Help With Sick Betta - Update With Recovery Pics

[Janene]

Our Betta has suddenly taken Sick. He often sits in the bottom of the tank now and only swims
to the surface if we drop a couple of Bloodworms in for him. But even then it's not as eager as it
was. Also, he's got some small spots on him.

We hope someone can help. I hate to see him to sick looking, he is such a beautiful
fish.

to help out
He is in a 20 litre Tank, set at 26 degrees Celcius
He's also the only fish in there.

(please note the greenish tinge to the water is from "Multi Cure" which is a disease treatment.)

 

[pippoodle]

it looks like white spot to me - i would recommend a couple of 50% water changes - until the green tinge disappears totally -replacing with dechlorinated tap water matching temp - and then add a white spot treatment to the tank

is the tank filtered?
and do you do regular water changes?
water stats? ammonia , nitrites and nitrates results please

 

[Janene]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, the tank is filtered -with carbon filter included.
I'm not sure of those stats? Do you mean the PH levels? They seem normal, perhaps a little high tonight so I added some PH down.

I don't do full changes, I do 50% changes, is that bad?
The green tinge is from the treatment liquid "Multi Cure", it clears after a couple of days - It says it works on Whitespot, so should I continue it? I only added some tonight, not long before taking the picture - thats why it looks green.

 

[CTlovesKS]

it looks like a bad chase of white spot to me. This could be due to stress or bad water conditions. White spot treatment is very cheap (I found some at a shop for a £1 and it done the done) and its only 2-3 days till the white spot goes away.

 

[electric yellow]

That looks like what my Ramjet has His behaviour sounds like him aswell.

 

[CeeJayy]

Your only problem is that if you get some white spot med and put it in then seeing as your filter has carbon in it then it will take the meds out before the fish is treated, try to get him to a hospital tank - one without a carbon filter.

Same will happen with the multi-cure.

For both Janene and Electric Yellow - visit this website <a href="http/freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/ich.htm" target="_blank">http/freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/ich.htm</a>

 

[CTlovesKS]

Your only problem is that if you get some white spot med and put it in then seeing as your filter has carbon in it then it will take the meds out before the fish is treated, try to get him to a hospital tank - one without a filter.

Same will happen with the multi-cure.

If thats the only fish in the tank then they would be able to switch of the fliter and put a bubble rock in there for oxgyen... That way the carbon wont be working as fliter is off. Though if other fish in the tank do as above has said. Put him in a tank on his own with just a bubble rock fpr oxgyen

 

[electric yellow]

Could you just remove the carbon?

 

[Janene]

I don't have a second tank
Although I did take the carbon sack out of the filter, so it's just the white mesh and the balls in there now. So the carbon is gone. I didn't realise that it did that! Gah, with I knew that yesterday lol. Thank you again.
I will get a new Carbon sack to put in when the treament is over.

So, is there hope of saving him? Or is he too far gone?

 

[CTlovesKS]

I don't have a second tank
Although I did take the carbon sack out of the filter, so it's just the white mesh and the balls in there now. So the carbon is gone. I didn't realise that it did that! Gah, with I knew that yesterday lol. Thank you again.
I will get a new Carbon sack to put in when the treament is over.

So, is there hope of saving him? Or is he too far gone?

Whitespot doesnt usualy kill the fish unless it is left for ages without treatment. I would say you could save him if you put the treatment in asap. Also the days couple of days after the treatment you should notice him coming back to himself and swimming around etc. Good luck, keep up updated

 

[CeeJayy]

I don't have a second tank
Although I did take the carbon sack out of the filter, so it's just the white mesh and the balls in there now. So the carbon is gone. I didn't realise that it did that! Gah, with I knew that yesterday lol. Thank you again.
I will get a new Carbon sack to put in when the treament is over.

So, is there hope of saving him? Or is he too far gone?

I have saved loads of fish from whitespot.

Whatever you do, dont let your filter turn off or dry out - this will kill all your bacteria you have built up and when you do eventually put the filter back in there will be no bacteria to process ammonia or nitrItes. If your certain you have removed the carbon then go ahed and treat in the tank.

 

[Janene]

I had added the dose of "Multi cure" before I took the carbon sack out of the filter.
Probably an hour before I realised, should I add more of the treatment? Or wait
the three days that it says to inbetween doses?

Thanks everyone for the advice.

 

[LauraFrog]

Hmmmm... are you in Australia too? If that multi cure is what I think it is (Vitapet) it's next to useless on white spot. It's probably best to do a few big water changes (50% twice a day for 2 days) to get rid of it and then start with a proper whitespot remedy. It 'aids in the treatment of whitespot' but it doesn't really get rid of it. If you are using the vitapet stuff I'd also go for a better quality med, I have used both multicure and whitespot remedy from them and not had good results compared to using better quality treatments. The instructions on this treatment are very vague and it's really easy to overdose it using the instructions on the bottle. They say wait 3 days, do a 25% water change, and redose, but don't say whether to treat the new water only or redose the whole tank... I redosed the whole tank and the fish died, so I think I got it wrong...

Increasing the temperature is also helpful, he would be comfortable at 30 degrees to help kill off the illness if you raised it by one degree a day. The parasite that causes whitespot does not like high temperatures.

The water stats we were asking for before (ammonia, nitrite and nitrate) refer to the nitrogen cycle and its byproducts - there are some pinned topics in the New To The Hobby section about it. Diseases like whitespot might just occur sometimes, but often they happen because the fish is stressed and one of the main causes of it is poor water quality (ammonia and nitrites present in the water). How long have you had the tank set up for with him in it, and how often do you do the water changes? Doing 50% water changes at a time is good, doing more than 50% is too stressful for the fish.

What carbon does is absorbs most chemicals that end up in your water. This means it's very good when there are problems with water contamination (like fertilisers in the water supply). Carbon has a limited capacity for holding all this gunk it absorbs from the water, and when it's full it starts discharging the chemicals back. Most of us on here don't use it because it isn't really necessary, but if you want to use it you should change it once a month. It will definitely have to be replaced if it's been in the tank with the medication.

Don't worry too much as ich(whitespot) on its own is not extremely serious, it is almost always curable and apart from the white spots your betta looks very healthy.

 

[Janene]

Thank you Laura for the advice

I am fairly new to fish, I'm a cat person myself! Lol. But I am doing everything they told me at the place I got him from. The Tank has been set up approx a month or so. I change the water, or 50% of it weekly.

Can you reommend some treatments? As I was told Multi Cure was good for it (guess I should not believe them anymore). I'm going out tomorrow to get some clean filter supplies. I will do a change of water tomorrow. I've adjusted the temp a degree to bring it to 27, will do the same tomorrow.

Thanks again.

 

[LauraFrog]

Just about anything that says it is a specific whitespot treatment will be good, the more specific the instructions the better. There are some people who have even perfected a way of curing it using salt and very warm water, but in my opinion this is more stressful for the fish than using a medication.

If the tank has only been set up for a month, it's likely that it isn't cycled. This is another area where pet stores often give out poor advice (or just not enough of it). I wasn't told about cycling either - fortunately you only have one betta in 20 litres. My first tank was the same size, and I had ten platys in mine. (Talk about ridiculous overstocking... I was lucky not to kill them all).

So here's the simple version of the nitrogen cycle. Fish produce ammonia all the time - it is expired through their gills, they pee it out, and any decomposing fish poo or uneaten food in the tank also becomes ammonia very quickly. Ammonia is extremely toxic to fish - in fractions of one part per million, it starts having effects on their health. So obviously you don't want it in your tank. You can't stop it being produced, so you have to get rid of it. You do it by cycling the tank.
Basically there is a species of bacteria that lives in the media (sponges, balls and rings) inside your filter that changes ammonia into nitrite. Nitrite is almost as poisonous as ammonia. Then there is a second species that changes nitrite into nitrAte (note the difference in the spelling). Nitrate is not harmful to fish.
These bacteria are not present in a new filter in a new tank. They do not miraculously appear from nowhere as soon as you add fish, and you can't establish them by adding some magic snake oil out of a bottle either. Most of the time we recommend fishless cycling, which is where you add ammonia out of a bottle (when there are no fish in the tank) for the bacteria to feed on until there is a stable colony in your tank. This means that when you add fish, there are enough bacteria present to remove the ammonia as it is produced so the ammonia reading is always zero. You can't do this if you already have fish, so you're probably going through a fish-in cycle at the moment. That means that there are fish in a tank that does not have enough nitrifying bacteria to remove all their waste, so you have to step in by changing the water to dilute the ammonia and nitrites until the bacterial colony establishes itself. Once the tank is cycled, it's a lot less worry.

I can't tell you how far through the cycle you are unless I have the readings for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, you might even be fully cycled. In a 20L tank with 50% weekly water changes and only one fish in it, the readings are probably very slight, and you are probably doing enough water changes to keep the fish from being harmed by the ammonia. In the meantime it's probably best not to change the filter sponges or clean the filter at all other than changing the carbon, because the less the bacterial colony is disturbed when it's developing, the faster it will grow.

I mention this because there's a small chance that the ammonia reading has stressed the betta just enough for the whitespot to get a grip on him, and also because it's very important to know if you're thinking of starting another tank or adding more fish to this one.