm when I noticed he was a little pale. Around 11:30 he was very pale and I found him on the bottom of the tank laying on his side. I had to touch him with my finger to get him to move.

[luluo]

He spent the night in the refugium in just a little bit of water so that he could breathe easily. I really thought I would find him dead this morning but his color is back, his eyes are dark again, he is swimming around as usual and surfacing without a problem. I have no idea what could have caused the incident last night. I assume some kind of stress, though not sure what that could have been. I'll keep a close eye on him today.

[orphansparrow]

oh, poor guy. i'm glad he's doing better. he's very pretty!

it sounds like you're keeping him in good condition.

i am not an expert, and someone may correct me here, but the only thing that sounds a tiny bit worrisome to me, is that you treated him with tetracyline for slight fin rot. that's a pretty heavy duty medication for slight fin rot. in the future i think just adding aquarium salt for a few days, and keeping the water really clean is sufficient. antibiotics like that can be pretty hard on their system, and is usually best used only when they absolutely need it. i have heard, that sometimes, just like humans, antibiotics can stress out their system. hopefully he will be fine soon! :)

[PewPewPew]

I Agree. Keep him in clean, warm water and keep the tank dark. allow him to rest and heal up. Keep his tank temp as stable as possible to avoid stress.

[luluo]

Thank you both. His light has been kept off today and will remain off for at least another full day. I'm thinking that doing a 50% water change in the 6.6g may have been too much. Thinking that maybe I should do about 25% changes every other day instead of 50% changes every three days.

As for the fin rot, I went back and forth for a day or two trying to figure out if it was rot or biting. I did the salt and water changes, for a few days but it kept getting worse. So I removed all of my plants from the substrate so that I could really get a good cleaning everywhere and I discovered a patch of cyanobacteria under a driftwood/java fern cluster. I also found it in the crevices of my HOB filter intake.

The decision to use antibiotics was not made lightly. I don't take them myself until I'm half dead so giving them to my tiny fish was a difficult decision to make and I cried every time I added it to the tank.

After his treatment, I did a water change, added charcoal to the filter, and the next day I moved him to his new tank. I acclimated him using the drip method.

Just wanted to explain that a bit better now that I'm not in freaking out mode. :)

[Neil D]

haha yay for happy fish. I agree with pew. Keep his tank completely dark.

[Oldfishlady]

When a fish has any changes in behavior after a water change and in general...its a good idea to make another water change to rule that out as the cause....sometimes dechlorinator can be forgotten, something on the hands...accidents happen......

When you treated-did you treat him in QT or in the display tank.....

In a 6.6gal filtered tank with one Betta and a few snails......I would make 1-50% with vacuum weekly in all areas that you can reach without moving anything in the tank or disruption of plants roots if you have live plants to maintain water quality.....

The 50% water changes shouldn't cause any problems unless the tank lacked regular water changes and by your post it did not lack water changes.....or if you do any chemistry changes with pH-or used different source water or big water temp difference or moved too many thing around that released gases from anaerobic area (rotten egg smell) disruption of the BGA can be problematic sometimes if its bad enough......general extreme chemistry changes that shock the fish.....

Right now I would start 50% daily water only changes for a few days using extra dechlorinator and add tannin if you have any-light out, water temp 76-77F, hold food for now....

Keep us posted.....

[luluo]

Originally Posted by Oldfishlady

When a fish has any changes in behavior after a water change and in general...its a good idea to make another water change to rule that out as the cause....sometimes dechlorinator can be forgotten, something on the hands...accidents happen......

When you treated-did you treat him in QT or in the display tank.....

In a 6.6gal filtered tank with one Betta and a few snails......I would make 1-50% with vacuum weekly in all areas that you can reach without moving anything in the tank or disruption of plants roots if you have live plants to maintain water quality.....

The 50% water changes shouldn't cause any problems unless the tank lacked regular water changes and by your post it did not lack water changes.....or if you do any chemistry changes with pH-or used different source water or big water temp difference or moved too many thing around that released gases from anaerobic area (rotten egg smell) disruption of the BGA can be problematic sometimes if its bad enough......general extreme chemistry changes that shock the fish.....

Right now I would start 50% daily water only changes for a few days using extra dechlorinator and add tannin if you have any-light out, water temp 76-77F, hold food for now....

Keep us posted.....

Thank you. He has 1/2 of an IAL in his tank. Should I add another 1/4 or 1/2? I will do the daily wcs with the extra dechlor through the weekend. Thanks so much.

[Oldfishlady]

Its hard to gauge/dose IAL by size since they can come in different sizes...lol....I go by color......a nice amber color is what I like to see, however, depending on why I am using tannins-I can go pretty dark...so dark you can barely see the fish in some cases...the more tannins the darker the water the more the fish likes it...laffs......but in this case a light-med amber color is what I would go for.......

Hope he perks up for you.....

[luluo]

Originally Posted by Oldfishlady

Its hard to gauge/dose IAL by size since they can come in different sizes...lol....I go by color......a nice amber color is what I like to see, however, depending on why I am using tannins-I can go pretty dark...so dark you can barely see the fish in some cases...the more tannins the darker the water the more the fish likes it...laffs......but in this case a light-med amber color is what I would go for.......

Hope he perks up for you.....

Thank you OFL!