Trio123

I know Im over reacting but I went to turn off the light on my betta's tank and there was a decent sized piece of fin floating in the water! He looked fine. There is only an african dwarf frog in there with him (highly doubt he ripped a fin off the betta thats three times his size... Should I worry? I was playing with him with a lazer pointer earlier... maybe he got excited and caught his fin on something? Or bit his own tail? (my goober cat does that) I've just never seen a piece of fin floating in a tank like that... it's creepy...

Rainsong

Bettas can "blow" their fins. No one has yet found any definative reason why, it seems to vary from fish to fish- though it's usually stress/aggression based. I had one male do it, once- the webbing between the rays of his fins was just... gone... or shredded. It was left floating around the bottom of the tank... ick.

Some also bite their own fins out of nervousness/stress, and leave chunks. You probably won't know for sure what, but check for jagged edges on tank decor, plants, etc- maybe cover your filter intake tube.

These guys sure do keep us on our toes, don't they? Best of luck with him and his recovery

COBettaCouple

Yea, we had one of our Bettas, Sora, blow his fin striaight down the middle from getting excited and displaying his full finnage. Another time, he was turning around going after a bloodworm and bit a big chunk out of his tail on accident.

Just start adding garlic guard, vita-chem and fish protector to the tank daily, if possible.

Rainsong

*Cringe* My boy who blew his tail really ... I just never figured out why. He wasn't in an overly high traffic area, wasn't around other fish, and as far as I could tell, wasn't stressing. I checked him one afternoon (he'd been fine that morning) and the first thing I saw was the weird stringy things on the tank bottom... then I start eyeballing him for worms. It was with great horror that I realized his fins looked like some tattered old sail! He didn't blow them all the way, thankfully, but that's alarming regardless.

I do hope it's one of those things that's rarely experienced by anyone here. I've heard there's a higher rate of it in shipped males, due to the stress during shipping.

chickadee

Dave has it covered. The big 3 will heal him up but keep his water super clean to prevent secondary infections or fungal types of things coming up.

Rose

Trio123

!Eeee! Poor Mr. Betta he must have blown it when he was playing with the light... he did get awfully excited and flared at me when I cut it off. I feed him mysis and brine shrimp with garlic and zoecon (a fish vitamin) every couple days and betta pellets the other days. And my water conditioner has a slime coating enhancer... is that what you mean by fish protector or are you talking about something more like "stress coat" (I think it is what its called).

Glad to hear that this has happened to others (and the best betta keepers at that) and isnt something bizarre I will give him a water change today and feed him the brine and mysis... maybe I could soak his pellets... hmm... for the next couple days. Thank you guys for explaining, I was really worried... I dreamt last night that I had accidentially bought a lazer gun instead of a lazer light and had accidently cut Mr. Betta .

jdhef

Fish Protector is actually the name of a product. There is a stick thread about it being the same thing as Pond Protector.