Betta fish swim problems

[Nick1234]

Hello, we have a betta in a 10gal tank by himself and he has developed a problem. The fish swims around the surface but is unable to descend more than 4 or 5 inches. He swims really hard to go down but then seems to just float back to the surface tail first. I assume it is some sort of swim bladder problem but don't know how to help him. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Nick

 

[Andy Sager]

Hello, we have a betta in a 10gal tank by himself and he has developed a problem. The fish swims around the surface but is unable to descend more than 4 or 5 inches. He swims really hard to go down but then seems to just float back to the surface tail first. I assume it is some sort of swim bladder problem but don't know how to help him. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Nick

If you can, post a 1 minute video of the fish doing this swimming. You won't be able to upload the video directly here but upload it to your favorite video hosting site and post the url to it here.

 

[Nick1234]

Well Fred the betta seems to have been cured. We moved him to a smaller tank and added a little salt for few days and he seems to have recovered somehow. Just did a water change and he seems happy now.

 

[Aiken Drum]

You may have seen an improvement because of the increase in mineral content from the salt you added re: your other thread.

I could use some advice on Gh and Kh levels please

Our well water is high PH and very hard water and so we switched to bottled RO water for out tanks...everyting has been fine until recently while browsing the forum I read about this water not having enough minerals for plants and fish. So I got a test kit from API and found that we have very...

www.aquariumadvice.com

What kind of salt did you add? While sodium chloride is the main constituent of aquarium salt, many brands also include magnesium and calcium chloride, both of which will raise general hardness.

 

[Nick1234]

Thanks Aiken. All we had on hand was some canning salt my wife uses for her famous dill pickles. It claims to be pure sea salt. And you may be right cause he was in straight RO water. I did another water change and added some well water to the RO and he is much better.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Canning salt should be straight up NaCl, same as aquarium salt. While it shouldn't affect GH (magnesium and calcium), or KH (carbonate and bicarbonate) it will raise total disolved solids (TDS) which it looks like your fish is responding well too. The tap water will be adding a more varied mix of mineral content.

 

[Nick1234]

Thanks Aiken, at least I somehow got that right. It was weird how pleased I felt to see that little fish recover like that.