Finally found the cause

[Synirr]

Zarobi, one of my veils who battled disease almost constantly, died a few days ago, but I didn't know exactly why. I figured it was some kind of bacterial infection, because he had a couple of red sores that would never heal up. Well, I finally bought a book on bettas that has been sitting at my LFS forever, and it has the answer! What it calls "acid-fast disease" sounds exactly like what Zarobi had. It's caused by Mycobacteria, which are resistant to most antibotics. The book says there's no cost-effective treatment for it, so at least I know that I did all I could for Zarobi (gave him all kinds of meds, but nothing worked.)
The book says this is most common in bettas with impaired immune systems (such as old ones) which seems to be true, as I have had another betta die of this a long time ago, but he was very old.

"Infections often manifest as slow growing bloody lesions anywhere on the body. Diagnoses is confirmed by the presence of red stained rods in a skin smear treated with the acid fact staining technique."

Just thought I'd throw the information out there for any of you who might have fish with the same ailment. It's good to finally know what it is

The book is Bettas: A Complete Pet Owner's Guide from Barron's, for those of you interested. It has a lot of neat info about wind species and such as well.

 

[50000_tears]

i have that book..its a lot of info..i read it a few times a little weird for me but i use it for disease identifying . that sucks i havent had a betta die for a while (i lost one to dropsy on the tenth)..may zarobi RIP