Dark spot on her head - it's spreading!

[BettaMomma]

Last night when I was feeding the girls I noticed a dark spot on Millie's head right next to her eye. I thought maybe she had been nipped so decided to just go to bed and check it this morning. I noticed this morning it's spread across her head and is now over to her other eye.

I don't have my camera here today, so I can't post pics... but it's kind of a darkish spot, almost looks like a tiny burn sort of? and the best way I can describe it is that it's a dark line that goes from one eye over to the other - as if she had glasses on and it's the mark that was left from that. lol
If you look at it from the side, it looks kinda like the top layer of skin right there is missing.

ideas?
I think I'll pull her out and quarantine her until I figure out what to do....

 

[wrs]

is she a marbel betta? Maybe she is just color changing? I have noticed by goldfish change colors, and thought it was a disease as well, but noticed that she was turning white.

maybe millie is just turning dark?

 

[BettaMomma]

Here is a picture of her from a while ago:

I'm pretty sure this is something more than color change, although I did think of that too. It looks like it's affecting her skin - maybe eating it away.

I'm terrified that it's HITH disease, but I'm just really, really hoping it's not.

 

[WILDER]

It looks red in the picture is it, if it is eating away at her skin, you will need to use tetracycline, is she flicking with it, also add some salt to the tank, does it look like it is peeling away.

 

[BettaMomma]

It looks red in the picture is it, if it is eating away at her skin, you will need to use tetracycline, is she flicking with it, also add some salt to the tank, does it look like it is peeling away.

Well, the picture up above is from a long time ago - I just put it up there to show someone what her coloring is.

It's actually not in that picture - it's up on top of her head and it now looks like someone sort of cut a little slit from one of her eyes across to the other, right on her forehead. She doesn't have any other signs of anything going on - she's still eating and the rest of her body looks great. She has slowed down a little bit and she's not chasing everyone around like she normally does.



I guess in some ways it kinda looks like mold too.

 

[WILDER]

I think I would medicate with an antibiotic and some salt as it dosn't sound right, and you say it dosn't look right to you, just to be on the safe side.

 

[BettaMomma]

Tetracycline, ya think?
I have almost every kind of med here so if you think something else would be better, lemme know. I'm leaning toward the tetracycline, though.

 

[WILDER]

Tetracycline its a good med and treats a large range of deseases, i no about your med cuboard wish we had access to the amount of meds you can get, i have to use my antibiotics when they get ill.

 

[BettaMomma]

Yeah, it's too bad you guys can't get all these meds over there.
I doubt I'd have had quite the success treating the nasty things some of my rescues have had if I didn't have these meds available.

I'm salting the heck out of Archie's old tank right now for little Millie.
She's going to be sooooo very ornary in that little tiny tank all alone.
She'll have no one to harass!

 

[Sorrell]

The red in that picture is completely normal, just parts of her gill bars

Does it look more like cotton or like a hard callous type of sore?

 

[BettaMomma]

The very best way I can think of to describe it, after having stared at it for a while, is that someone took her out of the tank, held her down and gouged a line across her forehead out with a pencil, and it left pencil marks along both sides.

Hmm.. you know - I do have a somewhat older crappy digi cam here.
Let me go see if I can get that old thing to work out.

 

[BettaMomma]

No go on the pho to.
My computer here at home only has 64 MB of RAM. lol
I can't even get the pictures to transfer to this machine, let alone open them.

She's REALLY mad that she's in that little tank now. She's swimming laps and she's got some pretty major stress bars going on right now.

Oh well.

 

[Kiarra]

Is there ANYTHING she could have cut herself on?

 

[BettaMomma]

I thought about that too.
She's famous for jumping - HIGH - when i'm feeding her and I thought it could maybe have been when I was dropping food in that she jumped up and hit her head. BUT.. I noticed it right when I first started feeding them, and she hadn't jumped yet. And, it has doubled in size now - spread all the way across her forehead - since last night.

Could that have happened and it started an infection that's spreading that fast?

I was terrified that it had spread that fast so she's in a nice warm sparkly hospital tank and I started her on the tetracycline.

 

[Kiarra]

Some infections can spread amazingly fast. I don't know if that's what she has, but treating her with Tetracycline is probably a very good idea.