Opinions on whether I should try this ?

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Fishfur

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Aug 14, 2013
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Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
What I'm thinking of involves some minor surgery on a Betta fish. I've a fair bit of experience doctoring a number of various animals, from wild birds and squirrels to shell damaged turtles and snails. I'm good with my hands, not squeamish, and have a fair bit of practice at advanced first aid and wound treatment.

The surgery I'm thinking is to clean up a Betta's tail. He was a truly gorgeous green dragon with double tail, who got fin rot. The rot was cured before I adopted him and there's been no sign of it since. But of the original double tail, all that remains are ragged edges and a single, small, rough looking piece sticking out roughly in the middle of the tail area. He's healthy otherwise, eats well, but has some slight trouble swimming. The fragment of tail twists and turns and last night I caught him trying to nip at this fragment.

I adopted this fish, [I call him Rags], with two others from the same owner. All were privately imported from Thailand by this owner. They're very good quality fish, and I was offered them because I'd had some experience with nursing damaged Bettas before, and I have the time to care for them, where the original owner no longer did.

Rags does not seem to be suffering, per se, but the condition of his tail seems to make swimming more of an effort for him. So I wonder if this is the right thing to do ? Anesthetize him briefly, cleanly remove the ragged piece of tissue and see if it results in some new tail growth ?

I'd use clove oil for anesthesia. I've used it a few times and am comfortable with it. Bettas are pretty tough and large enough that working on the tail wouldn't be too difficult. Likely take no more than a minute once he's sedated, and once back in clean water recovery is usually fairly quick. Even if he didn't grow any new tail, at least he wouldn't be able to keep trying to nip the piece and perhaps set up another infection. The only tissue I'd be touching is fin, not any of the caudal musculature.

I have no desire to torment Rags, but it's true I would like to see him have a chance to be restored to something of his former glory.

If you were confident you could do something like this, would you do it ?
 
From what I know, I do not believe you will get more regrowth by removing the last fragments. I would guess that the tail was too damaged to ever regrow. Fin regrowth after an injury is somewhat hit or miss depending on the exact damage, but taking off more fin will not likely help IMO. A few pictures of the situation might help shed more light on that though, if you are able. :)
It is up to you, but personally I wouldn't try it. The labyrinth organ can be rather sensitive, and the use of clove oil would not necessarily be good. Also, there is some mixed evidence that clove oil can leave remnants on the gills and hinder gas exchange after its use as a sedative in fish.
Since this is not a life or death situation, I would just leave Rags as is because I think the risk outweighs the gain in this situation. Up to you though.
 
This is precisely why I wanted opinions. I hadn't even thought of the effect clove oil might have on the labyrinth organ.

Regrowth of the tail is not life or death for this fish. It's just something I wondered about, whether or not it might work, and it's a bit sad that a fish who was so beautiful may be permanently disfigured. But he can have a decent life without his tail, even if it does seem to bug him a bit now and then.

I am trying to get pics. He appears to be very camera shy. Every time I get close enough to grab a pic he takes off, and I have another green blur to delete. I'll keep working on it.
 
This is precisely why I wanted opinions. I hadn't even thought of the effect clove oil might have on the labyrinth organ.

Regrowth of the tail is not life or death for this fish. It's just something I wondered about, whether or not it might work, and it's a bit sad that a fish who was so beautiful may be permanently disfigured. But he can have a decent life without his tail, even if it does seem to bug him a bit now and then.

I am trying to get pics. He appears to be very camera shy. Every time I get close enough to grab a pic he takes off, and I have another green blur to delete. I'll keep working on it.

I know how the picture thing goes! I have far more pictures of colors blurs, or empty spots where a fish used to be than I do of actual fish. lol

How long ago has the fin rot been cleared up?

I have read that their fins will tend to regrow faster in warmer water, but I really have not tested this. Beyond that, I do not personally know of anything off hand to help speed along the effort to try and get him some fin back. I will keep an eye out though if I run across any tips.
 
I took them on at the end of April, and the fin rot was fully cured at least 6-8 weeks before I took them home. There are no signs of reoccurrence. Thanks to issues with my landlord and a broken rad in the living room, all my livestock are in my bedroom and have been since April 2nd.

I haven't ever kept tanks in there before, because with a fair size west window, it is usually pretty darn hot in the afternoons. I've had to leave the door open to keep enough air moving to avoid overheating. There are five fans running all the time, not counting the ceiling fan, to prevent temps from hitting 30+ Celsius, which it will with the door shut even with fans.

The Betta tanks are typically around 80F, with one fan blowing on their surfaces from about two feet away, so it doesn't move the water around too much. Been a coolish summer, we haven't had any day get to 30 Celsius, so it hasn't been as bad as it might.

[ sorry for the temperature confusion.. my tank thermometers are in Fahrenheit, but the weather reports are in Celsius.]

The door is normally closed to keep the cats out. I made a deal with the allergy doc long ago; he wouldn't hassle me to get rid of my cats, if I ceased sleeping with them and kept them out of the bedroom by day. Works for me.

So I have wondered if part of the problem with slow or no fin regeneration is simply that the damage on these boys was caused by fin rot, rather than some kind of mechanical injury ? That's because of some experience I had with two other Bettas I adopted a couple of years ago, both with mechanical injury.

One was a very expensive privately imported show fish who decided to rip his own tail off in the transport container the evening before his show. His owner was a friend and asked me to take him because she was due to leave on holidays and didn't want her daughter, her fish sitter, trying to manage this fish with all the other tanks she had. There was no guarantee he would survive the injury anyway; he ripped virtually the entire tail off. Hard to imagine any creature doing such damage to itself.

I called him Dipstick; he was quite the twit. No personality to speak of and a picky eater too. Still, he regrew about 3/16th's of an inch of new tail tissue on all the torn edges, before he decided to suicide jump one day. I'm not sure how he managed that without a tail, but in any case, I didn't find him in time. [ I have covers on all the tanks now, always ! ]

Another one I took on from an acquaintance who got bored with him. She'd been keeping the poor fish on super coarse substrate at about 95F, with a filter running full bore, in a 2.5 G tank. He came from Petsmart & I was told he was a year old. I don't know how he survived the way he was kept. When I got him home, I tested his water. His tank came with him, I just removed about two thirds of the water to transport it.

The pH was so low it wouldn't even register on the API test ! He was missing most of his gill fins, a fair bit of the ventral, and some off the bottom of his tail, all rubbed off on that horrible substrate. I put him on a bare bottom with some java moss to rest on.

I thought he'd die of shock just from the change in the water, I didn't have any way to give him water nearly as acidic as what he came in, so as to make a change more gradually. But he survived. I was surprised at how quickly he regrew his finnage. Over half an inch in length on his gill fins & ventral fin and about a quarter inch worth of tail, in just a couple of months; completely recovered. Then he somehow managed to damage an eye, while I was away for a weekend. I don't how he hurt it, but it just didn't heal, and a secondary infection set in that finally did him in. It was really disheartening, given how much he'd lived through. But both of these fish had mechanical damage, not fin rot, and they both grew new tissue quite quickly.
 
The cause of damage is really not relevant but the degree of damage is. Tissue and scales can regrow, muscle and ligaments can heal. However, when the rays (bones) are completely broken, missing, degraded (etc), these generally do not 'regrow' although the area will heal. Not any different for any other vertebrate that loses a bony appendage (yes, I know there are some very unusual exceptions!).

If your fish is happy and healthy, I would not be overly concerned with his physical appearance. :)


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Thanks for the comment. I have a lot more experience mending mammals and once upon a time, turtles, but not so much fish. The Bettas are the only fish I've ever had that have had these kinds of problems, so I guess I have been fortunate in that respect.

I hadn't really thought about the fin rays being bony structures, but what else would they be made of ? It makes sense that a missing bone isn't coming back. My main concern is for the fish to have a decent life, so I'll leave him as he is and hope he doesn't bite off that one fragment that seems to bother him from time to time.
 
I think that is a good call in this case. If he was excessively biting the remaining fragment to where his life seemed in jeopardy due to constant infection or something, I would go ahead and risk the little surgery. But, many bettas are a bit tempted to nip at their flowing fins form time to time, so I wouldn't be concerned about it.
 
Thank you for the links, I'll look them up.

Bettas are not my special fish interest. I just seem to keep getting asked to take on specimens who are injured/damaged in some way, because people who know me also know I have the time to spend nursing them and am willing to try bringing them back to health.

That they are stunningly lovely fish can't be denied, it would be good to learn more about them. thanks again.
 
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