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Betta Fish: Urgent help with betta scale lose and open wounds, what’s wrong with my betta fish?

Hi everyone, I really need some experienced eyes on this because I’ve been stressing and researching nonstop, and I’m still not sure what’s happening with my new betta. I’ve recently started collecting bettas, and this new purple one has had a pretty rough start because of some mistakes I made early on. I want to explain everything in detail so I can get proper advice.

I bought his first tank at PetSmart and then bought the betta from Pisces. When I first got home, I put him in a temporary cup while I set up the 5 gallon tank. I added conditioned water and got it running, but I didn’t use any of the water he originally came in. Right after that, I realized I didn’t like the setup, so I went out and bought a different tank. I completely drained the first one, set up the new tank from scratch, and moved him again. I know you’re not supposed to buy the tank and the fish on the first day, but he was such a beautiful fish and it was a very impulsive decision very fast. He’s now been in this new tank for about 6 days. I know now that I basically gave him a tank reset twice within the first few hours of bringing him home, so I’m unsure if this caused stress or ammonia issues.

I’ve noticed a lot of his scales falling off with red open wounds if that’s what it is I’m not sure because I’ve never dealt with this before when owning my other betta fish, i’ve removed any sharp objects that are in the tank and his temperature is at 80F, once in a while I do 30% water changes. I’ve been on ChatGPT and Google researching as much as I can about ammonia and what could be going on and I just don’t know what’s happening and I’m scared.

I bought a test kit, but it does NOT include ammonia, only nitrite, nitrate, GH, KH, and pH.
Everything on that strip tested normal, but because I’ve done two full tank resets in the first 24 hours of having him, I’m worried the tank is in the early stages of cycling and may have an ammonia spike I can’t test for. I don’t currently have money to buy Prime or other ammonia binders.

I’m hoping someone can tell me:

  • are these actually open wounds or just irritated scales?
  • could this be ammonia burn?
  • what can I safely do right now without buying an expensive product?

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1p1vwku

Posted by atomicbobo

3 Comments

  1. petersb89 on

    You are going to need to buy an API fresh water testing kit, the strips are not an accurate reading when cycling a tank. Since your tank is brand new you’ll need to do larger more frequent water changes. You’ll also want to buy seachem prime to add to your water each time. Once you start testing your parameters you’ll know how much/ often to do water changes. This could be ammonia burn but without testing you won’t know.

    Looking at your tank it looks like you have plastic plants which can easily cut or damage fins. You’ll want to replace them with live plants or if you don’t want live plants you can buy silk plants. Their fins are so delicate and one way to see if your plants are safe is to take pantyhose to them, if they rip then they can rip fins.

    This is the guide I use when cycling my tanks, you’ll want to test every day until your tank is cycled.

    https://preview.redd.it/fcz9h50j0d2g1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5ea7be92f5e9bb45ad6e825adc45c2ed0b93144d

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