Cloudy Betta Eyes

[guppgirl]

Tank

What is the water volume of the tank? 5 gallon
How long has the tank been running? 3 weeks, but started with water and media from an established 20gal
Does it have a filter? yes
Does it have a heater? Yes
What is the water temperature? 78F
What is the entire stocking of this tank? (Please list all fish and inverts.)
betta splendens
1 tiger nerite

Maintenance
How often do you change the water? twice weekly
How much of the water do you change? 25%
What do you use to treat your water? Seachem Prime, Stability, Nilocg ThriveC
Do you vacuum the substrate or just the water? Vacuum the gravel twice a month, half tank is sand, half tank is gravel. I spot clean the sand every water change

*Parameters - Very Important
Did you cycle your tank before adding fish? Yes
What do you use to test the water? API Master
What are your parameters? We need to know the exact numbers, not just “fine” or “safe”.

Ammonia: <.25, I would say zero, but I know the master kit is notorious for reading NH4 at different levels
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: <5ppm, but water was changed yesterday.
pH: ~6.8

Feeding
How often do you feed your fish? 6 days a week, one fast day
How much do you feed your fish? Depends on the day, I try to vary his diet, but an appropriately small amount.
What brand of food do you feed your fish? Again, depends on the day. Omega One tropical color flakes, HikarI freeze dried bloodworms, Fluval Bug Bites. He has also on occasion eaten eggs laid by my cories.
Do you feed frozen or freeze-dried foods? Freeze-dried

Illness & Symptoms
How long have you had this fish? 2 months
How long ago did you first notice these symptoms? Literally 2 minutes ago.
In a few words, can you explain the symptoms? Cloudy eyes, not bulging like pop-eye, more like he has cataracts.
Have you started any treatment for the illness? Not yet, came here first, it's 11pm so anything I do will probably be in the morning unless someone says, "hey treat this right this second"
Was your fish physically ill or injured upon purchase? No, but he was a give away from a friend of a friend who said he didn't get along with his dwarf crayfish, so I do not know how old he is.
How has its behavior and appearance changed, if at all? He has always been a bit of a glass surfer, better now that he has his own space rather than being in the 10 gallon with guppies, but still surfs. Nothing's changed other than his eyes are cloudy.

Explain your emergency situation in detail. (Please give a clear explanation of what is going on, include details from the beginning of the illness leading up to now)
Nothing that I haven't already said, just wondering, do I need to treat this as a bacterial infection or something? Should I just do another water change tomorrow and check on it? He has literally no other signs of illness. He ate fine today, acted fine, and I didn't notice anything until just now. Lights were off in the room, and I had turned them back on to get some clothes and took a second to look in his tank when I noticed it.
I'm also considering the fact that I may just be freaking out over nothing and it could be that there were no lights on in the room and then suddenly I turned the lights on on him. Just felt like I'd rather be safe than sorry.

 

[PheonixKingZ]

I have the same problem with my new betta!! His eyes are like halfway cloudy!! I have no idea what it is! Picture please?

 

[guppgirl]

Very similar, though his is slightly less obvious, and hard to get a picture of because he's a black orchid, so his eyes really blend with his body.

Sasuke

• guppgirl
• Apr 27, 2019

 

[guppgirl]

Retested my water this morning. Ammonia is 0ppm, Nitrites is 0ppm, Nitrates 5ppm, but turns out my pH is 6.2, or lower, since 6 is as low as the test will read. This is with cuttlebone in tank, and KH and GH reading zero (though I need to get a proper test kit for these, right now I'm testing KH and GH with strips). This is after double checking all the readings by testing with both the API freshwater master, and with API strips.
What am I doing wrong that my pH is so low? My tap water KH reads at 40ppm, while the GH reads 0ppm, and the pH reads 6.6. I just totally don't understand why adding prime and stability would manage to lower my pH by 0.6, or what else in the water could be removing the KH?
Could this be causing it?
Any thoughts?

 

[guppgirl]

Bump and an Update, all parameters are the same, however, now he's got a small white spot on either side of his head, and on the top, that was not there last night. It almost looks like peeling skin, hence why I'm not sure if it's fungal, or bacterial. Trying to decide what to treat for and whether I need to raise or lower the water temp. Anyone who can help? picture incoming.

 

[guppgirl]

 

[Eric S.]

Based on those pictures it may be some form of Ich. Never dealt with it personally but if you notice more white spots forming/the previous ones getting larger be sure to let us know. I would recommend treating it regardless. I have had to treat for velvet before with my bettas and used Parasite Remedy from Imagitarium. I know that also treats for ich. Generally slightly raising the temp and doing a water change can help.
Let us know how he has been behaving recently, is it out of the ordinary at all?

 

[guppgirl]

Based on those pictures it may be some form of Ich. Never dealt with it personally but if you notice more white spots forming/the previous ones getting larger be sure to let us know. I would recommend treating it regardless. I have had to treat for velvet before with my bettas and used Parasite Remedy from Imagitarium. I know that also treats for ich. Generally slightly raising the temp and doing a water change can help.
Let us know how he has been behaving recently, is it out of the ordinary at all?

Not out of the ordinary at all. He's been eating fine, he's always been a bit of a glass surfer, but it hasn't increased or decreased. He is maybe a little more lethargic than usual, resting on the bottom, but I think some of this may be him trying to scratch himself on the sand, plants, and glass. It hasn't increased enough that I was at all worried until I noticed the spots.
The thing that worries me the most is that it literally showed up overnight after my water change yesterday, but all my parameters are fine, save for the water being a bit too acidic and I have seachem neutral regulator and equilibrium on the way that I was going to use to help that, but I don't want to start raising the pH until I'm sure that won't make it worse.

 

[Eric S.]

Not out of the ordinary at all. He's been eating fine, he's always been a bit of a glass surfer, but it hasn't increased or decreased. He is maybe a little more lethargic than usual, resting on the bottom, but I think some of this may be him trying to scratch himself on the sand, plants, and glass. It hasn't increased enough that I was at all worried until I noticed the spots.
The thing that worries me the most is that it literally showed up overnight after my water change yesterday, but all my parameters are fine, save for the water being a bit too acidic and I have seachem neutral regulator and equilibrium on the way that I was going to use to help that, but I don't want to start raising the pH until I'm sure that won't make it worse.

I'm not sure about acidity being the problem.
If he is trying to scratch himself it may be from a parasitic infection. Ich is the likely culprit again due to the white spots. Look to see if there are smaller white specks forming on the body too. Like I said before, I would recommend some sort of parasitic treatment at this point.
Things like this can come up out of nowhere so its good to be prepared with a form of treatment on hand.

 

[guppgirl]

I'm not sure about acidity being the problem.
If he is trying to scratch himself it may be from a parasitic infection. Ich is the likely culprit again due to the white spots. Look to see if there are smaller white specks forming on the body too. Like I said before, I would recommend some sort of parasitic treatment at this point.
Things like this can come up out of nowhere so its good to be prepared with a form of treatment on hand.

I've got Rid Ich getting here on Thursday, in the meantime, will it be helpful to raise the temp, how much? I've also got some Seachem stressguard on hand, which I know isn't a medication, but any chance it'd be beneficial?