Thinning Fins

Over the last few days, my delta tail's fins seem to have become exceptionally fragile. He's a black lace (at best guess; he's from the LFS, and his breeding is a mystery), so it's very hard sometimes to know what's going on with him since he naturally has black fins that fade to clear at the edges.

What I'm noticing lately, though, is that where his fins used to be a nice, dark black, they're becoming transluscent and even transparent, and they seem to be falling apart at the least excuse. I'd almost say it's fin rot if I didn't see very obvious and almost uniform thinning across the whole of all of his dorsal, anal, caudal and ventral fins. He had some very extreme loss of fin in his tail, including the rays, last week, but was showing regrowth that was very rapid and now appears to have stopped or slowed. He's since lost a very large chunk of his anal fin, including the rays, but is showing some signs of regrowth there.

The water parameters in his aquarium are all good. 0 ppm ammonia, 0 ppm nitrite, and 5 ppm nitrates. My water does run on the moderately hard side. I can't tell you off the top of my head specific gH or kH and don't have a test kit for either handy right now. pH is 8.0 in the aquarium. Not ideal, but I'd rather have a steady pH than try to mess with it. The aquarium is a planted, cycled 10 gallon that's been established for about a year and a half. There's nothing in the way of decorations that would catch a betta's fins, and my DT lives on the side of the divider without a filter intake or output, so that can't be causing any fin damage, either. The current is extremely gentle. I do a 20% water change about every three weeks unless there's a pressing reason to make them more frequent. I condition the water with NovAqua Plus and AmQuel Plus, and add a half-teaspoon of aquarium salt per gallon. It's a low light setup with just a regular 15 watt flourescent bulb.

My bettas have a mixed diet of Hikari frozen bloodworms (usually about 4 good-sized bloodworms/fish) and Hikari Betta Bio-Gold pellets (3/fish), and I also alternate in Hikari frozen brine shrimp or daphnia on occasion, or a small bit of frozen pea thawed in tank water. They're fed once a day. I usually fast them one day a week, as well.

I've never had a betta with thinning fins like this before, so I'm looking for ideas of what could be going on. I'll try to get some pictures of him for you sometime today. He's been moved to an uncycled quarantine tank with essentially the same water as his regular tank, except the salt levels are 1 tsp per gallon. His neighbor on the other side of the divider in the 10 gallon shows no sign of fin damage or thinning, but he's also a much younger fish. My DT is probably about 2 years old, so I wonder if age might be a factor, although he hasn't slowed down at all. He's very active and loves to flare, which is part of the reason he's been moved somewhere he doesn't have any reflections or fish to display for. His body color is very dark, more matte black than the iridescent black-blue he used to be, but again, I wonder if this is just an effect of aging.

I am planning on picking up some new, fresher food in case what I have on hand has lost some of its nutritional value. It's about time I did anyway. If anyone has any other suggestions or theories, I'd love to hear them.

I don't have any recent photos of him, but here's what he looked like when I first got him.



And here's what he looks like today.



You can see why I'm alarmed. This is damage that happened overnight. He has had some previous fin damage that had been healed for some time before this happened. You can see the regrowth in his caudal fin. It doesn't show up in the photo, but he also has regrowth in his anal fin, as well. I'm not sure how well the overall thinning of his fins shows up here, but I didn't want him flaring, so this is about the best I could do. The section you can see missing from his anal fin is about a fourth of it. The caudal fin he lost almost completely. His dorsal fin is looking ragged at the edges, and his ventral fins are very thin but intact. His pectoral fins both look fine.

He acts like a healthy, happy betta and has an excellent appetite, so I'm really not sure what's going on.

I'm no betta expert by any means, so i cant advise anything other than asking these in the hope it might trigger someone more knowledgable!

Has he got any tankmates?
Are there any rought surfaces?
Has his behaviour changed at all? E.g. is he resting in different places?

hanny93 said:

I'm no betta expert by any means, so i cant advise anything other than asking these in the hope it might trigger someone more knowledgable!

Has he got any tankmates?
Are there any rought surfaces?
Has his behaviour changed at all? E.g. is he resting in different places?

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He has a single tankmate, but it's a divided tank with one male betta in each section, so there's no fin-nipping possible since they can't reach each other. He's since been moved to isolation to remove the temptation to flare, as I'm concerned he'll damage what regrowth he does have since he loves to put on a show. I haven't seen any behavioral changes in him of any kind except, of course, that he's no longer flaring since he's in the hospital tank away from the sight of other fish. There are no rough surfaces in either his regular tank or the hospital tank.

I believe I forgot to mention that I maintain the tanks at 80 degrees Farenheit, which would be about 27-28 degrees Celcius.

Thanks!

jewelcolors said:

hanny93 said:

I'm no betta expert by any means, so i cant advise anything other than asking these in the hope it might trigger someone more knowledgable!

Has he got any tankmates?
Are there any rought surfaces?
Has his behaviour changed at all? E.g. is he resting in different places?

Click to expand...

He has a single tankmate, but it's a divided tank with one male betta in each section, so there's no fin-nipping possible since they can't reach each other. He's since been moved to isolation to remove the temptation to flare, as I'm concerned he'll damage what regrowth he does have since he loves to put on a show. I haven't seen any behavioral changes in him of any kind except, of course, that he's no longer flaring since he's in the hospital tank away from the sight of other fish. There are no rough surfaces in either his regular tank or the hospital tank.

I believe I forgot to mention that I maintain the tanks at 80 degrees Farenheit, which would be about 27-28 degrees Celcius.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

How long have you had your fish in the tank...has he always been in this tank since you got him? I have a DT which had to same problem and I came to the conclusion that the High ph was the cause of his fin problem. He was not happy and became stressed out. He had young juvenile bettas with him but they were not at all affected by the high ph. I ended up removing the young to another tank and completely overhauled his tank...while he sat in a bucket and watched. I replaced his gravel as this may have been the cause to his high ph and replaced it with sand. I put in a log and real plants instead of artificial ones. His fins have stopped rotting and I can just start seeing new growth and the ph is coming down too. Its sitting just around the 7.4 and as the time goes on I'm expecting it to drop to hopefully 7 or 6.8. This has only been in the last 5 days that I did this. Hope to have been of some help

Thanks. I do wonder about the role the pH is playing, but I'm hesitant to mess with it without some solid guidance.

He's lived in this tank for over a year (I did a fishless cycle, then moved him in with his then-neighbor), and never had this problem before. The pH is definitely not caused by anything in the tank. If I fill up a bare tank or a bucket, the water has the same pH, regardless of whether or not it's been treated with anything or how long it's left to sit. I have a larger community tank that's planted and has driftwood in it, and it also has the same pH. All of my tanks (with the exception of my hospital tanks) are planted. The DT's has java ferns, anubias and cryptocorenes in it. The everyday tanks do have gravel substrate, but I think if that were affecting the pH, I would see a difference between my cycled tanks and a bare one or water just sitting in a bucket.

I have two other bettas of approximately the same age, both male HMs, kept in equivalent conditions. The one you see in my avatar has never had fin or health problems of any kind (although I'd better knock on wood, now). The other has blown out his fins a few times, but I don't see any thinning or raggedness in them.

If you have any suggestions for safe, reliable means of lowering the pH and keeping it there, I'm all ears. I would prefer to have these guys closer to an ideal range, but I don't want to risk putting them through pH swings.

Thanks!

jewelcolors said:

Thanks. I do wonder about the role the pH is playing, but I'm hesitant to mess with it without some solid guidance.

He's lived in this tank for over a year (I did a fishless cycle, then moved him in with his then-neighbor), and never had this problem before. The pH is definitely not caused by anything in the tank. If I fill up a bare tank or a bucket, the water has the same pH, regardless of whether or not it's been treated with anything or how long it's left to sit. I have a larger community tank that's planted and has driftwood in it, and it also has the same pH. All of my tanks (with the exception of my hospital tanks) are planted. The DT's has java ferns, anubias and cryptocorenes in it. The everyday tanks do have gravel substrate, but I think if that were affecting the pH, I would see a difference between my cycled tanks and a bare one or water just sitting in a bucket.

I have two other bettas of approximately the same age, both male HMs, kept in equivalent conditions. The one you see in my avatar has never had fin or health problems of any kind (although I'd better knock on wood, now). The other has blown out his fins a few times, but I don't see any thinning or raggedness in them.

If you have any suggestions for safe, reliable means of lowering the pH and keeping it there, I'm all ears. I would prefer to have these guys closer to an ideal range, but I don't want to risk putting them through pH swings.

Thanks!

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Yes its a bit of a dilemma...usually in a planted tank the ph sits around 7-6.8 well it does for mine. The only time I couldn't get the ph to drop is in the tank that my DT was in. I had artificial plants and quartz gravel which I felt was responsible for the high PH. Usually when you have a planted tank and do your usual water change the tap water alters the ph a little bit but after a couple of days or so it starts to drop. How hard is your tap water? I have also soften the water with peat moss which I buried under the sand in a stocking and was told that wood helps soften the water as well. If you don't mind your water looking a bit like tea you could give it a try. If its not the PH then all I can say is there is something there that is stressing your betta out and I know when a betta is stressed you can bet your life the first thing he gets is fin rot. I'm hoping someone on the forum will come to your rescue and give you more solid advice. Good luck.

Thanks very much. I appreciate the input. Like I said, I don't have tests for GH and KH on hand. I'll have to stop in at the store over the weekend and either pick up the tests or let them do the tests for me and write the specific numbers down. I'll see if I can get hold of a local acquaintance who's quite good with fish and find out if he's ever tried to lower the pH in his tanks and what's worked for him if he has since we have the same water supply.

I would say that's not from ph. Best to leave the ph then add additives to adjust. Stable is better than fluctuating.
asfor the finrit, try waterchanges every day for a week at least and see if he improves. Generally ckean water is all they need. If no improvement then time to consider antibiotic meds,
cheers

loraxchick said:

I would say that's not from ph. Best to leave the ph then add additives to adjust. Stable is better than fluctuating.
asfor the finrit, try waterchanges every day for a week at least and see if he improves. Generally ckean water is all they need. If no improvement then time to consider antibiotic meds,
cheers

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That's generally my opinion regarding pH. Since it seems so stable under various conditions, I'd prefer not to mess with it unless there's a method available that's very reliable.

I'm still not convinced this is fin rot, or least not fin rot on its own, due to the overall deterioration of the fin thickness, even in fins that show no evidence of ragged edges or damage of any kind. I've seen a lot of cases of fin rot over the years, and this is nothing like any of them. However, I'm taking some of the same precautions I would with fin rot in any case. He's certainly at risk for it if he doesn't already have it. If I'm able to speak with my local acquaintance this weekend, I'll ask if he's ever seen anything similar in his fish.

How long did it take for him to look like that? Onky a few things cold make fins apoear like that. Finrot, tail-biting( does not resemble tail-biting) or get sucked up into the filter impellar.
Id stick to waterchanges..in isolation if possible with aquarium salt. 1 tablespoon per 5 gal. Hopefully will help without meds. Keep it up for a week or more and note any changes..better or worse.
cheers

I think the weather is cold.
condition control.
water temp. Thailand.
27-28 degrees Celcius.
pH.7-8.