She hid her illness from me until it was too late. I examined her and found she had a lot of slimy cottony fungus coming out of her gills and mouth.* I had not seen this until the morning she died. I check all my fish each day with a magifying glass and flashlight to look for anything unusual like fungus, parasites, missing scales, finrot etc. The night before she was active, dancing around and racing to get her pea as it sank. Not what you'd expect from a Betta that was hours from death. Her gills were so badly swollen yesterday morning I think she must have died of suffocation. She had little bubbles coming from her gills. She could no longer breathe.*
* At least it took her quickly and she didn't have to suffer in pain for days.
Karma is still active and eating well but is really paled out and has dark stress stripes. Hopefully now that she is on Maracyn-Two she should be able to fight off whatever bacteria killed Whisper.
It is possible that my insanely high PH levels damaged her gills and killed her. I tested the tank and ammonia and nitrite are both 0 and nitrate is less than 5.
I need to find a way to lower the PH. For now I am going to do as Rose suggested and use some Spring Water to do a little water change in all the tanks this weekend but this is not a long term option. I think I may have no choice but to use a PH reducing product and another to stabilize the PH. This high PH will kill all my fish sooner or later.* I think if I reduce the PH very slowly over the course of a week it should prevent PH shock.
I was worried I would lose Lava last night too. He looked so sick and wouldn't move or come to eat. I thought for sure I'd come home this morning and find him dead too but he saw me and swam clumsily over and ate his anti-bacteria pellet and then started playfully chasing bubbles around. I am still going to continue to try new meds to reduce the swelling on his swim bladder but eventually may have to face the fact that he could be permanently disabled. He may have to spend the rest of his life floating (sometimes on his side) on the top of the tank.*
* He is able to straighten himself out and propel himself around a bit but as soon as he relaxes, he drifts sideways.
Also, when he was chasing his bubbles today I noticed one of his long rays on his tail was barely hanging there and then it fell off. Could he have just caught it somewhere and just torn it or does he now have finrot too? How, after all the antibiotics he's been on for the past 2 months could he have finrot?
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