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The fish lives alone in a ten gallon, no need to quarantine.
You don't have to bin everything. Plastic can be bleached. Wood, rocks and gravel can be boiled or baked in the oven for an hour at 100-150C. Glass can be bleached or washed in vinegar or alcohol (60%+).
www.seachem.com
bettasource.com
Completely unimportant but have to let you know anyway - it's not his dorsal fin involved, the dorsal fin is the one on his back. It's the caudal fin being affected here, the tail.
Just wanted to stress this part of Colin's advice for you or anyone else who lurks to read the thread and is in a similar boat. If courses of antibiotics haven't worked, if the fish dies or needs to be euthanises because of a severe infection like this where the specific cause is unknown, it's far too risky to use the same tank/substrate/decor/plants and buy another betta and plop them in the same tank.
Steralising and starting over means binning everything that cannot be bleached, so pretty much the entire contents. Wood, stone, most substrates..
The tank itself can be cleaned with bleach, rinsed incredibly well, allowed to air dry, rinsed again with water and triple strength declorinator, rinsed thoroughly, allowed to air dry again. That should be enough to have killed off any bacteria and make the tank safe for use again. Some equipment can be soaked in a bleach solution - buckets, nets, filter and some filter media, like sponges, airline tubing. But a lot of that stuff is cheap and easier/safer to replace rather than trying to steralise if you're not sure how to do it properly. Some plants can survive a bleach dip, but many, especially the more expensive ones, won't, and most wouldn't risk it and bin the plants, substrate etc. Not worth the risk. I'd personally bleach the tank and filter itself, bin the rest and start over.
I just got seachem paragauard, I was going to start dips today, or just dose the whole tank. What do you think, my plants might die but i would rather save him
In march to almost july it was just that little bump, when it got worse I did the first 3 doses of seachem kanaplex, and another round a few weeks after, along with salt. I'm not sure if seach paragaurd is a non antibiotic but I just got that, do you have any recommendations?Thank you so much for the tag and the vote of confidence! Sadly though, I'm far from a fish expert, let alone in diseases. I just often end up in the emergency threads because I can usually talk someone through an emergency first aid water change and my heart goes out to people having an emergency and I want to help where I can! Which usually just means urging a large water change and tagging @Colin_T for all else, since he really is the disease expert!
Hi OP. I do have to agree though that he's in very rough shape. Can someone link me to whichever product Parguard is, please? When I search I'm only getting results for the birth control device, and lots of US products aren't available in the UK. I don't want to advise trying a med when I don't know what's in it.
@mll6966 I'm sorry that this is happening to your fish, and that the news isn't great. @Colin_T might sound a little cold when he recommends euthanising him, because for you, he's your pet fish with a name and you can't imagine doing it while he's swimming around, but Colin is looking at the damage - look closely again at the progression in the photographs.. it isn't just that he's lost his tail. It has eaten into his body! No matter how active he is, that has to be causing a lot of pain, and the chances of successfully treating it at this late stage, without knowing the precise bacteria that's causing it, are incredibly low. But throwing random antibiotics at him in the hope it might work isn't a solution either, since it means extending his suffering while you try different antibiotic courses in a "hit 'em and hope" approach, and that kind of misuse of antibiotics is why we now have drug resistant bacteria at all, and drug resistant bacteria are killing humans as well as animals. Mis-using antibiotics without knowing what the actual bacteria involved is, in order to save a single pet fish that is unlikely to survive at this point - isn't something we can encourage in good faith for that reason.
So while Colin's bedside manner might be upsetting when you want to save your pet fish, he really is considering how painful that must be for the fish. I winced when I saw how much it had eaten into his body, that's a nasty infection. Had treatment begun back when the lump first appeared and grew in March, or when the tail first began to recede, we'd have a better chance of saving him. But now you can really only follow Colin's advice and try using the methylene blue (can still use it with a blue fish, but it will stain the silicone on your tank) or the broad spectrum non-antibiotic treatment until you can get him to a fish vet. But you need to start that urgently, because despite swimming around, and looking "happy" (we really cannot tell, as humans, if fish are happy" that poor betta is being eaten alive and is suffering.
The aquatic vet isn't likely to operate, more likely to take a scraping and identify which bacteria is involved, so an antibiotic can be chosen that targets the specific bacteria involved. But not many people will or can afford to take a £10 betta to an aquatic vet. So they end up trying random antibiotics hoping that they will work and causing more problems as I wrote above and extending the animal's suffering. If the vet says that he's too far gone and also recommends euthanising, then it would be best to listen to them, I'm sorry.
But this began back in March, he's only just had a second attempt at treatment, and you were reluctant to try a third, so the slowness in reacting/treating is a bit alarming to me... if you want to try to save him (and I completely understand that you can't face the idea of euthanising him yourself) and you truly are willing to take him to the aquatic vets as soon as possible - then you need to get hold of and start treating him with that broad spectrum non-antibiotic or methylene blue immmediately - go to a store to buy it I mean, rather than order it online and wait days for delivery, because the fish is being eaten alive and suffering.
I'm sorry I don't have more optimistic news for you.
