penny

I was away on vacation for three weeks and my mother in law stayed at my house to look after my fish and my cat. No problems with my community tank ( or the cat) but my little betta died after 10 days. I know the fish were well cared for while we were away with 10% water changes twice a week and fed properly etc. It is hard to know what happened as I was not here, but it appears he was his normal active self for 10 days, but then he started sitting under the bridge and not swimming around or coming up to the surface when she approached the tank. My M-I-L texted me straight away as she knew this was not his normal behaviour. It was hard to know what to do as I was in Thailand at the time, so we just did a water change, but he died two days later. I cannot see how the ammonia could have been toxic as the 6 gallon tank was well cycled and had just the one little fish in there. I know the information is very limited but I would appreciate it if anyone has any ideas as to what may have happened, or is it common for bettas to just die despite appearing to be healthy and happy?

Shawnie

im sorry you lost your boy hard to say what it was tho..how old was he? could the MIL have overfeed him? they are huge pigs and will literally eat themselves to death...any food on the bottom leftover that he might not have eaten? could have cause an ammonia spike...sounds almost like it could have been age or over eating as fast as he went without any other signs of sickness...

Lucy

I'm really sorry about your betta, it's rough to lose one of our fin babies.
Did you test the water? Sometime there's a mini cycle for no apparent reason.
Unfortunatly, it's hard to know why he passed without more info.
How long did you have him? Sometimes they come to us so stressed and the damage is already done, thus shortening their lifespan.

penny

Because I was away and did not get home until 9 days after he died I have not tested the water. He was in a 6 gallon heated filtered tank and has been fine and very active for 6 weeks before I left. Maybe he was already stressed or damaged, but he seemed to be really fine and that is why I was so surprised and sad to hear that he had died. I suppose I will never know what happened, but I am curious to know if others have experienced similar problems.

agabr123

i'm really sorry to hear that if you could test the water that would at least give an idea of what may have happened.

Phinny12

I was thinking along the same lines as Shawnie..possibly overfeeding and maybe MIL had the best intentions but did not completly clean out all the uneaten food.

aquarist48

Sorry to hear about your loss. When we buy fish from the LFS sometimes it's hard to tell the ages of certain fish.