Ugh. Poor boy...

[AquaNut]

Hey all you betta experts, help!! I noticed a few days ago that one of my betta boys was looking a little less spectacular than usual.... nothing alarming, just his finnage didn't look as extraordinary as it usually does. After a couple of days, I started thinking his caudal fin looked sort of clamped at the bottom, so I dumped a bit of melafix in the tank (he shares a divided ten with the girlie in my avatar) and added an extra bit of salt (maybe 2 tsp). He's definitely not feeling well; he's loitering around the bottom and resting on leaves a lot (not his usual behaviour at all). Now, his tail and dorsal fins are looking ugh.. melted? for lack of a better word. It's like the outer extremities of his fins are melted into a glob. I don't know how else to explain it. They don't look like typically clamped fins you'd find on another type of fish, but I've never really had a sick betta before, aside from a girlie who was fatally wounded by another girlie, so maybe this is what clamped fins look like on a veil tailed betta? I added 250mg of tetracycline last night. Does anyone have any ideas about what it is or how I might treat it? I'd hate to lose such a pretty boy. The tank is well maintained and the female in the tank has never looked better.

 

[wuvmybetta]

I've never really had a sick betta before

me neither ,I've only battled one case of dropsy and lost

I don't know what it could be ,but I'll search around and see if I can come up with anything for "lethargic with melted finnage"

 

[AquaNut]

Thanks wuv. I know my description bites, but I don't know how else to describe his fins. He's still fanning at me like crazy and flaring at his girlie through the divider, but his fins don't fan out at the ends, even though he's flaring to the best of his ability. They're all clumped together. The reason I say they're not like typical clamped fins is because his pec. fins and anal fin are still perfectly fine and it's just the ends of his fins that are like this. It does seem to be getting worse, though, which is why I decided he probably needs some 'real' meds (as opposed to my usual tea tree and salt). I'm using tetracycline as it's so broad spectrum and I don't know what I'm dealing with.

 

[Kossy]

Hi, I think it sounds like a bit like clamped fins (see my sig to see if any symptoms meet diseases) however if it is clamped fins this is usually a sign that the fish is stressed. This is normally due to bad water quality give him regular water changes. Most cases of clamped fins the fish gets over it however it usually finishes with another disease or hopefully nothing.

 

[AquaNut]

Hi Kossy,

He's in a planted, sand substrate, heated 10 gallon tank that he shares with a girlie (and a divider). He is a major bubble nester and was FURIOUS at me when I tried to run a power filter in his tank, so they don't have a filter. On account of this, they get a 10-15% water change daily, along with some of my other unfiltered bettas. Occasionally I miss a day, and once they even had to wait for the third day for their water change, but I'm pretty confident in saying that water quality isn't the problem here.

If anything is stressing him, it would be the fact that his girlfriend is in clear view on the other side of the divider and he spends most of his time flaunting, fanning, and flaring at her. I'll continue with the tetracycline for a few days, unless somebody comes up with something really convincing about a better course of action I could be following.

 

[wuvmybetta]

unless somebody comes up with something really convincing about a better course of action I could be following.

well,since you said THAT, I'll yap about silver for awhile

as you may have heard me mention before....the only thing I ever treat my fish with is colloidal silver . I love it. I take it myself and so does Tues, so does the rabbit the dog...blah blah blah. But anyway...I've seen it do amazing things, such as : I bought a male with a deep hole in between his eyes,treated him with a hefty dose of silver the day I got him,the next day the hole was gone. One of my females split her dorsal fin one night,she just had spines sticking up,I added a dose of silver to her tank and within 24 hours it had grown back together completely and with a more beautiful coloring than before. I've watched it destroy ich within 48 hours. I've brought home MANY sickly, near death bettas and they all recovered and were fabulously healthy after their first day of being here,thanks to silver .I've brought home bettas with such bad cases of fin rot and they're all beautiful now. Ever wonder how I manage to keep so many bettas healthy ,that's how

When my male got dropsy...I immediately started using silver on him,he NEVER got any worse but the dropsy didn't go away, I kept using silver for about 2 months (2 months!) and he remained the same & acted as happy as could be,just swollen and scaley,so I quit with the silver and started using spectrogram...he died within a week, that proved to me that the silver was doing something,at the least it wasn't allowing his illness to progress

I treat all of my new fish with it,since it destroys harmful bacteria within 6 minutes I dose them with it while they're in the bag so they don't carry illness into the tank. I use it directly in my tanks once every two weeks as a precaution and it has never altered my readings so it doesn't affect good bacteria.

Here's a link with some interesting facts, no mention of fish though ,I sometimes wonder if I'm the only weirdo in the world who uses it for fish

http/www.familyhealthnews.com/49.html




editoooh,oh! You may find this interesting too since your an organic gardener, I had an organic garden a couple of years ago and my tomato plants suddenly started turning brown, branch by branch, I think it was blight or something like that. I added some silver to a watering can and fed them, the brown immediately stopped (in mid branch ) and they had to be some of the healthiest most flourishing tomato plants I've ever seen

 

[AquaNut]

That's very interesting stuff, wuv. I know Jenica's aunt used to take it, I don't know if she still does. How do you know how much to put in your tanks? I'll definitely check it out.

 

[MattL]

How strong is the silver you use? Ours is 3ppm!

How much do you dose the tank with?

Matt

 

[White Whale]

You can try the link in my signature. Maybe that might help a bit.

 

[wuvmybetta]

I use 500 ppm matt

I really don't measure how much I use,usually at least a dropperful,maybe two to three droppers on my big tanks, but I use the same 2-3 dropperfuls in little bitty tanks ,no worries though,ya can't overdose . I guess the amount you would need depends on what your treating (disease wise)

But while acclimating newbies I use a very strong amount
I've used tons of the stuff the last few days with all this "moving of fish" to avoid any ich break-outs (especially with the clowns)

 

[AquaNut]

Alright wuv. I'm sold. I despise using chemical meds in my tanks, so I'll try anything more natural that comes from what I consider to be a trustworthy source. (Yup, I trust ya lol). I hadn't medicated any of my tanks for sooooo long, but lately it seems like there's been one glitch after another. I guess the more tanks you have and the more you rip out your carpets and move alllllll your tanks at once the better the chances are that you're going to have less-than-thriving fish here and there. I'll hit the health food store today.

 

[wuvmybetta]

yaaaay! You won't be disappointed,get as high of a ppm as you can find, it's worth the extra cash in the longrun ,you use less of the high ppms so it lasts a lot longer than lets say...a 10 or 20 ppm

 

[AquaNut]

Well, I only had two choices in my town when it comes to colloidal silver, so I went with the higher of the two, and it's 40 ppm. Where on earth do you find it 500 ppm? The women at both of the local health food/natural care shops looked at me like I was on crack when I enquired about colloital silver that potent. Anyway, I gave a dropperful to each of my new white bettas. I'm moving the tank with the gunky fins guy in it to the living room a little later tonight, so I'll dose him up when I get him settled back into the tank. Eh. What's $25 to keep your betta's fins healthy?

 

[wuvmybetta]

As long as it's a pretty big bottle you should be ok,you can just use more. My health food store has some silver that's 2500 ppm,but it's $$$$$$,I've bought 1500 ppm online before, I believe it was from energetics.com

Good thinking on treating the newbies , I love giving everything (or body) silver


BUT your pretty handy so you may want to purchase a silver machine (?) someday, you can buy them online or make one for pretty cheap,it doesn't make the extremely high potency stuff but you can make 5-100 ppm using a generator and silver bars (somehow dipped in sterile water blah blah) it was too high tech for me but I bet you could handle it!

 

[AquaNut]

LOL I'm handy? Well thanks for the vote of confidence, but I dunno if I'm up for making my own colloidal silver. Actually, I'm pretty sure Jenica's dad knows somebody who has a machine. Hmm