Think something is killing my Betta! Please help!

[ParadoxOwl]

My Betta, D.W. has always been fairly, active let's say. Flaring at everything from his plants and filter, to the snail and me. He swam like a nut job all day and gobbled up the food I gave him. He seemed very happy and healthy.

I do a water change every week, usually 25% but sometimes 30%. Recently I think my nerite laid eggs and babies have appeared so my water changes became twice weekly to stop my Betta from eating all the babies! Yes he actually does eat them.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, on his Betta leaf, on the suction cup, I noticed something very very small moving on it. I removed it right away thinking it could be a bug or something. Nothing was seen for a while until the past couple of days. During the water changes, while checking the bottom of the bucket for baby snails, I noticed super tiny brown specs. I'm talking a smidge smaller than baby snails. These brown specs seem to be moving! I looked up diatoms and I don't think it's that.

Since I noticed these thingys D.W. has been acting odd. He's moving sluggishly and doesn't eat as much, if at all! Some days he doesn't move. He just sits next to his heater or in a decoration which is very odd for him. This morning I thought he died, cause there was no movement from him for 5 whole minutes.

What can I do aside from water changes every 2 days? (I use prime and API stress zyme when changing water)

If I can, I'll snag a pic of the small dots.
My levels are
Amm- 0
Nitrite- 0
Nitrate-0
PH-6.9
Temp- 82

 

[Toad]

Nerite snails don't breed in freshwater from what I've heard, so whatever baby snails you have aren't from them. If the little things creeping around your tank are flat I'm guessing some sort of lice or leech. Some sort of parasite at least.

 

[ParadoxOwl]

I took D.W. out of his tank and emptied it. I kept the old media in another tanks water, in a bowl, while i re-started it. I removed the gravel to clean it further, ran his decorations under hot water, and added the filter and heater after being cleaned. Now there's some kind of white wiggle thing in there!

I'm keeping him in a smaller bowl in an 80 degree room until I sort this out. I added Prazi worm killer to the water to try and kill what ever these could be...

He's acting a little more normally being put in fall fresh water... so, thats goos right?

 

[Tony30gal]

wow this is a pretty wicked situation.. I'm subscribed to see if you can get rid of these "things"

it makes me want to do an "in depth" scan on my tanks and make sure they dont have these tiny little moving parasite things like some speak of. Blah!

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[ParadoxOwl]

I keep trying to snag a picture of them, but it's so hard! They look like little white wiggly hairs. My research says they might be nematodes? PraziPro isn't killing them whatever they are!

If they are these nematodes, should lack of anything being in the tank kill them? I read a few posts that say yes. Some even say these guys are harmless, but, i don't trust them.

 

[ParadoxOwl]

Here's 3 photos. These buggers are hard to capture. They are thin and hairlike.