Discolored, Raised Bump on side

My betta, Kel, has a raised bump on one side that is the size of a couple scales. It alllllmost looks as though some are peeling away, but it is discolored and catches the light from certain angles.












Any thoughts on what this might be?

He has showed no major behavioral changes.

He eats a combination of omega one tropical minI pellets, frozen bloodworms and frozen brine shrimp.

Heated Temp: 78-79 degrees
Cycled, planted 10 gallon aquarium
Ammonia: ~0
Nitrite: ~0
Nitrate: ~1

His companions are a nerite snail, somewhere an assassin snail and a couple bladder snails.

View attachment 1463265408825.jpg

My last male betta died out of the blue -- dropsy, so now I'm a little paranoid.

 

Bumping this up for you, hope he's doing ok.

 

Bumping this up for you, hope he's doing ok.

Thank you maybe I should delete this one and replace it in the betta fish section?

The area seems to have gotten smaller, and he stills seems okay.

I'd like to understand what it is, though, for the future, and in case it worsens or reappears later.

 

To me it looks like an injury. Are there any pointy things and is he in a gravel tank? I'd do daily waterchanges. Another treatment method, which I wouldn't use if it's getting better on its own, is to add an antI bacterial and 1 tsp aquarium salt per 5g. Glad it's going away.

 

Hey Platylover.
Looks to me just a shedding of scales. My dwarf gourami does it occasionally and they are related. I may be wrong but unless it gets worse and lots more fall off or the skin under the scale gets infected or inflamed then maybe it is a problem. Hope this helped a little.
~Mudkipz

 

Thank you! I greatly appreciate both your responses Platylover and AtomicMudkip.

He is in a tank with a layer of sand on top of gravel, so the gravel peeks through in places. Thank you for the advice! If I see something like this come back I'll definitely do the daily water changes to be safe.

I'm glad you brought up scale shedding; I wasn't sure if that was a real thing. How would I identify an inflammation/infection?

 

HI Kalyn If you see skin under the missing scales turn pink or red that is usually the sign of inflammation or that something is wrong. This happened when my Dwarf Gourami lost some scales but it was from Iridovirus not shedding.
~Mudkipz

 

HI Kalyn If you see skin under the missing scales turn pink or red that is usually the sign of inflammation or that something is wrong. This happened when my Dwarf Gourami lost some scales but it was from Iridovirus not shedding.
~Mudkipz

Interesting -- okay!

Thanks again; I'm no longer twitching in my ignorance. ^u^