35 Litre (roughly 10 US Gallon) Betta tank - Betta advice needed!

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What would other people suggest to treat a Betta Fish with Fin/ tail rot? I have just brought King British - Fin Rot treatment > hoping it wont muck up the bacteria in my filter?
 
tinkster87 said:
What would other people suggest to treat a Betta Fish with Fin/ tail rot? I have just brought King British - Fin Rot treatment > hoping it wont muck up the bacteria in my filter?
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I'm completely unfamiliar with treating it. I'm just scared of meds in general...but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that one (I've personally never heard of that one). I'd just do a bit of research on it.
 
yeah Im taking it by the manufacturer name its only available over here, but seems to be sold at quite a few lfs and pet stores around my local area.
 
I can't speak with authority here since I'm not familiar...but I believe a lot of these fin rot treatments are designed to kill bacteria / antibiotics. Obviously something killing bacteria is the last thing you want right now. I'm not sure if the meds differentiate between gram + / - bacteria. Do you have a QT you can treat him in? Even figuring out a temporary hospital tank for a while might be a smart move.

But again, I'm not familiar with the med and if it will have any effect at all on the bio-filter...like I said, I'm just scared of meds in general.
 
Also when I finish work (only 40 mins :) ) I'll see what it says on the bottle and packaging etc regarding the bio-filter - prob won't mention it at all!
 
tinkster87 said:
Also when I finish work (only 40 mins :) ) I'll see what it says on the bottle and packaging etc regarding the bio-filter - prob won't mention it at all!
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I used Maracyn one time in my QT and it absolutely nuked the bio-filter. Once the fish were removed I tested it with small amounts of pure ammo and it didn't budge. It explicitly says on the packaging that it doesn't effect biological filtration, lol.

Hopefully someone will chime in with some knowledge of fin rot meds. If you've got a few extra $'s...you can pick up 10 gallon tanks for like $12. A super cheap heater and small filter are a great investment anyway to quarantine any new fish you get, and also be able to treat sick ones without treating the entire main tank.
 
Thanks.

I wish tanks where that cheap here!!! spent so much on this tank so far.

I am keeping an eye on a tank on ebay which is used but looks in ok condition its 2ft long and holds about 15 US gallons, though is literally a tank no roof or anything. have to see..
 
For a quarantine tank you don't need anything other than a tank, a heater and a filter. No lights, substrate or decorations are necessary. I've heard it's a lot more expensive for that stuff over there though. At PetSmart, Walmart and Petco over here the 10 gallons are super cheap. I went a little crazy and bought an entire Marineland LED kit to use as my QT...so it ended up running me about $60, but it came with everything.
 
I admit I haven't read the thread all the way through but I'm confused now....is it a fishless cycle or fish in? :) Or are there two tanks? I'm reading ammonia isn't dropping and a betta with fin rot, so I'm assuming one is fishless cycling with ammonia and one has a betta in it that may be sick?

As for the betta I have zero knowledge of disease but a lot of others on here do, so you might want to post a thread about him in the unhealthy fish section and ask what to do.

Also this is a pretty good page geared toward Bettas and their diseases and how to treat.
 
librarygirl said:
I admit I haven't read the thread all the way through but I'm confused now....is it a fishless cycle or fish in? :) Or are there two tanks? I'm reading ammonia isn't dropping and a betta with fin rot, so I'm assuming one is fishless cycling with ammonia and one has a betta in it that may be sick?

As for the betta I have zero knowledge of disease but a lot of others on here do, so you might want to post a thread about him in the unhealthy fish section and ask what to do.

Also this is a pretty good page geared toward Bettas and their diseases and how to treat.
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It was a fishless cycle that was almost done....he had an issue with some sort of decoration possibly leecing something into the water that the bacteria didn't like...and someone (not me!) recommended that he add SafeStart and go ahead and stock. So basically he's been dealing with ammo spikes since the fish were added.

Good links!
 
the basics of it is....

got tank 6 weeks ago, cycled fishless for almost 5 weeks, trites spiked and went down, Nitrates appeared and normal but Ammonia has never dropped enough and has never dropped to 0.

I then went down the route of using Tetra Safestart to try and cure the Ammonia problem so I done a big wc to get the ammo v low and added safestart and fish, however 1 and half weeks later it hadn't done anything. I then on Tuesday managed to get a used filter and put that in the tank thou hasn't done anything as yet. Then couple of days ago I thougth Bruno's tail was getting bad then last night I thought it definitely was bad so now trying to sort out his fin rot asap.
 
Ah, gotcha! Thanks Eco and Tinkster for the summaries. So the fin rot could be from the ammonia. I'm assuming you are doing large water changes daily, right? Clean water might really help him too. I don't want to say much b/c I know nothing about illnesses but if you post about this in that other forum I mentioned (and mention the situation.....about the tank and the ammonia, etc) someone else might help you help your fish. Good luck :)
 
Sadly Bruno has died, RIP little dude! I am really sad he was so awesome!

And today the ammo is soooooo close to 0ppm.

Now Bruno is sadly no longer about, will the ember's (5) and the cherry shrimp cause enough ammonia to keep the tank going?

I will prob leave it a week or two until I get more fish just to make sure there is no disease in the tank. But the Embers are all fine.

I feel so bad to loose Bruno!

--------------

Not sure what I will be getting next for the tank, if I didn't have the embers I would put female fighters in as I found another lfs who do stocks females, but then I also need something that likes brown algae....

Have to see, but have plenty time to think about it as i leave the tank alone to make sure there is no nasties in there!
 
tinkster87 said:
Sadly Bruno has died, RIP little dude! I am really sad he was so awesome!

And today the ammo is soooooo close to 0ppm.

Now Bruno is sadly no longer about, will the ember's (5) and the cherry shrimp cause enough ammonia to keep the tank going?

I will prob leave it a week or two until I get more fish just to make sure there is no disease in the tank. But the Embers are all fine.

I feel so bad to loose Bruno!

--------------

Not sure what I will be getting next for the tank, if I didn't have the embers I would put female fighters in as I found another lfs who do stocks females, but then I also need something that likes brown algae....

Have to see, but have plenty time to think about it as i leave the tank alone to make sure there is no nasties in there!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't put any new fish in there for a long while yet. First you should deal with the ich in your tank which can take at least two weeks to treat and then after that you should monitor to make sure it doesn't come back. Also you have a fish-in cycle going on (and yes I believe the fish you have should be enough to keep the cycle going) and I wouldn't subject any more fish to that than you have to. Finish up the cycle with the fish you have; by then you'll know whether or not the ich is gone and then think about stocking.

You mentioned ammonia is close to 0 (and what does close mean? Is it showing green at all?), but what about your nitrite and nitrate? YOu need to monitor those as well. Nitrite is just as toxic as ammonia is and at some point it's going to start rising and you're going to need to keep up the pwc to keep it under 0.25.
 
The ammonia is very yellow but still has a slight tint of green in there. Definitely definitely lower than 0.25pm by a far bit, but just not pure yellow yet.

The Nitrite has also be checked everyday, last time I checked it yesterday it was 0 as it has been since it spiked and went down when it was in the middle of fishless cycling. Basically in the fishless cycle all went well apart from the ammonia eating bacteria which never formed in any great strength - why me and eco23 think it could well be a dodgy aquarium vase decoration I had in the tank causing problems.

Nitrates is only getting done every few days now as the waterchanges are everyday so they should not build up too high. Nitrates appeared in the fishless cycle soon after Trites (well appeared higher than trates in tap water anyway)

I thought Ich was white spot? or am I wrong, Bruno did not have white spots on him, I could see no visual signs of illness (his tail was actually healing - and I think him resting against the inlet on the filter may well have done the tail damage).

Thanks for your help
 
tinkster87 said:
The ammonia is very yellow but still has a slight tint of green in there. Definitely definitely lower than 0.25pm by a far bit, but just not pure yellow yet.

The Nitrite has also be checked everyday, last time I checked it yesterday it was 0 as it has been since it spiked and went down when it was in the middle of fishless cycling. Basically in the fishless cycle all went well apart from the ammonia eating bacteria which never formed in any great strength - why me and eco23 think it could well be a dodgy aquarium vase decoration I had in the tank causing problems.

Nitrates is only getting done every few days now as the waterchanges are everyday so they should not build up too high. Nitrates appeared in the fishless cycle soon after Trites (well appeared higher than trates in tap water anyway)

I thought Ich was white spot? or am I wrong, Bruno did not have white spots on him, I could see no visual signs of illness (his tail was actually healing - and I think him resting against the inlet on the filter may well have done the tail damage).

Thanks for your help
Click to expand...

Sorry, my mistake, I'm reading too many posts and getting them confused :facepalm: So you had fish rot and not ich. Are the other fish looking OK? Fin rot can be caused by unhealthy water conditions and ammonia, etc. Cycling is tough on fish even if you do your best to keep the levels down.

So you started fishless cycling, went through the spike and everything and now have fish. With your nitrite going down and being 0 and your ammonia 0 or close-to you may be really close to cycled. I'd still wait and keep an eye on things for a couple of weeks just to make sure before you add anything else in there.

The API ammonia kit is hard to read. When I first got mine I thought the yellow of 0 was actually 0.25. Looking at the tube itself it looks yellow, but when you hold it against the card it starts looking green. Then I actually saw what 0.25 looks like and realized it's definitely greener. What you could do, to be sure, is either test some distilled water or your tap water (if you know it's definitely 0) against the ammonia test of your tank and compare the colors and see how you're reading them.
 
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