libertybelle
Aquarium Advice Addict
Hey all,
Thanks for reading. Pardon the long post but I wanted to cover the basics thoroughly. I have a Betta with fin rot and while I do know the basics of how to deal with it and where it comes from I wanted to talk to people with some more experience about the causes in my specific case.
About 6 months ago I bought an adult male Betta quarantined him and then slowly introduced him to my main tank. He turned out to be very docile and so I left him as a community betta.
The tank is a 30G, specs are in my about me but in summary; it is a fully stocked (105% according to aqadvisor) planted tank with several small schools of small fish. They are all quite peaceful and occupy different levels of the tank. There are no fin-nippers or personality conflicts amongst them that I've ever seen. There is a lot of plant cover and a couple floating betta decor pieces where he can rest in away from the flow.
Tank is heated to 76-78 degrees. It gets 50% water changes every 1-2 weeks. They eat tropical flake and fruit flies. Ammonia/nitrites are always zero and even when I occasionally slack off on the water changes I've never seen nitrates above 20, possibly due to all the plants.
So this last week I've been pretty stressed out so I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the tank. To my surprise when I finally got around to checking things out I discovered my betta had developed a moderate case of fin rot. He was still swimming around but his color had faded a bit, he had obvious fin loss and a bit of fuzz on the end - he just didn't look good. Obviously I realize that fin rot generally indicates water quality problems or fin nipping but it doesn't seem like either is a problem in my case.
I have also noticed that the over filtration can be a little much for the betta in this tank. I have an ac70 on the tank as well as a small 10G internal that I keep in there so I can quickly set up a quarantine tank if needed. The ac70 is turned to its lowest flow but there are areas in the tank the betta avoids because of the current.
Do you guys think it's probable that he incurred some damage getting pushed around in the current, or perhaps is just getting exhausted by fighting the current and that's causing him to have a lowered immune system?
I acclimated him to fresh clean water in a 5 gal. I moved some established filter media over into the built in filter of the 5 (instead of moving the whole 10G internal filter) so the flow would be slower. I treated with melafix and stress guard because that is what I had on hand (yes, I know to be very careful about the dosage of melafix with bettas)
I would welcome any comments on either issue:
1) do you think the cause could be related to having to fight the current all the time
2) Should I go out and get antibiotics or fungal medication or just see how he does with no tank mates, clean water and low flow for a while?
Thanks in advance!
Thanks for reading. Pardon the long post but I wanted to cover the basics thoroughly. I have a Betta with fin rot and while I do know the basics of how to deal with it and where it comes from I wanted to talk to people with some more experience about the causes in my specific case.
About 6 months ago I bought an adult male Betta quarantined him and then slowly introduced him to my main tank. He turned out to be very docile and so I left him as a community betta.
The tank is a 30G, specs are in my about me but in summary; it is a fully stocked (105% according to aqadvisor) planted tank with several small schools of small fish. They are all quite peaceful and occupy different levels of the tank. There are no fin-nippers or personality conflicts amongst them that I've ever seen. There is a lot of plant cover and a couple floating betta decor pieces where he can rest in away from the flow.
Tank is heated to 76-78 degrees. It gets 50% water changes every 1-2 weeks. They eat tropical flake and fruit flies. Ammonia/nitrites are always zero and even when I occasionally slack off on the water changes I've never seen nitrates above 20, possibly due to all the plants.
So this last week I've been pretty stressed out so I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the tank. To my surprise when I finally got around to checking things out I discovered my betta had developed a moderate case of fin rot. He was still swimming around but his color had faded a bit, he had obvious fin loss and a bit of fuzz on the end - he just didn't look good. Obviously I realize that fin rot generally indicates water quality problems or fin nipping but it doesn't seem like either is a problem in my case.
I have also noticed that the over filtration can be a little much for the betta in this tank. I have an ac70 on the tank as well as a small 10G internal that I keep in there so I can quickly set up a quarantine tank if needed. The ac70 is turned to its lowest flow but there are areas in the tank the betta avoids because of the current.
Do you guys think it's probable that he incurred some damage getting pushed around in the current, or perhaps is just getting exhausted by fighting the current and that's causing him to have a lowered immune system?
I acclimated him to fresh clean water in a 5 gal. I moved some established filter media over into the built in filter of the 5 (instead of moving the whole 10G internal filter) so the flow would be slower. I treated with melafix and stress guard because that is what I had on hand (yes, I know to be very careful about the dosage of melafix with bettas)
I would welcome any comments on either issue:
1) do you think the cause could be related to having to fight the current all the time
2) Should I go out and get antibiotics or fungal medication or just see how he does with no tank mates, clean water and low flow for a while?
Thanks in advance!
