Dropsy

[cutechic]

One of the males has dropsy. He's in a filtered, divided 2.5g. The past week he's been sitting on the sand, and today I noticed he's pineconing. I think I'm going to euthanise.

My question is, will I have to tear the tank apart and sanitise, to prevent it from infecting my other betta (if he hasn't been infected already; he's not showing any symptoms though)?

Thanks in advance.

 

[BettaMomma]

Are you going to try to even treat him for the dropsy?

If you have him in a divided tank, get the other one out of there right away.
You'll want to treat the other one for dropsy, even if there are no signs - in my opinion.

IF it were me, I'd go ahead and try to treat the one with dropsy too. That's just my opionion, tho...

 

[cutechic]

Of course I'm going to try treating him- I've been doing daily water changes and adding silver since he started laying on the sand. He looks dreadful, and I doubt he'll last through the night. I hate euthanising fish, but I don't want him to suffer.

I've just isolated him and will continue adding colloidal silver to both tanks.

Should I sanitise the original tank though?

 

[BettaMomma]

Great. I'm sorry to hear he's doing poorly I always hold out hope for fishies to make a miraculous recovery.

And yep, I'd definitely sanitize the tank before anything else goes in/back in the tank. I'm a freak about stuff like that - I know it's COMPLETELY unnecessary, but I always throw out everything that was in a tank with a fish that died of a disease and buy all new. But, like I said - it's completely unnecessary and cost a bundle if it happens more than once or twice.

Someone else might be able to give you better advice than I can about sanitizing the tank, but I definitely would.

Good luck with your fishies.

 

[cutechic]

Alright, I'll do that now. The other (non-dropsy) betta will have to live in a .5g for a couple days. I might as well sanitise the 10g while I'm at it. I isolated the 2 remaining fish in the 10g since the rest died off suddenly of unknown causes. Ugh.

 

[BettaMomma]

Ooh, that sucks.
It sounds like your fish problems come around like mine do - the whole "When it rains it pours" type of deal.

Yikes. Good luck with your fishies.

 

[cutechic]

Yep, that's always how it is.

Thanks for the luck, I'm sure I'll need it.