Emily Grace
New Member
Hello! I would appreciate any Insight anyone can provide on this, as I can’t seem to find an answer anywhere. I am including a ton of info, because I have no idea what’s relevant.
About two months back I started noticing this brown stuff accumulating in my fish, Crescent’s tank. This is my first time having a betta so my immediate assumption was that it was really liquid poop of some sort. I figured that was just what his poop looked like, since I never saw more solid normal fish poops in there either. Eventually I got really worried and brought the top two pictures (taken when he was in a smaller, 2.5 gal aquarium) to my local pet co as well as some water to have them test my water. The woman there told me the water was fine & that actual fish diarrhea would make the water murky, which it’s always been really clear. She told me I was feeding too much (about 6-8 pellets a day) and told me to feed him half as much every other day, and to add in other higher protein foods like dried blood worms and shrimp, and to stop with pellets for a while. She said he was probably stressed because I had him on a slightly rocky surface and was metabolizing too much food too quickly, so I moved him to a better spot and followed her recommendations.
None of that seemed to help, and I quickly began feeding him more because I couldn’t find any resource that suggested you feed your fish as little as she did, so I upped it to about an eyeball mass of food twice a day, with one day fast like a lot of people seem to suggest. During this time I was checking the tank for normal poops and I saw none, so I still assume(d) the mystery brown stuff was poop. Recently, because of a snail death and moving back home from school because of covid-19 I completely broke down the tank, deep cleaned everything, and reset it at home with fully new water. For about a week and I didn’t see any poop, mysterious brown or otherwise in the tank and Crescent was constipated, I assume from stress of aB emergency four hour car ride in a small container. Then he started to have some little round pellet shaped poop and his stomach went back to normal size. After about a half a week-a week of normal poops I stoped seeing the little round ones and the tank started getting those weird brown blotches again.
I am now considering the possibility that the brown is brown algae, but that doesn’t explain the complete lack of regular fish poop in the tank. Does this look like algae? I’m not sure, now that I am thinking about it it might kind of grow over time but I’m not sure, it does seem to increase exponentially after i clean everything. I am having to scrub everything down every other week just about, and it can get a lot worse looking than these images. Now I am worried that if this is algae, why doesn’t my fish seem to poop at all?
Anybody have ideas or ever seen anything like this? If it’s algae should I boil everything or something?
First two images: old pics in a smaller tank from when issues began.
Last two images: today in a 5 gal tank (Crescent is currently being treated for some fin rot which you can see)
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About two months back I started noticing this brown stuff accumulating in my fish, Crescent’s tank. This is my first time having a betta so my immediate assumption was that it was really liquid poop of some sort. I figured that was just what his poop looked like, since I never saw more solid normal fish poops in there either. Eventually I got really worried and brought the top two pictures (taken when he was in a smaller, 2.5 gal aquarium) to my local pet co as well as some water to have them test my water. The woman there told me the water was fine & that actual fish diarrhea would make the water murky, which it’s always been really clear. She told me I was feeding too much (about 6-8 pellets a day) and told me to feed him half as much every other day, and to add in other higher protein foods like dried blood worms and shrimp, and to stop with pellets for a while. She said he was probably stressed because I had him on a slightly rocky surface and was metabolizing too much food too quickly, so I moved him to a better spot and followed her recommendations.
None of that seemed to help, and I quickly began feeding him more because I couldn’t find any resource that suggested you feed your fish as little as she did, so I upped it to about an eyeball mass of food twice a day, with one day fast like a lot of people seem to suggest. During this time I was checking the tank for normal poops and I saw none, so I still assume(d) the mystery brown stuff was poop. Recently, because of a snail death and moving back home from school because of covid-19 I completely broke down the tank, deep cleaned everything, and reset it at home with fully new water. For about a week and I didn’t see any poop, mysterious brown or otherwise in the tank and Crescent was constipated, I assume from stress of aB emergency four hour car ride in a small container. Then he started to have some little round pellet shaped poop and his stomach went back to normal size. After about a half a week-a week of normal poops I stoped seeing the little round ones and the tank started getting those weird brown blotches again.
I am now considering the possibility that the brown is brown algae, but that doesn’t explain the complete lack of regular fish poop in the tank. Does this look like algae? I’m not sure, now that I am thinking about it it might kind of grow over time but I’m not sure, it does seem to increase exponentially after i clean everything. I am having to scrub everything down every other week just about, and it can get a lot worse looking than these images. Now I am worried that if this is algae, why doesn’t my fish seem to poop at all?
Anybody have ideas or ever seen anything like this? If it’s algae should I boil everything or something?
First two images: old pics in a smaller tank from when issues began.
Last two images: today in a 5 gal tank (Crescent is currently being treated for some fin rot which you can see)
