On Thursday morning I noticed that my betta fish’s fins had gotten quite ragged. His tank is right by my bed and I check his fins pretty obsessively because I know long fin bettas like him can have issues with fin rot or tearing. Well overnight he went from having beautiful fins with signs of new growth, to having the fins shown in the picture.
I unfortunately had to work Friday and Saturday but today I did a big water change after checking parameters.
Before the water change his parameters were: ammonia: 0, nitrite: 0, nitrate: 0, PH: 6.5, temp: 76°F. I still did a water change to make sure he had fresh clean water.
His tank is moderately planted (still waiting for some of the plants to grow in more). He has lots of good resting spots on moss wrapped spider wood branches at varying heights. He is accepting food and still seems pretty active.
I have been researching and looking at pics of fin rot trying to determine if that’s what he has. I don’t see any discoloration but he also gets so excited when I’m near the tank that he won’t hold still (it took a lot of tries to get decent pics lol).
If he does have fin rot my plan is to move him into a hospital tank and treat with aquarium salt. I will also order some kanaplex incase the salt isn’t sufficient.
The only major behavioral change I’ve noticed is he has stopped building bubble nests and has stopped chasing the shrimp as much.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1qap1e1
Posted by purpl_dahlia
3 Comments
I would treat it with broad spectrum antibiotic just to make sure. There’s Esha2000 here in France that works well
Info I forgot:
His tank is 7 gallons
His only tank mates are a few shrimp and some snails
He has been in this tank for about a month, but the tank has been set up for around 4 months. Plus it was set up using mature media.
I do a 1 gallon water change every week, I use salty shrimp to remineralize the water because my tap water is aggressively soft.
I feed him every 3 days, but have been considering increasing to every other day. I give him fluval bug bites, he usually eats around 6-10 of them (that’s just an estimate I’ve never actually counted, I use a sea monkey feeding spoon to measure).
Edit: formatting
That’s fin rot, i’d check your parameters.