Betta Fin Loss - Can't Seem to Fix It

[alicia_r]

My betta fish has been losing his fins fairly rapidly, and I can't seem to figure out what's up. At first I thought it was fin rot - but I took some photos to a local shop that specializes in tropical fish and the owner said it didn't look like fin rot, but rather fin loss. So we've been experimenting with removing some of his plants and gravel (we had originally added some new silk plants that started all of this mess), and now we're back to the original (successful) set up and he's still losing his fins.

The 3 gallon tank generally hovers around a 6.8ph, 0 nitrites or ammonia. It does seem to be a little warm (around 80 degrees) with the heater in it, and we haven't tried removing it yet. We have an active filtration system in there with a carbon filter, and are expecting to get foam padding for the prefilter on Monday from Amazon, as we couldn't find any near us.

I initially did a 100% water change (he lives alone) to start a treatment with aquarium salt (we also use stress coat and betta bowl plus), about two weeks ago, and did 25% changes and vacuumed the gravel daily for a week, but it didn't make much of a difference so we dropped down to 25% changes and vacuuming once a week.

He's acting totally fine, actively swimming to greet us, though he is spending more time resting on the bottom of the tank lately. He's not mopey or anything though. We feed him three betta pellets in the morning and a small dried bloodworm snack in the evening, and he's still eating/chasing after his food/begging.

Any help is appreciated - we've had him for about two months and I just feel really bad for the little guy. I'm attaching images of his tail issues and current tank set up for reference. The light green plants are the ones we removed, as his tail loss started after we added these.

 

[Autumnsky]

Are you saying his fins are reducing in size?

Clean water is a key for fins. Is the filter actually cycled?

You can get a little prefilter sponge for the intake from a Petco and possibly Petsmart it is from Fluval, package looks like this, but it is around $4.00 I can't remember, if there is a 3 pack better deal and you can use them on most intakes. Might be a white box, they updated to the package to black I think.
Fluval EDGE 6 And 12 Gallon Intake Stem Pre-Filter Foam Sponge

 

[BBradbury]

ali...

Since most of the tank is water, it would be best to set up and maintain an aggressive water change routine. If you put chemicals into the water and aren't consistent with your water changes, you can't expect to have stable water parameters and a healthy tank.

Work up to the point you're changing out at least half the water every 2 to 3 days. Small water changes leave most of the old toxic water in the tank and with a small tank, you have very little water to dilute the wastes the fish and bacteria produce. This is why you have to remove and replace a lot of water frequently.

Large water changes are the best medicine.

B