He was a little bit lethargic about 3 days ago. I blamed it on not enough oxygen being in the tank and turned up his bubbler and he perked up. Yesterday I did a very very small water change and top-off. Like 5%. And now I just got back from work and see he's turning white?? Please help!!
https://i.redd.it/3yz3vmvyyeag1.jpeg
Posted by sophiecolem4n
4 Comments
1. 10 gallons
2. Yes, low flow sponge filter
3. 78°
4. 0ppm ammonia nitrate and nitrite ph 6.5, test strips
5. Tank: 2 months, fish: 1 month
6. Spot clean with a baster once a week with about 10% taken out. 25% like once a month
7. 2 cherry shrimp and like 6 nerite snails
8. Vibra bites x5 1x a day, freeze dried blood worms x2 occasionally, shrimp patties 5x 1x a day
Check your nitrates again. Very very rarely are they truly at 0. Shake each bottle for 45 to 60 seconds….add both parts and shake the tube vigorously for 30 seconds and wait 5 minutes then read. If they are high do a 50% water change immediately. Keep repeating every couple days until you get to around 20ppm or less
Is there any other odd changes? Lethargic, tattered or clamped fins, etc? Colors changing on bettas is actually fairly common and not always negative
Ok this looks like water quality stress – don’t use strips they can read false negatives/positives. Invest in a liquid testing kit.
However we need immediate action to help this guy. Do an immediate water change of at least 50%. Dechlorinate and temperature match the water you add.
Keep up with the surface agitation and get oxygen into the water. He is breathing using his labyrinth organ because the water is irritating his gills.
Don’t feed for 48 hours because he isn’t eating and it’s adding to ammonia as it rots.
Take your water to your LFS until the liquid kit arrives and see what the parameters are.
Now, longer term this is an immature tank with a very high bioload with your shrimp, nerites and betta. Especially if you add the daily shrimp patties etc. Also, you have too many nerites for the size of the tank. They should only be added to mature tanks and yours won’t have enough food to sustain them. If one of those has died, a huge ammonia spike could have occurred.
This is currently fixable but you need to act quickly.