Jendayi

Thursday through yesterday Cujo lost another quarter of his tail while on tetracycline. Today Romeo's tail frayed, and it was almost completely healed. Their water is warm, clean, filtered, and treated with Prime and NovAqua+. They get their Vita-Chem daily. Their food is good quality, they get a varied diet with pea treats and daphnia, and I don't over feed. I stopped taking them out of their tanks for water changes, so I think their stress levels should be very low. I talk to them and play with them and pay attention to them all day. In short, these bettas are getting the best care that I know to give them.

So I am trying to step outside the box and find other reasons for their persistant tail rot that does not respond to anti-biotics. The only thing I can come up with is maybe the water quality of my water is bad somehow. I don't mean ammonia, nitrite, nitrate - these are all zero in their tanks. I mean the water that comes out of the RO filter that we have here at the house, or the tap water.

My LFS manager told me that I should keep the pH of their water as close to neutral as possible. The RO water has no pH, the tap water is at 7.8 or so. I can mix the two so that the pH is 7, ok fine. The RO water lacks any sort of trace elements (like distilled water) which I really didn't know and was just learning about tonight. I have been using the RO water the majority of the time, so maybe my fish are reacting to missing the nutrients from the water that they need? I was giving them some aquarium salt for a while, but stopped that a bit ago.

An article I was reading about RO water tonight stated that you need to adjust the KH (alkalinity, Carbonate Hardness) and GH (General Hardness) of the water for the fish. These are values that I have not thought about before. I can test KH with my bf's API reef test kit, but not the GH. And I don't really know what bettas require for these values anyway, as the only thing I can find is a pH value.

For now I am going to acclimate them to a combination of the tap water and RO water to get the pH right (continuing to use my water conditioners for the chlorine, etc.) and then maybe go from there. I guess I just wanted to see if anyone else has any more experience with the chemistry side of things here. There is probably a specific water chemistry forum here, but I know you guys and the rest of the board takes so long to get replies

Thoughts? Ideas?

COBettaCouple

we've not tested the kH or gH of our water ever. I know it's very hard water though from trying ph lowering products when we first started - trying to get to the magic 7.0. I don't know what numbers the bettas need either in those 2. I think they adjust to them, the same as they do to pH.

We're sorry to hear cujo and romeo have had setbacks.. i hate finrot, it's such a persistent bugger.

chickadee

The kH and gH basically test the amount of hardness which deals with the amounts of added compounds in the water. The kH and gH of RO water should be positively neutral and could be good for people who are having digestive problems but are not too good for fish who have teeth and bones that do need to have some calcium in their water especially to form some strength in their skeletons or if you have shellfish in your tanks. You can also do as you say and mix the tap and RO water if the readings are too high on the tests, but my kH and gH are at the highest levels and my fish do fine except for Nate who is suffering through his bit of finrot right now but recovering nicely. The regeneration is happening at a very fast rate and I have been very pleased. I am using NovAqua+ (no Prime - not needed if you use the NovAqua+) and VitaChem and clean water in a tank that has no gravel and I finally broke down and gave him a small silk plant. Since he did not have medication in the tank and it was uncycled, I took a small piece of Alexander's filter medium to put into his filter and it cycled it immediately as it was an Azoo Palm Filter. I am going to start him on a series of Triple Sulfa tomorrow though to help him get a little better boost on the healing process as he has had a good couple of weeks away from the meds and I feel very good about his progress. I plan on giving him the full 10 days and then he comes off of meds for good and stays in the little tank with the VitaChem and clean water until he is totally healed. This is a hard nut to crack but as long a Cujo is fighting it there is a chance. Just please hang in there, and do not give up. You may have to remove the gravel from the tank if you have not already, and I know this is not an easy thing to do but you will not lose your cycle as long as your filter is running and your fish remains in the tank. If you want to keep some of the gravel then get a nylon stocking and fill the nylon stocking with the gravel and put back in the tank. The important thing is not to let Cujo sleep or drag his fins on the gravel. The rest of the gravel can be rinsed with dechlorinated water and stored for when he gets better and then put back into the tank.

Rose

Jendayi

Cujo is in a tank with only a filter, heater, and one silk plant. He hasn't had any gravel or any other substrate since he left his 5 gallon tank around 2 months ago. I guess I didn't realize that you could have a cycled tank without any substrate in there, with only the filter for bacteria. I could run some filter material in the cycled 5 gallon for a few days to put in Cujo's filter in his mini-bow. That would definitely help with not needing to add the Prime then. (Also Jett is in a mini-bow, and I could do the same thing for him...) How long should I leave the filter material in the cycled tank before moving it to the uncycled?

It occured to me that the Quick Dip test strips that I bought a while ago measure these values (even though I know they aren't accurate, it gives me at least some idea). According to this test strip, my Total Hardness (GH) is 'soft' or around 75ppm and my Total Alkalinity (KH) is between 'moderate' and 'ideal' - 80ppm to 120ppm. So that makes me think that my tap water is probably better not even being mixed with the RO water, just to let my fish adjust to the higher pH. I have some of Seachem's Neutral Regulator that my LFS manager sold me, but after reading a lot over on the pH board, I'm thinking that I might ignore his advice after all

COBettaCouple

They sold us phDown and phUp and the pH fizzy tabs before we found out about pH here at fishlore. We just kept trying to get 7.0 but the stuff didn't do anything on our pH.

Cycling is a funny thing, I recently got an idea to get a bunch of those sponge filters at the DFS site and run them in cycled tanks for a while to let them get rich in good bacteria, then transfer them to uncycled tanks to jump start the cycle in those. As I learn more about how it works, I regret past mistakes more and hopefully am getting better ideas on improving the cycling of new tanks.

voiceless_kat

I am so sorry to hear of the setback,Jendayi. Neptune is back in his cycled tank, even tho he showed some fraying the day before he moved, and a tiny bit this morning. I am not medicating him, just watching, and hope he will fight it. I do use VitaChem and I do have silk plants and substrate. I waited since Feb to get this tank cycled, so am hoping he will fight it on his own.

Now the other 3g Eclipse is also starting to cycle.............quickly it seems. I started it on Friday with Zymbac, and already had high ammonia and starting to see nitrites.

Storm's tank is not cycled, he has no fin rot and seems in perfect health at this time.

Wink Jack Sparrow is on fins, still in the small 1.66g as I try to cycle tanks and I just added substate to that this morning. He also seems in perfect health. I just spent 10 minutes watching him try over and over again to bite a water drop on the outside of the tank!! LOL He is so little compared to the other two, I almost expected more difficulties, but luckily, he is still his teeny, tiny demon self!!

I wonder if some of these guys are more prone, or are fighting something from when we first got them How Storm could go from almost dead to seemingl perfect health without also getting finrot is beyond me.

I would encourage you to do as Rose suggested and hang in there, continue what you are doing. I know Mike suggested to me a long time ago that some fish seem to suffer this fin rot problem, and we have to do the best we can, and try not to stress over it, as long as they seem otherwise healthy. It is nothing you are doing, since obviously you are giving them excellent care. I know I have personally felt so much better since I adopted that attitude, although I am sad for Neptune' that his beautiful tail keeps coming and going..LOL. He is otherwise happy and spunky.

I am supporting you through the net.....sometimes I felt better just writing about it here, and knowing I wasn't alone.!! Take care. Val

Jendayi

You are so sweet Val, ty for all the encouragement.

Yesterday I started the process of changing their water to tap water. This morning Romeo's tail is frayed even worse, but Cujo is the same. I will just keep doing daily small water changes and get them through it.

I put an extra whisper filter into my cycled hex 5 (this was an interesting challenge lol). How long should I leave it in there until the filter pad is considered seeded?

chickadee

It takes about a week to seed a filter from another one.

Rose