Hello all,
I have a Betta fish that has been poorly for a while now and could really use some help in trying to figure out what exactly is going on and what my best course of action should be. I think I have an idea of what it could be, but I keep reptiles and crabs myself so I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to fish. I'd like to hear others opinions because I've tried everything I can think of but nothing seems to be helping anymore.
Summary of how this situation came to be:
My partner purchased Winston in February. He came from a local Pets At Home. We have many pets already but she had always wanted to give fish a go and didn't want any help with it (I think it was a chance to challenge herself in her mind.)
He was being kept in a 5gal, cylindrical BiOrb tank with live plants, ramshorn snails, bladder snails and a few water slaters that ended up in there from one of the plants. The subtrate was a mix of aquasoil and sand that was capped with large white quartz gravel. The tank was cycled for around 7-8 weeks before Winston went in it.
He was very active for the first few weeks before he began getting slightly lethargic. He wasn't swimming around as much and would often just sit still doing nothing in the middle of the water column. We thought he might have just been settling in and calming down a little so decided to just monitor it and watch for any other changes before acting on anything.
Between then and May, nothing really changed and he continued to eat well so we started to believe that he was just a bit lazy.
In late-May my partner noticed some signs of what she believed to be fin rot at the time and tried using that dreadful BettaFix to heal him with. I'm now aware that this was a terrible idea and could have caused him more harm than good, but I didn't know it at the time.
Around this time, he also began to lose a lot of his colour. At first, his blue faded out to a pale powdery baby blue before his red turned to a pale pink over the course of about a month. Whether this was the first sign of an illness or a reaction to the BettaFix is something I'm unable to work out, though it wouldn't surprise me if the BettaFix made things worse after having learned more about it.
From between then until late-July, he continued to slowly lose all of his colour before turning almost completely white with a dark red/pink tail.
By around August 8th, my partner noticed that he was beginning to show red patches below his scales in multiple areas, with the worst areas being on top of his head and around the right flank of his abdomen, just behind his gill. He was also breathing very heavily and had lost his appetite. This was when I was asked to step in to help because my partner started panicking that something was seriously wrong. My first reaction was to dissolve a very low dose of aquarium salt into his water as I had read that it can help fish that are struggling to breathe. Stupidly, I didn't think to ask her about water changes or her routine with him first as I assumed she had been taking care of it all. It turned out she had only been doing tiny water changes of around 10% once every month or so and not doing frequent water tests.
As soon as I tested the water, I knew it was bad.
pH was sat around 8.0. Ammonia was at 0ppm. Nitrite was also at 0ppm, but Nitrate was up at 80ppm.
I immediately done several large water changes until I got the Nitrate down to a reading of ~20ppm. I had to stop there though because I needed to head out for a while. By the time we returned home, it was late so I ended up leaving the rest until the following day when I done several more (smaller) water changes and managed to bring the Nitrate down to 10ppm.
A few days after this (around August 10th), I realised that he was beginning to swell up around his belly with very mild pineconing along the rear of his abdomen. It was so mild that I could barely see it, but it was definitely starting to happen.
Learning that this was a sign of Dropsy, I done another 40% water change with fresh, dechlorinated, temperature-matched tap water and started looking into causes and treatments. I decided to give him an epsom salt dip for 15 minutes before returning him to his main tank and fasted him for 3 days, at which point the Dropsy symptoms subsided and his scales laid back down. The swelling around his abdomen deflated significantly and he seemed to be on the mend.
This brought us hope that he was going to recover, so I fed him a small meal of 2 pre-soaked Betta pellets and fasted him for a another two days as I didn't want him to be completely full while the bloat was still clearing up. However, with him beginning to look underweight, I thought it was important that he had some energy to fight whatever was going wrong.
A few more days passed by and all was fine. The bloat was still present but very minor. I continued to fast him for two more days, but on day 3 (the evening of August 15th) the bloat returned again - much larger than the first time. Strangely, it seemed to have happened over a single day with no obvious cause. We hadn't fed him, he had looked fairly normal eariler that same morning when I glanced at him. Even stranger is that there was no pineconing like the first time despite him being considerably more swollen. I gave him another 15 minute epsom salt dip since it seemed to help before, but it didn't do much so I increased the dose to 1tbsp per gallon and done another dip the next morning. From this point, I upped the dips to twice a day. Still, this had little result. It started to seem as though it was keeping the swelling at a certain point, but not really taking any extra fluids out.
Later that evening, I noticed that he was starting to have trouble swimming. After a quick search on here, it was obvious that something was going on with his swim bladder because his tail kept on floating up above him, causing him to thrash around and dart to the surface. He was also 'yawning' repeatedly every couple of minutes which concerned me, so I decided to set up a shallow quaratine tank with fresh water and ordered him some Kanaplex as I'd heard positive things about others using it to treat early Dropsy.
When it arrived the following day, I chose to make him a batch of medicated food which he accepted without fuss. This was dosed at 1 scoop of kanaplex into one tablespoon of moistened pellets which I mashed and left to set in the fridge. I fed him 2-3 1mm sized pieces once a day for 7 days, then fasted him for 3 days. I also continued giving him 2 epsom dips a day the entire time.
This appeared to help as his bloat was easing and his blue iridesence started to return, but only a few days after the Kanaplex treatment finished on 23/08, he started to balloon again. As of this past week, his bloat is the worst it has been so far, but he still has no signs of pineconing. He belly is so distended that it's transparent and looks to be full of amber-coloured fluid. I can clearly make out his organs through his skin and he is spending most of his time asleep at the surface. He is still hungry and pooping, but he is definitely going down hill again.
As of yesterday, I've started trying him on API General Cure because it has Metronidazole in it and I can't find MetroPlex in my laughing-stock of a country. I'm only doing this because I was told that Metro might help when Kana hasn't worked. This is day two and so far, no change.
I apologise for the wall of text, I just felt it best to be as detailed as possible. If anyone can offer any advice on this, I'd appreciate it.
TLDR; Got a severely sick, bloated Betta that was kept in very poor water conditions for an unknown amount of time. Not responding to medications, peas didn't do anything, daphnia hasn't helped, epsom salt dips no longer working to keep fluid retention at bay. My guess is swim bladder disease or a massive infection but I'm unsure what else to try.
Housing - Was originally in a 5gal cylindrical tank (BiOrb) but has since been moved to a (shallow, bare-bottom) 2gal hospital tank with a heater, airstone, a floating log and a few floating plants thrown in for cover/comfort. No filter. To begin with, I was keeping the water at 27 celcius, but I currently have it at 28. No tank mates as it's a temporary hospital tank.
Food - Receives a rotation of food; Fluval Bug Bites, FishScience Betta Granules, Tropical SuperVit Granulat, Live Daphnia. No freeze-dried or frozen foods. Currently being fed 2x 1-2mm blobs of medicated food per day. Eating very well, still showing signs of ravenous hunger but I'm hesitant to feed more because I don't want him to rupture something internally, if he hasn't already... Although he is still eating, he is having trouble snatching the food out of the water because he is unable to properly control his bouyancy. Unfortunately some of this could have been caused by the fact that my partner was quite heavily overfeeding him for the first few weeks that we had him. She was giving him 10-20 pellets at a time and allowing him to eat until he was so full that he would turn down food.
Maintainence - Since being in the hospital tank, I have been doing daily tests of the water using the API Masterkit and performing 50% water changes every day to keep any toxcin levels low. Before this, his water was being changed very infrequently. I'm unable to give an exact answer but we estimated that he was only getting a (10-15%) water change every 4-5 weeks. We have always used tap water to do these changes with as I know my water is very safe, just on the hard side. No heavy metals present, always treated with dechlorinator/conditioner. I usually use Tetra's Aquasafe. No other additives. I'm not sure how often he was having his substrate cleaned when in his previous 5gal, but since being in the hospital tank I have been cleaning his tank bottom daily.
Water parameters - Survived a Nitrate spike up to 80ppm for an extended (unknown) period of time before being moved to a quarantine tank. Tested daily with 50% daily water changes. Last readings were pH: 8.0, Ammonia: 0ppm, Nitrite: 0ppm, Nitrate: 10ppm. This was taken this morning after a 50% water change. Before the water change, Ammonia and Nitrites were at 0 and Nitrate was around 20ppm. I'm ashamed to admit that actually not sure what the GH and KH of our water is...
Symptoms -
Started around late May and yo-yo'd between getting improving and declining. It began with loss of colour, heavy breathing and lethargy which turned into problems with bouyancy, then he started to bloat. After this, he started sleeping at the surface a lot and stopped being as active. He is still consuming food. Looking back on early photo's, he has always had very buldgy eyes. I'm not sure if we received him with Popeye but his right eye has always been bigger than the left.
The current symptoms are;
Treatments -
Started treatment with Kanaplex-laced food on 16/08, finished course on 23/08. Started 15 minute Epsom salt dips the evening prior to starting Kanaplex and kept this routine up through the Kanaplex treatment. Now trying General Cure.
I have a Betta fish that has been poorly for a while now and could really use some help in trying to figure out what exactly is going on and what my best course of action should be. I think I have an idea of what it could be, but I keep reptiles and crabs myself so I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to fish. I'd like to hear others opinions because I've tried everything I can think of but nothing seems to be helping anymore.
Summary of how this situation came to be:
My partner purchased Winston in February. He came from a local Pets At Home. We have many pets already but she had always wanted to give fish a go and didn't want any help with it (I think it was a chance to challenge herself in her mind.)
He was being kept in a 5gal, cylindrical BiOrb tank with live plants, ramshorn snails, bladder snails and a few water slaters that ended up in there from one of the plants. The subtrate was a mix of aquasoil and sand that was capped with large white quartz gravel. The tank was cycled for around 7-8 weeks before Winston went in it.
He was very active for the first few weeks before he began getting slightly lethargic. He wasn't swimming around as much and would often just sit still doing nothing in the middle of the water column. We thought he might have just been settling in and calming down a little so decided to just monitor it and watch for any other changes before acting on anything.
Between then and May, nothing really changed and he continued to eat well so we started to believe that he was just a bit lazy.
In late-May my partner noticed some signs of what she believed to be fin rot at the time and tried using that dreadful BettaFix to heal him with. I'm now aware that this was a terrible idea and could have caused him more harm than good, but I didn't know it at the time.
Around this time, he also began to lose a lot of his colour. At first, his blue faded out to a pale powdery baby blue before his red turned to a pale pink over the course of about a month. Whether this was the first sign of an illness or a reaction to the BettaFix is something I'm unable to work out, though it wouldn't surprise me if the BettaFix made things worse after having learned more about it.
From between then until late-July, he continued to slowly lose all of his colour before turning almost completely white with a dark red/pink tail.
By around August 8th, my partner noticed that he was beginning to show red patches below his scales in multiple areas, with the worst areas being on top of his head and around the right flank of his abdomen, just behind his gill. He was also breathing very heavily and had lost his appetite. This was when I was asked to step in to help because my partner started panicking that something was seriously wrong. My first reaction was to dissolve a very low dose of aquarium salt into his water as I had read that it can help fish that are struggling to breathe. Stupidly, I didn't think to ask her about water changes or her routine with him first as I assumed she had been taking care of it all. It turned out she had only been doing tiny water changes of around 10% once every month or so and not doing frequent water tests.
As soon as I tested the water, I knew it was bad.
pH was sat around 8.0. Ammonia was at 0ppm. Nitrite was also at 0ppm, but Nitrate was up at 80ppm.
I immediately done several large water changes until I got the Nitrate down to a reading of ~20ppm. I had to stop there though because I needed to head out for a while. By the time we returned home, it was late so I ended up leaving the rest until the following day when I done several more (smaller) water changes and managed to bring the Nitrate down to 10ppm.
A few days after this (around August 10th), I realised that he was beginning to swell up around his belly with very mild pineconing along the rear of his abdomen. It was so mild that I could barely see it, but it was definitely starting to happen.
Learning that this was a sign of Dropsy, I done another 40% water change with fresh, dechlorinated, temperature-matched tap water and started looking into causes and treatments. I decided to give him an epsom salt dip for 15 minutes before returning him to his main tank and fasted him for 3 days, at which point the Dropsy symptoms subsided and his scales laid back down. The swelling around his abdomen deflated significantly and he seemed to be on the mend.
This brought us hope that he was going to recover, so I fed him a small meal of 2 pre-soaked Betta pellets and fasted him for a another two days as I didn't want him to be completely full while the bloat was still clearing up. However, with him beginning to look underweight, I thought it was important that he had some energy to fight whatever was going wrong.
A few more days passed by and all was fine. The bloat was still present but very minor. I continued to fast him for two more days, but on day 3 (the evening of August 15th) the bloat returned again - much larger than the first time. Strangely, it seemed to have happened over a single day with no obvious cause. We hadn't fed him, he had looked fairly normal eariler that same morning when I glanced at him. Even stranger is that there was no pineconing like the first time despite him being considerably more swollen. I gave him another 15 minute epsom salt dip since it seemed to help before, but it didn't do much so I increased the dose to 1tbsp per gallon and done another dip the next morning. From this point, I upped the dips to twice a day. Still, this had little result. It started to seem as though it was keeping the swelling at a certain point, but not really taking any extra fluids out.
Later that evening, I noticed that he was starting to have trouble swimming. After a quick search on here, it was obvious that something was going on with his swim bladder because his tail kept on floating up above him, causing him to thrash around and dart to the surface. He was also 'yawning' repeatedly every couple of minutes which concerned me, so I decided to set up a shallow quaratine tank with fresh water and ordered him some Kanaplex as I'd heard positive things about others using it to treat early Dropsy.
When it arrived the following day, I chose to make him a batch of medicated food which he accepted without fuss. This was dosed at 1 scoop of kanaplex into one tablespoon of moistened pellets which I mashed and left to set in the fridge. I fed him 2-3 1mm sized pieces once a day for 7 days, then fasted him for 3 days. I also continued giving him 2 epsom dips a day the entire time.
This appeared to help as his bloat was easing and his blue iridesence started to return, but only a few days after the Kanaplex treatment finished on 23/08, he started to balloon again. As of this past week, his bloat is the worst it has been so far, but he still has no signs of pineconing. He belly is so distended that it's transparent and looks to be full of amber-coloured fluid. I can clearly make out his organs through his skin and he is spending most of his time asleep at the surface. He is still hungry and pooping, but he is definitely going down hill again.
As of yesterday, I've started trying him on API General Cure because it has Metronidazole in it and I can't find MetroPlex in my laughing-stock of a country. I'm only doing this because I was told that Metro might help when Kana hasn't worked. This is day two and so far, no change.
I apologise for the wall of text, I just felt it best to be as detailed as possible. If anyone can offer any advice on this, I'd appreciate it.
TLDR; Got a severely sick, bloated Betta that was kept in very poor water conditions for an unknown amount of time. Not responding to medications, peas didn't do anything, daphnia hasn't helped, epsom salt dips no longer working to keep fluid retention at bay. My guess is swim bladder disease or a massive infection but I'm unsure what else to try.
Housing - Was originally in a 5gal cylindrical tank (BiOrb) but has since been moved to a (shallow, bare-bottom) 2gal hospital tank with a heater, airstone, a floating log and a few floating plants thrown in for cover/comfort. No filter. To begin with, I was keeping the water at 27 celcius, but I currently have it at 28. No tank mates as it's a temporary hospital tank.
Food - Receives a rotation of food; Fluval Bug Bites, FishScience Betta Granules, Tropical SuperVit Granulat, Live Daphnia. No freeze-dried or frozen foods. Currently being fed 2x 1-2mm blobs of medicated food per day. Eating very well, still showing signs of ravenous hunger but I'm hesitant to feed more because I don't want him to rupture something internally, if he hasn't already... Although he is still eating, he is having trouble snatching the food out of the water because he is unable to properly control his bouyancy. Unfortunately some of this could have been caused by the fact that my partner was quite heavily overfeeding him for the first few weeks that we had him. She was giving him 10-20 pellets at a time and allowing him to eat until he was so full that he would turn down food.
Maintainence - Since being in the hospital tank, I have been doing daily tests of the water using the API Masterkit and performing 50% water changes every day to keep any toxcin levels low. Before this, his water was being changed very infrequently. I'm unable to give an exact answer but we estimated that he was only getting a (10-15%) water change every 4-5 weeks. We have always used tap water to do these changes with as I know my water is very safe, just on the hard side. No heavy metals present, always treated with dechlorinator/conditioner. I usually use Tetra's Aquasafe. No other additives. I'm not sure how often he was having his substrate cleaned when in his previous 5gal, but since being in the hospital tank I have been cleaning his tank bottom daily.
Water parameters - Survived a Nitrate spike up to 80ppm for an extended (unknown) period of time before being moved to a quarantine tank. Tested daily with 50% daily water changes. Last readings were pH: 8.0, Ammonia: 0ppm, Nitrite: 0ppm, Nitrate: 10ppm. This was taken this morning after a 50% water change. Before the water change, Ammonia and Nitrites were at 0 and Nitrate was around 20ppm. I'm ashamed to admit that actually not sure what the GH and KH of our water is...
Symptoms -
Started around late May and yo-yo'd between getting improving and declining. It began with loss of colour, heavy breathing and lethargy which turned into problems with bouyancy, then he started to bloat. After this, he started sleeping at the surface a lot and stopped being as active. He is still consuming food. Looking back on early photo's, he has always had very buldgy eyes. I'm not sure if we received him with Popeye but his right eye has always been bigger than the left.
The current symptoms are;
- Severe bloat with cream/amber coloured fluid visible in abdomen.
- Popeye, right side worse than left.
- Lethargy.
- Sleeping at surface often.
- Bouyancy issues (sinking when ascending, tail floating when descending)
- Pale red colouration all over body. Started out blue and red, but is now a sickly white/pink with pale, dark pink fins. He still shimmers blue under bright light though.
Treatments -
Started treatment with Kanaplex-laced food on 16/08, finished course on 23/08. Started 15 minute Epsom salt dips the evening prior to starting Kanaplex and kept this routine up through the Kanaplex treatment. Now trying General Cure.
- 1 course of Kanaplex.
- Aquarium Salt (low dose) - Fasted several times.
- Fed boiled, hulled peas.
- Fed Daphnia.
- 2x 15min Epsom salt dips a day.
- Currently on day 2 of a course of API General Cure.
