Swimming Bladder & Scoliosis

[TetraFamily]

Hello,

We need some of your wisdom! We just rescued 2 male bettas. The red Crowntail has swimming bladder desease and the tangerine Koi has scoliosis. We are trying to give them the best life they can have and hoping for some improvement. What can we do?

1 gallon tank (because they cannot swim well)
Temperature: 78 F
PH 6.8
Hardness: 100
Nitrate and Nitrite: 0
Feeding them a combination of betta mini flakes, mini pellets, and daphnia.

 

[Andy Sager]

Hello,

We need some of your wisdom! We just rescued 2 male bettas. The red Crowntail has swimming bladder desease and the tangerine Koi has scoliosis. We are trying to give them the best life they can have and hoping for some improvement. What can we do?

1 gallon tank (because they cannot swim well)
Temperature: 78 F
PH 6.8
Hardness: 100
Nitrate and Nitrite: 0
Feeding them a combination of betta mini flakes, mini pellets, and daphnia.

Swim bladder is not an easy condition to diagnose so first, what makes you think it has "swim bladder" disease? Is the fish swimming upside down constantly? Is the fish swimming head up at all times? Is there any swelling in the abdominal area? Is the fish lying on the bottom unable to swim? These are the common symptoms of swim bladder disease.

As for the scoliosis, there are a few causes for this: poor nutrition, TB, Genetics and poor environment. Sadly, to my knowledge, nothing can be done to reverse this condition. What to do is dependent on the cause. If the cause was TB, the fish should be euthanized as this is a contagious disease. Anything used for this fish ( i.e. net, tanks, gravel, etc) should be sterilized. For the other conditions, it would depend on how bad the curvature is. If it's severe, are you really doing the fish a good service by making it struggle to survive? If it's mild, you should treat the fish as any other without the condition regarding clean water, good nutrition and safe environment to live in.