Swim bladder?

I just noticed my betta is only swimming at the top, he's trying to swim down but he can't. What's the best way to fix this?

What do you feed him?
If you feed him dry food only, he probably has air in his digestive tract and that is causing him to float to the surface. Stop feeding him dry food for a week and see if it improves. Use frozen but defrosted or live foods.

Make sure your water quality is good. You want 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and less than 20ppm of nitrate.
Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate if there are any readings above this.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

---------------------------
Can you post a short 30 second video if the fish trying to swim?
If the video is too big for this website, post it on YouTube and copy & paste the link here. We can view it at YouTube. If you are using a mobile phone to take the video, have the phone horizontal so the video takes up the entire screen. If you have the phone vertical, you get video in the middle and black on either side.

Colin_T said:

What do you feed him?
If you feed him dry food only, he probably has air in his digestive tract and that is causing him to float to the surface. Stop feeding him dry food for a week and see if it improves. Use frozen but defrosted or live foods.

Make sure your water quality is good. You want 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and less than 20ppm of nitrate.
Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate if there are any readings above this.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

---------------------------
Can you post a short 30 second video if the fish trying to swim?
If the video is too big for this website, post it on YouTube and copy & paste the link here. We can view it at YouTube. If you are using a mobile phone to take the video, have the phone horizontal so the video takes up the entire screen. If you have the phone vertical, you get video in the middle and black on either side.

Click to expand...

He eats pellets and freeze dried blood worms so I'll definitely get him frozen food.
He's actually back to his old self but I'll tell you what happened.
I tested the water and everything was normal except the ammonia was .50
So I quickly did over 75% water change and shortly after he did a big poo and then was able to swim normal, then he just swam around to celebrate lol.
But just last night I did a big water change so I don't know how the ammonia was high. Could it be the drift wood I added?

Also here's the video anyway

Itsmemario said:

So I quickly did over 75% water change and shortly after he did a big poo and then was able to swim normal, then he just swam around to celebrate lol.

Click to expand...

That's a typical response to this issue. The fish ingest air when feeding and they have air inside their body and it eventually comes out the other end. When the air comes out they can swim normally again.

Try to minimise the amount of dry foods you feed him and use raw or cooked prawn/ shrimp, and any other frozen or live foods you can get.

He was floating at the top again tonight! He hasn't had any food since last night when he was floating.
His water was fine but I changed it anyway and just like last night he started swimming normal after I changed the water. So not sure how a water change helps him to stop floating both times?
He also has Ich looking stuff a pretty lot on him, it came out of nowhere because I check him closely all day and didn't notice anything.
But it kind of explains his erratic swimming, one day he'll peacefully swim around and the next he's going crazy back and forth.
I'm going to do the raising temperature and salt route.
Ugh this is frustrating.....

In the video in post # 3, the fish is gasping at the surface and that could mean there is a problem with the water quality.

If there is any ammonia or nitrite in the water it will stress him out and could cause him to gasp at the surface. Ammonia and nitrite will also cause fish to produce excess mucous that looks like a cream or white film over their body and fins.

If you post a picture of him, I will check him for whitespot (Ichthyophthirius).

I noticed that too but I've been doing a small water change in the morning and a bigger one at night so not sure what more I can do. Last night and this morning the ammonia and nitrites are 0.

Also this morning there was no white dots on him but I did get a pic last night. It almost looked like tiny bubbles but it also looked like salt that I read ich could look like.
And he has no mucous stuff on him.

I forgot I took a video, you can see the dots better here.

In the video it looks like there are some white spots on the edge of his anal (bottom) fin. Those are not whitespot, they look like the end of the anal fin rays. If there are other spots then let me know where to look and I will check again but he doesn't appear to have whitespot.

Fish with whitespot tend to rub on objects in the tank. Does he do that?

I guess it doesn't show in the video but he had them on his body too. He doesn't rub but he does this weird thing where he swims down really fast and accidentally hits the gravel and swims back up and does it again.

Poor guy..... the only thing I know is he's only floating up at night(whatever that means lol). All day he's fine. His water is fine, everything is at 0 and he also seemed to be trying to get air at the top again(maybe it's his gills since the water is fine?)
I also left some air in the top of his house so he can feel like he's low but can still get air and he likes it

I reckon he is swallowing air for some reason. As to why, I have no idea. He might be having trouble breathing and is taking in more air in an attempt to get more oxygen. He might have problems with his eye sight and is trying to grab things that he thinks are on the surface, but is getting nothing but air.

Are you still feeding him dry floating foods or have you started using frozen and live foods?

Try increasing the aeration from the filter.
Make sure you use a clean bucket for water changes and that bucket does not get used for anything except the fish tank.
Make sure there are no aerosols (air fresheners, hair spray, deodorant, perfumes, bug sprays, etc) being used in the room.
Make sure you don't have any moisturising cream, grease, oil, perfume or anything else on your skin when you feed the fish or work in the tank.
Make sure you dechlorinate the new water before adding it to the tank. Get a "FISH ONLY" bucket and fill it with tap water. Add dechlorinator and aerate it for 30 minutes, then use it to fill the tank.

Add some floating plants so he can rest on them near the surface. Water Sprite (Ceratopteris thalictroides/ cornuta) is the best floating plant for Bettas. It grows rapidly on the surface but can also be planted in the substrate where it will grow into a nice light green bush.

If you can't get any Water Sprite, get a few artificial plants and let them float on the surface. Try to get silk plants rather than plastic and make sure they have no sharp bits on them.

Ok, thanks so much! I got him frozen food and I'm going to get live plants tomorrow.
Will an air stone help?
Also, I didn't even think of this but we've been having crazy wildfires here. The air quality has been between 150-200! It's always smokey outside. I wonder if that has something to do with it?

I wouldn't add an airstone, just increase the air coming out of the filter.

If the air inside the house smells smokey, that could be a contributing factor, especially if it's been going on for more than a couple of days.

Colin_T said:

I wouldn't add an airstone, just increase the air coming out of the filter.

If the air inside the house smells smokey, that could be a contributing factor, especially if it's been going on for more than a couple of days.

Click to expand...

Yes, it's been going on for weeks and the house does smell smokey inside, not the last couple days though.
The air pump is all the way up, this morning he's having a lot of trouble. I took the tube off and put it in the water for a few minutes.
I got the Indian almond leaves, would it be ok if I put one in the tank?