Help Please! Girls' eyes clouding over

[purple_drazi]

I've got 3 girls in a 5gal Eclipse.
I was having a problem with algae and wanted to add an otto so I was gradually (like 1 cup of water every week) changing over from salt to reg. tank water. About 6 weeks ago I noticed that one of the girls had what looked like a cataract on her eyes, there was a cloudyness in the middle. I pulled her out, put her in a hospital tank with salt and bettamax and it cleared up by the next day. I thought that the eye thing might have been due to the water change over to I stopped it and moved back to salt.

Yesterday as I was cleaning the tank I noticed that the cloudyness is back on the eyes of the first girl and one of the other girls now has it too.
eek. I immediately added bettamax to the water but I have no idea what is causing this. I can't find anything about it on the net and unlike the first time, the problem hasn't cleared up so quickly.

Anyone have any ideas on what it is and what kind of better treatment there might be?

 

[black angel]

cloudy eye is a bacterial condition. doing more water changes may help but usually it stays, salting to 1% may help but keeping the water really clean is a must. have you tested the water for ammonia and nitrites?

 

[purple_drazi]

thanks for your reply. I hadn't tested the water in that tank in a long time - just did a 50% water change every two weeks or so.
I may have gotten behind in my water changes and not noticed it.

I changed 50% yesterday and did another 50% today.

 

[Alix]

wow every 2 weeks? i do a complete water change for my one betta every friday. an a few every now an then when i get bored

 

[purple_drazi]

wow every 2 weeks? i do a complete water change for my one betta every friday. an a few every now an then when i get bored

I understand, and when I had my betta in a simple glass bowl I changed the water something like every 3 days.

The 3 girls are in a 6 gal. Eclipse (not 5, my bad) which has a bio-wheel filtration system as well as reg. filter media though so it's not necessary (or even good for the beneficial bacteria) to do a 100% change once the filter has become established and the tank has cycled.

 

[Karah's_Mommy]

Sounds like popeye to me. I treated with Maracyn when one of my boys had it, and it cleared it up.