Betta Fin Rot?!

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GoldeenTrix9898

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Right, so I got Obisidian only a month or two ago, he was rescued from a pet store where he lived in a gross little plastic cup. When I first got him, he had a few pinkish spots at the ends of his fins, at first I thought it was just his blood vessels showing through because the ends of his fins were transparent. Now I'm not so sure. I am a beginner at fish keeping, so I'm very worried.

He lives in a cycled 5 gallon planted tank with a school of lambchop rasboras. Slightly overstocked, but my water parameters are stable at ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10 and ph is 8. The tank is heated but the temperature seems to fluctuate a little, it drops to around 76 at night and then rises to around 80 during the day. Still looking to fix that. The water evaporates very quickly for some reason and so I replenish about 15% of the tank's water every three days and vacuum the gravel while I'm at it.

A few days ago I noticed a tiny chunk of his tail missing. At first I thought maybe he accidentally tore it on something in his tank, so I proceeded to check everything with a pantyhose. Nothing was sharp. So I ignored it and thought maybe he just flared too hard. Today, I was looking at him and noticed that the area right under the missing piece of tail is looking frayed and torn. It's still just a very small area, but it definitely wasn't there a few days ago. Is it possible that after tearing his tail fin rot decided to visit? I may be overreacting but I'm really worried and I don't want him to get hurt.

He's acting normal and swimming around happily, sticking his face into things and lounging on my hornwort. He's eating well and shows no signs of distress. The first two photos are of Obsidian now, the one with him in front of the pot is from about a week ago. I want to know if this is fin rot, if it is, can I stop it before it starts to seriously eat away at Obsidian's fins?

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I've read that bettas when bored will bite their tails but don't hold me on this as I am in no way an expert. It's just that it doesn't really look like fin rot and I've had fin rot lots of times. You might want to read about tail biting though.


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I've read that bettas when bored will bite their tails but don't hold me on this as I am in no way an expert. It's just that it doesn't really look like fin rot and I've had fin rot lots of times. You might want to read about tail biting though.


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I read up about it, and most places say that it's caused from boredom. But my betta has a whole myriad of tioys in his tank, dozens of plants, a school of rasboras, shrimp, caves, pots, ping pong balls, I don't know how to keep him more entertained.:(
 
Maybe it's the early stages of fin rot. You could go ahead separate him and add some salt just make sure bettas can handle it first though.


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