I have a female plakat. She is about 6 months old per the info from the breeder. She normally is VERY active, curious, and always swims up to greet us.

The past few days, she’s been hiding a lot. I’ve noticed that her belly seemed a little bit bloated and thought maybe I was over feeding, so I fasted her for a few days but her belly never seemed to shrink. I fed her some brine shrimp today — no idea if that was the right call. No pineconeing as far as I can tell.

She doesn’t necessarily seem to be struggling to swim (labored/erratic movements, etc), but she’s lethargic. Today I noticed that she keeps wedging herself between the tank wall and plant holder, seemingly to rest near the top and breathe. She doesn’t appear to be breathing heavily, but she’s going up for air more than usual. She has plenty of surfaces near to rest on near the top but never really uses them under normal circumstances.

Water parameters looked good tonight. This is my first betta since learning how to actually keep fish. I’m not really sure what to do for her 🙁

Any advice is appreciated.

———

Setup / Parameters:

Tank: 40gal, heavily planted

Filter: Fluval FX2

Water temp: 80F

Tank mates: bladder and ramshorn snails

pH: 7.4-7.8 range

Ammonia: 0ppm

Nitrite: 0ppm

Nitrate: 0ppm

Diet: Frozen brine shrimp, Fluval bug bite flakes, hakari pellets (usually one day frozen, one day dry food, and one day off).

I’ll post some additional photos below.



https://v.redd.it/shm06jnl67hg1

Posted by blossomiest

5 Comments

  1. The80sgeek-666 on

    No nitrates? With all those plants and snails? That’s kind of odd. Are you using testing strips?

  2. Commercial_Sundae_10 on

    It looks like slight pineconing if you blow up the picture . I hope not for your babies sake! And yours dropsy is a nightmare.

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