Urgent Help Needed...getting A Very Sickly Betta

[evilkid500]

ok so here is the story: my girlfriend moved into college and she found that the girl who had moved out before the xmas break had left her betta in a jar to die in the room. luckily the guy is still alive after more than 3 weeks and it just so happens that i have an empty fish tank that would be a paradise to a betta fish (small filter, heater, things to hide in, 2 gallons) The betta's is currently in a small jar with water that is so dirty it you can barley see the fish in it. so i'm going to be going down there tomorrow to get it and i was wondering what the heck i should do. i don't want to shock the fish by putting it from it's extemely cold dirty water into crystal clear warm (75-80 degrees) water. should i not heat my tank and try to keep it the same temperature as the water it's in now? i deffinitly don't want to mix in any of that nasty water with the new water right? also this fish hasn't eaten in 3-4 weeks, when i feed it do i want to feed it a lot or just what you'd normally feed a betta on a normal day? any suggestions from people that know what to do will help this poor fish survive and i will gladly take any advice i can get. I had another betta for about 1.5 years so i'm not completely new to taking care of a betta. it's just a betta that's been abandoned and starved that i don't know how to handle. thanks for any replies.

 

[Minni3]

ok so here is the story: my girlfriend moved into college and she found that the girl who had moved out before the xmas break had left her betta in a jar to die in the room. luckily the guy is still alive after more than 3 weeks and it just so happens that i have an empty fish tank that would be a paradise to a betta fish (small filter, heater, things to hide in, 2 gallons) The betta's is currently in a small jar with water that is so dirty it you can barley see the fish in it. so i'm going to be going down there tomorrow to get it and i was wondering what the heck i should do. i don't want to shock the fish by putting it from it's extemely cold dirty water into crystal clear warm (75-80 degrees) water. should i not heat my tank and try to keep it the same temperature as the water it's in now? i deffinitly don't want to mix in any of that nasty water with the new water right? also this fish hasn't eaten in 3-4 weeks, when i feed it do i want to feed it a lot or just what you'd normally feed a betta on a normal day? any suggestions from people that know what to do will help this poor fish survive and i will gladly take any advice i can get. I had another betta for about 1.5 years so i'm not completely new to taking care of a betta. it's just a betta that's been abandoned and starved that i don't know how to handle. thanks for any replies.

Well what you want to do is to not stress him out too much. So i guess you need to use some of that filthy water, then make partial water changes until all of it is gone. What do you mean by dirty? As in algae? Algae shouldn't be a health risk to him. You can feed him normally...but try not to overfeed. Does he have anything wrong with him, as in health wise?

 

[Topazlizz]

Well, this is what I think. Obviously that horrible jar water has some sort of balance in it that's ok for the betta, and your crystal clear fresh water doesn't. The tank will be uncycled, right? So if I were you I'd use all the jar water, possibly partially strained to get some of the bits out, and then work out a way to mix the waters together slowly with the betta in it, gradually getting used to the new stuff. Is there anything in the jar besides dirty water, like gravel or something that might hold some beneficial bacteria? Even if you mix the water, your filter will take care of it fairly quickly, and partial water changes over time will do the rest. I would also try to start with a water temperature close to the jar's, gradually increasing it over a period of days.

On behalf of the betta, thanks for being a knight in shining armour!

 

[Amerce]

If you float the jar in the tank you have so that the jar temp equalizes with the tank temp and then start to gradually top up the jar with the tank water over a half hour to hour period, as you top up remove some of the dirty water as well to ensure that the jar still floats.

Have to be done gradually cause the shock of the new water has to be minimised, the betta has got used to his filthy water and super clean water would be a too much of a shock.

Also has the tank been cycled or is it a bare bottomed tank, what filtration are you using in it. Cycling isn't so much of an issue on a bare bottomed, but the filter media really needs to be mature. If it isn't then keep a close eye on the water parameters once the fish is in the tank and do plenty of small water changes.

Good luck and I hope he is happy in his tank.

 

[evilkid500]

Thank you all very much for the quick replies i'll try to answer a few questions. Health wise the fish looked fine, just very skinny. He was swimming around and probably was in search of food lol. At this very second my tank is empty I was planning on filling it and adding the chlorine eliminator / aquarium salt before i left and only filling it by about an inch and a half and gradually filling it until it reaches full capacity. The water he is in now is completely full of his own waste, that's what i meant by dirty. There is also very little of it left, most of it has evaporated. The jar he is in now has a few of those clear glass rocks ( i forget what they are called) and a small shell.

So i guess my plan is going to be filling my tank just enough to cover the bottom and the fish and putting his jar in it to equalize temps. Then i'm going to add a small ammount of my tank water to his water and leave him for about 30 min. Then i'll add more of my water to his water so the jar is almost filled back up and leave him for another 30 min. After that i'll put him in the tank with all of the water from his jar, leave it alnoe for a little bit then start doing small water changes to get the dirty water all out and fill my tank to capacity.

Let me know if that sounds ok to everone. Thank you all very much for the advice lets just hope he makes the ride home from boston now.

 

[Amerce]

Sounds good, when feeding him just give him small quantities as betta's with good appetites will gorge, if you can get live food all the better.

Good luck and you must post photo's

 

[evilkid500]

Well I am very happy to report mission accomplished. The betta surrvived the drive home from Boston and the transition to the new tank. It did leave me with one question though. I noticed when i was transfering the water that there were two bubble sacks with little tiny tiny black dots in them. If I had to guess I'd say they are eggs. Is this a female betta?? I tried to get a clear picture of them but it's very difficult to with a 1.3 megapixle cell phone camera lol.

These photos are what I found the betta in after i had added a little bit of conditioned water.





This is after I had gotten it home and added water from the new tank and put the filter in the tank to remove the debris in the water which there was a lot of.



Here is the picture of the "eggs" I tried to make it easier to see by circling them in yellow they still arn't clear at all but maybe some one can tell me for sure if this is a female betta?



And finally here is the betta in its new tank and omg does it love it, i've never seen such a hyper betta.