Please Help Me Help My Betta! I'm Desperate!

[AmyDee]

Hi all, I am new to this forum and am desperately seeking help for my poor sick Betta fish, Pablo. He has fin rot for sure... the fins on the side of his body are what is concerning me most. They are half gone with the fin rays exposed at the ends. He also has whiteish grey patches on his fins, they are not fuzzy and seem to be getting worse.

He lives by himself in a 10 gallon tank with a filter and light. He has been living in this tank for almost two months, before that he was in a 5 gallon with no filter, the water got super gross... lots of algea and smelt like rotten eggs... which is how he got the fin rot and why I upgraded his situation. He is an old guy, I have had him for almost 5 years and got him full grown.

I tried treating him with Maracyn2... did two treatments, nothing. Then I was thinking that maybe I should worry about the fungus first, so I am now using Tetra Fungus Guard, the 1st dose, but he looks worse today. he looks happy, swimming around, has a good appetite, but there is def. something wrong and I have been trying to find someone to ask but at the pet store they just say "use Betta Fix" for anything.

I am hoping that someone can tell me how to take care of my little guy, he has grown to be a member of our little family.

Thank you so much,
Amy

P.S. I did not have a ph tester until recently, liek in the past I checked it a few times with strips but hadn't done it in a while. Now he has ameter attached to his aquarium and it reads the highest level possible, however we put in two doses of ph balance, so I am not sure if the meter doesn't work, or if I should put more of the stuff into the water. Suggestions?

 

[jasonh_000]

you arent saying how frequently you are changing the water.

i change the water on my 10gal 50% once a week. sometimes i do 25% as well. i change the water wednesdays and saturdays.

make sure you have a heater with adjustable thermostat. turn the temp up to 85f
get some sea salt from the grocery store. it's the same as kosher salt. add a few pinches in.

dont use any more of those treatments. it is probably stressing him out.
you can use melafix diluted or betta fix. it doesnt work wonders though.

so to recap:

warm water with some sea salt
turn off lights to reduce stress.
no more weird cures.
dont use any weird water [like filtered]
add extra stresscoat.

it's good that he has a good appetite. once this issue is resolved his fins will grow back fairly quickly.

 

[sadguppy]

Nice big water changes, every day using temperature matched dechlorinated water, and keep going with the medicines.

 

[Blubble37]

agreeed, water changes will also help remove some of the spores from the water, if the fish looks happy and has a good appetite then he feels better, obviously the treatment is having the desired effect upon him, it does take quite a while for their fins to regrow however, so you may be in for a wait :L

hope this helps

Blubs37

 

[sibbick92]

Nice big water changes, every day using temperature matched dechlorinated water, and keep going with the medicines.

hi can anyone one help me out its not urgent so no worries

 

[Blubble37]

make your own thread and we'll help, thread hijacking is frowned upon

 

[AmyDee]

1 do two 25% water changes each week.

He never lost his appetite and despite getting sicker looking has remained spunky.

There are more fungus patches then before I started the treatment and his fins are getting worse, today I noticed that I can see the fin rays on his tail fins as well. So the treatments are def. not working.

I have tried aquarium salt, it has little effect.

I need reccomendations on an antiobiotic that will work as it seems to be aggressive... around 50% of his side fins are gone with the rays exposed and now I can see them at the tip of his tail too. I need a more aggressive treatment then just clean water, he has that.

I am wondering, no one commented on my question about the ph and the bottom of my original post, and I do know that water parameters probably have an effect on his ability to heal. Maybe the treatments are not working because of the ph, but at this point I am not sure if the meter is broken or not.

Ohhh and his water is at 26 degrees celsius.

Also, there are a few different suggestions here, use the medicines, don't use the medicines, which is it? Has anyone successfully treated this before?

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

Th pH won't have anything to do with it, i wouln't think.
He is getting on the old side for a betta so...it may be that's why he can't heal it's hard to recommend a treatment with confidence if we're not really sure what the illness is. Do you think you could post a picture?

 

[AmyDee]

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/ii535/Jamie_Fogal/IMG_5322.jpg[/IMG

[IMG]http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/ii535/Jamie_Fogal/IMG_5321.jpg

 

[AmyDee]

The water is green from the tetra fungus guard. Today we are doing a 100% water change to take that out since it is doing nothing. His tank will be refilled with dechlorinated tap water. We will also add aquarium salt, bacterial supplement and stress coat. Sorry the pics aren't great, my camera is kind of old and Pablo seems a little camera shy.

I hope that this helps you to help me help Pablo. Like I said, he is still lively and eating fine, but clearly something is wrong and all of the info on the web is so incoherent and conflicting.

In the first picture, food is floating because I just fed him to coax him out. The plant that you see is a fake silk plant. The bottom picture shows how bad his front fins are, but it is a little blurry though you can still see the damage. The white patches are not fuzzy.

His aquarium is very bare bones right now to make cleaning easier between treatments and to try and limit bacteria growth. He just has the bee hive home, the silk plant that he loves to lie in, and gravel. usually there are many more ornaments, floating log, hide outs, etc, but after the aquarium became polluted the first time, we removed them all and started fresh.

 

[AmyDee]

Please feel free to ask any questions that you need to help him. I am obviously an inexperienced aquariumist, so I do not know what other information I can offer.

 

[AmyDee]

Ohh and some of the pics look kind of weird because there is an aquarium beside his that houses our fire belly toads. That is why you see different gravel and decorations in the background of some of the pics.

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

I've seen much worse cases on finrot than this so try not to panic too much

In regards to treatment I tend to recommend Melafix and frequent water changes. Melafix is actually quite a mild medication so is pretty safe to use. There's a lot out there on the internet that says it's not safe to use with bettas but I've never actually come across anyone who's had a problem with it and myself and many others have used it with their bettas just fine.

Worth a try!

 

[colleen0309]

Your pH is not important at this point. What is important is the ammonia level and nitrite level right now. Hopefully they are low or nonexistant because of the water changes you are doing. The average lifespan of a betta is 2.5 - 5 years. Sadly to say, your betta is an old man.

 

[AmyDee]

I understand he is old, however <I have known people to have their betta for 7 years. And as he is still perky and eating fine, I have a feeling that if I get control of what is hurting him, then I am sure he will be around for a little longer. It is hard to explain, but I have seen him every single dayu for the last almost 5 years, other then the obvious problems that I can see, he acts just like he always has.

Okay, I do have melafix though I haven't tried it because i have heard bad things. Last night we found this pimafix that we bought, I quickly read the revues and it said that it worked great for fungus, I read many revues and they all said it worked great, so we added a dose of that. Was that okay? Should I add melafix on top of that or should I do another water change and just go with the melafix?

Okay so to recap; Last night he had a 100% water change to remove the tetra fungus guard from the water.
-We used a double dose of aquarium salt
double dose of stress guard
and a double dose of bacterial supplement
Along with a single dose of pimafix

(My boyfriend dbld the doses because all of the packages suggested that for treatments, use dbl.

accordint to my meter, the amonia and nitrate levels are as low as they can be.

Water change was done with tap water that was dechlorianated with a decholorinator.