Sleepy Betta?

[SparkysBois]

Hi,
My betta is 2 years old. He has always been a not very active betta but for a couple of weeks I have been becoming concerned. He no longer swims around during the day but just lies on the plants or the ground. When I come over to his tank he does not swim up unless I get his food out, then he will swim to the surface to eat. He is very slow at eating and takes a long time to eat one pellet. Is this normal or is there something wrong?

 

[itiwhetu]

A photo of the fish and the tank, please

 

[Colin_T]

Pictures and video of the fish?

It could be old age, disease or poor water quality.

What is the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH of the water?
How often do you do water changes and how much do you change?
Do you gravel clean the substrate when you do water changes?
Do you dechlorinate the new water before adding it to the tank?

What sort of filter is on the tank?
How often and how do you clean the filter?

What do you feed the fish and how often do you feed it?

 

[SparkysBois]

 

[SparkysBois]

 

[SparkysBois]

Sorry for the late reply, I've been very busy. It is an eco style 37 which is 21L with a filter under the hood. I buy replacement filters about every 3 months and rinse them when they get clogged. I water change 50% every 1-2 weeks. He eats about 5 omega one pellets a day (have offered him more before but has no eaten much more) and sometimes bloodworms I siphon the gravel yes and add dechlorinator. I will test water tomorrow.

 

[Colin_T]

You should only replace filter media/ materials when it starts to break down. If you replace the media, you remove the beneficial filter bacteria and can have ammonia or nitrite readings occur in the tank and these can harm the fish. If you have to replace filter media, only replace part of it and wait 2 months before replacing any more.

You can put sponges in most filters and sponge last for 10+ years. You can buy sponges for different brands of filters and use a pair of scissors to cut them to fit your filter. Sponges get squeezed out in a bucket of tank water. The sponges get re-used while the bucket of dirty water gets poured on the lawn.

Established filters should be cleaned at least once a month.

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The fish looks skinny and sunken in around the back of the head. This could be caused by intestinal worms, gill flukes, cancer, lack of food or bad food.

If the food is fresh it should be ok. However, if the packet of food has been open for more than a couple of months, it might have gone off or have fungus growing on it. It's preferable to use up fish food within one month of opening it.

If you aren't going to use all the food in a month, you can put half in an airtight container and pop it in the freezer until you need it.

You could try offering more variety in food. Frozen foods like bloodworm (you already use), brineshrimp, daphnia, mysis shrimp, raw or cooked prawn/ shrimp are all useful and can be fed each day to try and build the fish up.

You can feed him live brineshrimp, daphnia, mozzie larvae, aphids, small flies and moths (that are free of chemicals and pesticides).

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What does his poop look like?

You could try deworming him and see if that helps. I would treat for round worms first. If he doesn't improve after a month then treat him for tapeworm.

Section 3 in the following link has information about treating intestinal worms in fish.

What to do if your fish has Stringy White Poop.

Fish do a stringy white poop for several reasons. 1) Internal Bacterial Infections causes the fish to stop eating, swell up like a balloon, breath heavily at the surface or near a filter outlet, do stringy white poop, and die within 24-48 hours of showing these symptoms. This cannot normally be...

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