Does this look normal for a Betta?

[tsaraber]

I have a male betta in a 2.5 gallon tank. He used to be in a 10 gallon with 4 danios but we moved him just last week. He has his own filter, a heater set to 78 degrees - don't know what else would be necessary info other than his ph is 7.8 and there is no ammonia present..

Rather than try to describe it, I've uploaded three pics. Not the greatest but hopefully it'll due... They're huge so I'm going to link to them rather than post them here:
http://home.woh.rr.com/saraber/play/monty_01.jpg
http://home.woh.rr.com/saraber/play/monty_02.jpg
http://home.woh.rr.com/saraber/play/monty_03.jpg

From what I can tell he doesn't 'act' sick.. His appetite is good, earlier this week he did make a bubble nest but he hasn't recreated it since his last water change. He doesn't do any of the things described in the parasite comments I've read. Basically I'm just a little concerned about his appearance.

Picture 01 shows the whole fish - I keep reading about clamped fins, is that what his top fin is? Most of the photos I've seen online of Bettas they have their fins nice and spread out. He never does that.

Picture 02 is a closeup of his head, it's a little blurry but you can see a bit of red streaks along the side of his head, behind his eye. Is this normal?

Picture 03 is another closeup, does this look normal to you? The white speck to the right of his eye has been there all week. It was a bump at one point, then it turned kind of pink and now it's back to being something like a white flake. I'm a little concerned about the color of his entire head in general.

Like I said he doesn't 'act' like he's sick but I have noticed that when he flares he can't flare the side with the bump nearly as much as the other side. And again, don't know if this is normal but when he does flare and I can manage to get a peek underneath/inside, it's all red. Maybe that's normal - I have no idea since he's my first Betta.

Let me know what you think.. Thanks in advance for your time!!!

 

[QTOFFER]

Ammonia is 0? How are the nitrITE levels?
He might have been stressed by the move into the smaller tank. I'd keep an extra vigilant eye on the water parameters and perform water changes more often.

It does looks like there might be some kind of bacterial infection going on. Since he doesn't appear acutely sick, maybe you can try dosing him with MelaFix for starters. Keep an eye on the white spot - if it persists after a few days with MelaFix, you might want to try a broad spectrum antibiotic like erythromycin or tetracycline.

 

[tsaraber]

Nitrite and nitrate levels are both fine.. Kh is high, way high.. No idea about gh, test kit was ordered Monday so it should arrive any day now.

I don't know that he was stressed by the move, like I mentioned he was building a bubble nest at one point right after the move. They won't do that if they're unhappy right?

But what I'm wondering... We've been using distilled water. Our tap water is horrible, mixing it with distilled is pointless really because last batch I tested took 7 cups distilled to 1 cup tap to get the ph even half way reasonable. I treated the distilled water using Seachem Equilibrium and Neutral Regulator - the LFS owner said that's all that was needed but I'm thinking neither takes care of the trace elements. (ordered those Monday too - Fresh Trace)...

Today he has a small yellow/gold patch starting on his side. Could he just be lacking trace elements? I will pick up the meds you mentioned though - can't hurt to have them around the house.

Oh I should mention that he's not in pure distilled water just yet. We took two gallons of water from the original tank to put into his new tank when we set it up. Right now he's only had about 11 cups of distilled added during water changes..

 

[QTOFFER]

Tsaraber, I'm afraid my advice to use MelaFix for the betta was way off the mark.

Please have a look at Grimlock300's post.
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=17572

MelaFix is a great product to have around, but it's no good for bettas. They make something called BettaFix.

 

[tsaraber]

Ahhhhh - all is well then.

I went to the LFS and was a little irritated that I couldn't find the MelaFix (still haven't gotten what I ordered Monday and didn't much want to wait another whole week to treat Monty) but they did have BetaFix and it appeared to have similar ingredients so I picked some up. I also got some of the Betta water conditioner, says it adds electrolytes which I figure can't hurt until I get my ordered Fresh Trace in....

Still thanks for your input - it did point me in the right direction.. =)

 

[Allivymar]

Urk! A gold patch?? Does it sorta look like gold dust? If so, your betta has velvet; Bettafix won't do a thing. You need to treat him with meds such as QuickCure and fast - velvet kills quickly. Its quite possible he has a bacterial infection as well; red streaks are usually indicative of infection.

 

[tsaraber]

Hi Alli!

I thought of velvet too but for now I'm ruling it out. It doesn't look like so much 'added' color as it does a loss of color. Looks like he just faded in that spot - but I am going to keep an eye on it.

 

[Allivymar]

Whew ok, you're ahead of me here *grin* excellent.

 

[Christmasfish]

Bettas can change color slightly to mood. A real stressed one can turn almost brown with the side bars like females do. The white spot looks like an interloper!
My departed bettas started with one of those, then pink globs that became fussy that became globs. His was so hard to treat that he finally succumbed to suspected metal poisoning *sniff* He knew 7 tricks and was my personal fish
His tank was the only unheated one so the 76 by day would drop to low as 70 at night. It unknowingly was making my job harder. Now I have 8 gallon stackable kritter keepers with a small world mini pump and 25 watt heaters so I never lose another saveable sick fish again. Don't delay! Heat him up to see if it is ich and ( i had been around bettas all my childhood, but never saw one catch ich to know the treatment)get ready to buy meds! It's hard to lose your fishy friends and not be sure you did everything.

edit: PS
Hagen Thermal compacts work perfect for those mini tanks. They are small enough to fit and you can adjust the temp as needed! they are HARD to find in my area, why my fish was last to have one. I bought 8 yet 8 never came back in...I cruised petsmart EVERY day! I finally went to one 50 miles away..Too late *sniff*

 

[tsaraber]

Thanks for your input Christmasfish..

What do you mean by interloper?

Regarding the condition of my betta, he's still got his spot and it's the oddest thing I've ever seen. His tank is heated so the last two days I have been raising the temp 2 degrees per day, he is currently at 82 - up from 78. Up until today I was using Betta Fix but it didn't seem to be doing much.

Yesterday I did about a 10% water change and the water that I added contained aquarium salt - only enough to cover that little bit that I added, should I perhaps add more directly to his tank? If so how much? He has a 2.5 gallon tank.

What's rather amusing is that yesterday when we started raising the temperature, on top of the 10% water change, the bump on his face changed quite a bit. Where there one only one little white dot before, there were suddently two and it looked like the scales in that area were pushed up a bit and you could see some of the same substance the dots consisted of underneath the scales. Today it's right back to the way it was before - I'm including two new pics.

http://home.woh.rr.com/saraber/play/monty_04.jpg
http://home.woh.rr.com/saraber/play/monty_05.jpg

And speaking of temperature - how high should I aim for and for how long? I've read so many threads but everyone has a different oppinion.

 

[jsoong]

Regarding the salt, what level are you aiming for? Justing adding a little bit to the change water won't do much - by the time you mix that with the tank water, you are down to 1/10 the level you started with (since you are doing 10% water change).

Generally, you need to add the correct amount to raise the tank to the desired level, *only* after that will you be adding small amounts in change water to replace the amount you removed during water change.

How much? depends on the level you aim for. If you are aiming for 0.1% (= 1 ppt), you need to add 1g to each liter of tank water. In your 2.5 gal (= 10 l), that is approx 10g. 10g of salt is approx. 1/2 tablespoon.

What level should you aim for? depends on why you are adding salt. If you are using salt to protect for nitrite posioning, or to give osmolar relieve to decrease stress, a level of 0.05% to 0.1% is recommended. If you are treating ich, then 0.3% is needed. (Note I do not know if bettas can take that much salt - never researched that). If you are going the high salt route, you should not add the whole lot at once. I would only raise the salt content by 0.1% every 24 hours, until the desired level is reached.

Hope this help a litttle. I can't help much with diagnosing the bump on your betta's head.

 

[bettagirl]

Hi, I hope I can offer a little help. Regarding your question on temp, most bettas prefer 80-82 and neutral pH. They can withstand lower temps better than high temps, and will die quickly if the tank temp reaches ~90.

How old is your Betta? I think ick can be ruled out as it looks different and it's much bigger. Ick spots are said to only get as big as a pinhead.

You might double check to make sure its not velvet. I looked up diseases in my betta book, and it mentioned "no disease is less recognized" and that bettas can withstand a velvet infection for weeks. They recommend using a flashlight after dark to see if the light glances off the scales to properly id it. One of the results of velvet is "gaping holes" that quickly become infected with bacteria. This may be the white buldge? Clamped fins are also mentioned as coinciding with velvet.

What are you currenlty treating with now? If you think it might be velvet, and depending on what you are medicating with now, it is recommended to use copper sulfate solution and two teaspoons of marine salt per gallon with daily water changes.

 

[tsaraber]

Thanks for the info Jsoong and Bettagirl...

I was treating him with Betta Fix... When that didn't appear to do anything I did a water change and switched to Quick Cure (think that's the name, it's one of those ich meds)...

I hasn't considered velvet as I'd never really seen it described the way you put it but I guess that is a real posibility. He did have a yellow/goldish patch on his side for about a day but that's gone already. I'm going to do a little more reading on that now.

After the water change and the addition of the Quick Cure he really seemed to perk up. He was a lot more active yesterday and he even started work on the bubble nest again.

Jsoong, I'm not sure if I want to try to treat him with salt so I will use your stress reducing level, doing it gradually in the water changes.

 

[jsoong]

If the quickCure & salt seems to work, stick with it!

I've never seen velvet, but my Goldie source says: " to treat velvet, use Quick Cure and salt". So if the spots are velvet, you are doing the right thing!

 

[tsaraber]

Imagine that! We accidentally used the right meds? lol

I feel soooo bad for the poor little fella. I haven't a clue what's wrong with him but I can take heart in knowing that whatever is wrong doesn't seem to be causing him any grief. He sure seems happy and he's been going to town on the bubble nests.

I did a 20% water change yesterday (using my infamous distilled water mixed with Seachem's Equilibrium, Neutral Regulator, Fresh Trace and aquarium salt), no meds.. Will do another 20% change today and give him another round of Quick Cure today and tomorrow. Right now his two spots are pretty much gone so all he's left with is a weird flaky look on his head and his gill plates are an odd metallic red color. He doesn't look cottony, more like his skin is just flaking from being dried out or something. I guess if this round of Quick Cure doesn't help with that then I'll do a few more water changes and try a week on Betta Fix.

 

[tsaraber]

Well it's not looking good..

Last night he really got bad. He stopped eating, he started just laying on the bottom of the tank. He would come to the top, gulp some air and then just sort of fall back to the bottom of the tank. We did another water change and this morning we ran up to the pet store for some meds for velvet thinking that's what he had - his whole front chest is a rust/coppery color. Most descrips of velvet I've heard mention gold coloring but a few have mentioned rust and I have to admit, I was running out of ideas.

We got home, put the meds in his tank (coppersafe and tetracycline) when my husband mentioned he looked a little bloated. Sure enough he was. On closer inspection we noticed the pine-cone deal going on with his scales - dropsy on top of everything else. So back to the pet store for maracyn and maracyn 2 - we did a 100% water change, washed out his bowl and everything that was in it to get the aquarium salt out of there. We put a very tiny amount of epsom salts in the water to hopefully bring down the swelling. I just hope we got it all right - there is so much conflicting information on the net.

I don't have high hopes for the poor guy - dropsy doesn't have a very good recovery rate but I'm not about to give up on him. It's funny but right now I'd gladly pay $100 if it would fix a $3.00 fish!

 

[jsoong]

So sorry to hear about the dropsy. That's bad news.

The prob with dropsy (& the confusion out there) is that it is a symptom, caused by many things - such as water parameter, pH problems, bacterial, fungal or parasite infections. Treatment may work for some but not others.

I think you are doing all you can for the poor little guy. Keep up with maintaining pristine & stable water parameters, the epsom salt & antibiotics ... and hope for the best.

Good Luck!

 

[Kwenbee]

Your Monty looks exactly like our Jake. I am watching this thread carefully in case we have the same betta problems. So far, the bettas have been the easiest fish to deal with. One minor bout of ICH with Bill the Betta, betta dive to the carpet while we weren't home one night (no idea how long he lay there) and a sudden frigid temperature in the fish tank (due to malfuncitoning furnace and no heater in the tank) and Bill the Betta survived them all.

The red you see behind his eye might be his coloring...Jake has and has always had the same thing.

 

[bettagirl]

I'm sorry to hear about your betta now having dropsy as well. It sounds like you're doing what you can and I agree that it's probably really important to keep the water parameters as stable as possible, especially with the frequent water changes. You mentioned having a larger tank, so perhaps you could fill with water from there instead of putting in fresh out of the tap dechlored water. This would at least ensure he's getting the same pH, etc every time.

Good luck and I hope he pulls through!

 

[tsaraber]

Monty didn't make it..

His swelling never came down at all, today would have been his second treatment with the Kanacyn.

I don't think I'm going to get another Betta (or any fish for that matter) for a very long time. Not until I figure out how to produce stable, quality water - I'm sure that was a big part of the problem with Monty. Being in the smaller tank it was pretty hard to keep the water quality stable. His tank was at a much lower ph than the big tank so I couldn't have used that water for him.

Not sure I'll get another Betta regardless. They're so beautiful and attentive and I just don't have it in me to watch another one suffer.

Not to mention our track record with fish really sucks. In the past five months we've lost the betta, a goldfish, 2 algae eaters and a red tail shark (that one actually jumped into the filter if you can believe it)...

Kwenbee, good luck with Jake. I hope he's getting better.

Thanks to everyone for their help and support.