squashedbananas206
Hello, I just registered here so I could post a question (I have found two seemingly similar cases of this but have seen differing advice so I decided to post my own).
I have a betta named Iggy (Igenous) who seemed to be on his last leg about half a month ago. I thought it was dropsy from his pineconing, refusal to eat for multiple weeks, and bloating. So I followed some basic care advice and hoped for the best. He has made a surprising recovery and now can’t eat enough. I realized a few days ago that he appears to have a hole in his stomach under his right fin (see picture). I was feeding him frozen brine shrimp and watched in horror as the brine shrimp eggs that happened to be in the tweezer-full he gobbled up came trickling out his side. He turns around and eats whatever comes out of him.
I did an 80% water change and cleaned everything in his tank as recommended by another thread. I also added a recommended dose of aquarium salt to possibly stop an infection. Since, the angry-ness of the hole has drastically gone down, but food still trickles out. I’m wondering if I should do a stronger medication (I own nearly every fish med out there because I had no idea what was wrong with him for so long). He is very energetic but has had trouble swimming for the last month, I think because of the injury. He swims a bit lopsided.
He is in a 5 gallon heated at 78 degrees, filtered, was cycled for a month before he came. I feed him HikarI micro pellets with min 43% protein (for the longest time he couldn’t eat anything bigger he would spit out his usual North Fin pellets, so we are using this and it seems to be a good size), in the mornings. And I’m the evening I rotate between frozen brine shrimp or mysis shrimp enriched with vita-chem and an occasional live fruit fly as a treat. Before he got sick he only ate pellets, everything else has been us spoiling him and to get him to eat. He is extremely skinny.
Before he got sick, his water test readings seemed fine, no large spikes. Now the water is the same with ammonia and nitrite at zero and nitrates at 5.0ppm as of today. When I was first treating him his ammonia was high because I removed his filter and was using ammonia lock to try to detoxify. His pH can be a bugger with my home’s water, but I use a instant pH 7 powder when needed.
I don’t want to put him down especially because he seems so energetic. It’s hard to tell if he is in pain.
I’m sorry that’s so much, I’m just looking for any advice here and I wanted to be thorough. Iggy is my 9th graders’ class pet and they have been asking about him ever since I took him home. I feel it’s my job to reach out for more help. Thank you in advance to the kind people of this site.
I have a betta named Iggy (Igenous) who seemed to be on his last leg about half a month ago. I thought it was dropsy from his pineconing, refusal to eat for multiple weeks, and bloating. So I followed some basic care advice and hoped for the best. He has made a surprising recovery and now can’t eat enough. I realized a few days ago that he appears to have a hole in his stomach under his right fin (see picture). I was feeding him frozen brine shrimp and watched in horror as the brine shrimp eggs that happened to be in the tweezer-full he gobbled up came trickling out his side. He turns around and eats whatever comes out of him.
I did an 80% water change and cleaned everything in his tank as recommended by another thread. I also added a recommended dose of aquarium salt to possibly stop an infection. Since, the angry-ness of the hole has drastically gone down, but food still trickles out. I’m wondering if I should do a stronger medication (I own nearly every fish med out there because I had no idea what was wrong with him for so long). He is very energetic but has had trouble swimming for the last month, I think because of the injury. He swims a bit lopsided.
He is in a 5 gallon heated at 78 degrees, filtered, was cycled for a month before he came. I feed him HikarI micro pellets with min 43% protein (for the longest time he couldn’t eat anything bigger he would spit out his usual North Fin pellets, so we are using this and it seems to be a good size), in the mornings. And I’m the evening I rotate between frozen brine shrimp or mysis shrimp enriched with vita-chem and an occasional live fruit fly as a treat. Before he got sick he only ate pellets, everything else has been us spoiling him and to get him to eat. He is extremely skinny.
Before he got sick, his water test readings seemed fine, no large spikes. Now the water is the same with ammonia and nitrite at zero and nitrates at 5.0ppm as of today. When I was first treating him his ammonia was high because I removed his filter and was using ammonia lock to try to detoxify. His pH can be a bugger with my home’s water, but I use a instant pH 7 powder when needed.
I don’t want to put him down especially because he seems so energetic. It’s hard to tell if he is in pain.
I’m sorry that’s so much, I’m just looking for any advice here and I wanted to be thorough. Iggy is my 9th graders’ class pet and they have been asking about him ever since I took him home. I feel it’s my job to reach out for more help. Thank you in advance to the kind people of this site.
