Female Betta Slow Fin Rot 2nd Opinions Help

Hello hello! I hate to be one of THOSE people who posts in fish disease as their first post, but I wanted some 2nd and 3rd opinions as I've never had a problem like this before. I'm not a newbie betta or fish keeper, mostly have been self taught and have always wound up in this forum (and some others) lurking and reading about something or another. Sorry for HUGE wall of text, I'm going to try to be as detailed as possible, pics down below.

So I've been having a slow creeping fin rot problem with one of my female bettas. Her 2.5 gal filter was fully cycled (have the api master kit) fishless cycled beforehand. 77F stable +/- 1 degree, my water's ph doesnt fluctuate much even after gassing out or the fish living in it, stays right near 7ish. It started showing up as slightly raggedy fins maybe 2 months ago? Started seeing in her top fin first. I don't have any pictures from when her fins were perfect. I'll admit I wasn't vacuuming the gravel out like I should, I was just doing half water changes weekly with prime and the nitrates would barely register even then (yes I shake the heck out of solution 2). Then found to my HORROR that the suction cups on the small world filter were flaking. so:

-Tore down all the gravel, took out filter, bleached everything out, and just left a silk plant and house and started keeping the water very clean (full change every 2 days) with bettafix added. No improvement after a few weeks, fins still shrinking. Bottom fin started to show rot.

-decided to treat with Hikari Betta Revive in floating container for 7 days. Daily nearly full water changes. No improvement. Left her in clean tank, possibly with a pinch of salt for...I'd say 5 or 6 days?

-Got frustrated and got maracyn 2 (prob around march 23?). Mardels website advised that you premix 10 parts of solution to get 10x 1g measurements of medicine (now premixing just sounds like bad advice but I didn't think anything of it at the time) and dosed daily for 5 days. I'm pretty sure I did a couple of 25% water changes inbetween, right before i dosed fresh meds.

-still no improvement/change so got maracyn 1 and dosed together with maracyn 2 for 5 days, total 10 days. still no improvement, so flushed tank out and left water fresh on 4/6 (cant remember if I added salt). Cleaning water and scrubbing tank down under sink every other to 2 days approx. I left her in clean water no meds for longer this time.

-Got Kanaplex and some mini catappa leaves from Sungrow in the mail since my store doesn't carry just in case, was teetering between dosing furan 2 or kanaplex. after a couple of days and finally getting worried that this rot is going to get too close to her body dosed first dose of kana for 2.5 gals. That was 4/15.

4/17 performed 25% water change and dosed fresh kana.   so figured a fresh water change wouldnt hurt.

CURRENTLY She's due for her 3rd kanaplex dose, acting completely normal, very healthy appetite, still jumping for her food but i haven't seen any change in her fins. My question is...do i keep going? Can I dose furan and kana together this time? then dose her to furan only? does she need a break since kana's hard on the fish if overused? Do i throw some of these mini catappa leaves in the tank? The tank needs a good full scrubbing again, the water is a bit cloudy and there's some clear fuzz growing on the airline and airstone i have going in there. Can I do this safely at this time with one dose to go?

I can pickup things like triple sulfa, fungus cure, maracyn oxy, maracyn plus easily. Methylene blue i know where to get but its a bit out of the way. I want to do right by her, she was already rescued once before by bettafix and clean water alone.

First day of kanaplex, potato pic:
Currently no change:

 

Wow you have put that poor fish threw so much. Personally i use just hydrogen peroxide. 1ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide per actual tank water gallon. 50% water change before, dose tank, wait a day and repeat 3 times. Then just a couple extra water changes and the tips of the fins start turning white which is new fin growth and they are good to go. I actually treat all my new bettas this way since i only have a petco and they always have some fin rot.

 

So you just dose peroxide directly in the tank? Ive seen "fish surgery" suggestions where they put peroxide directly on the fins but never in the actual tank water free floating. Personally kind of afraid to go that hands on.

Should I stop the rest of these meds premature then?

 

as far as treatment options thats up to you. But yes it can be dosed to the tank. Its more popular as an algae side but works equally as well at killing off bacteria. If you have a newer tank you can remove your filter media and put it in some tank water for 8 hours so it doesn't hurt your beneficial bacteria.

 

Woah, slow down, it looks like you have a case of “over maintenance”

Questions
1. Why did you bleach everything over one moldy suction cup?
2. Why did you throw out your media?
3. Why are you shocking the poor thing by changing 90% of the water per day?
4. Why are you aimlessly medicating without asking anyone first?

 

1. To be fair I thought maybe she was overly sensitive to that stuff and that that could've been exacerbating the issue to begin with. I saw her fins starting to get raggy and was hoping it wasn't the start of anything. I didn't do anything crazy until i saw THAT.
2. I was originally trying to keep the filter alive in a separate bucket, dosing ammonia while i waited for a new filter house to come in at my local store, it was a small world filter house i used with my last betta a few years ago and it...just got old. I lost the cycle though. I was gonna jumpstart it with my 5 gallons media once this whole ordeal was done.
3. Everywhere you look up fin rot it says to keep the water extra clean, so i tried that first. Flushing out all the bad bacteria and stuff. When I do water changes I drip the fresh water through a clamped airline to reduce shock, or at least that's the idea.
4. From all the threads I was reading, the betta revive and the maracyns are relatively mild and what many use first so i figured those were worth a shot? I'm not super into posting publicly, not that there's anything wrong with it.

 

Okay....from here this is what you can do..
Do daily 1 gallon water changes, use that one gallon for a daily bath but this is assuming your filter is still alive and ammonia and nitrites are zero. As of now what are you parameters? I will continue after I get this info. Do you gravel vac? Do you have any meds in there right now? Do you have a hospital tank? Is she eating?

 

She's in her 2.5g tank now, it has a heater, sits at 77F. The tank is a hospital tank now, it's bare bottom with a cloth plant and air stone, and save for the first bleaching I have only been cleaning with warm water. I have a separate 1g tank that I can use but I found it easier to split the 10g packets into fourths rather than tenths. I saved about 25% of the old water this morning and refilled the tank fresh and scrubbed down, didn't dose the 3rd dose of kanaplex yet since I haven't seen much of a response, so there might be a bit of residual meds in the water.

Ph is either 6.8 or 7.0, very close, deff not 7.2
Ammo is 0 (yellow)
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 0
I treat new water with prime, I don't use salt normally but I have it.
Our water's very soft here, the gh and kh are always very low but phosphate does show up in the water, not sure if these are super relevant here so I didn't test.

Edit: Whoops, she is eating, her appetite hasn't changed at all. She seems to have become more active since the water change, not that she was sluggish to begin with.

 

I have mini indian almond leaves, should I put some of these in the tank? Or make a "tea" of sorts out of them?

 

Yes, try your best to get the water clear without any meds just almond leaves and come back to me.

 

Thank you very much, I will do that, I guess I'll give it a few days? to clear her system out then see where she is.

 

Ok, so I've been doing daily partial water changes, left the almond leaf in there and trying not to do anything drastic since last Thursday, and here's a new pic of my girl. I can't tell if this is improvement, although it looks like on her bottom fin that black outline might be getting lighter in one spot? Could this be the infection dropping off? What's the next step here? Her appetite hasn't changed, and she still jumps for my finger.

 

Okay now tell me what you have on hand as far as meds go..are your parameters stable? Do you have some kind of filter to run carbon or chemical media between doses? Do you have any idea what brought this on?

 

ph: 6.6-6.8 bc of the almond leaf, Ammonia 0 Nitrite 0, I always treat with Prime so ammonia and nitrite shouldn't rise.

Temp 77F stable

I have a new filter that I can put carbon into. My filter was fishless cycled for her initially and by the end of the week her water would read 0/0/5-10 so I was just doing weekly half water changes once a week (testing to make sure nothing spiked and my nitrates didn't build up). I think my problem was that I wasn't cleaning the gravel at every water change, and I had that incident with the disintegrating suction cups on the filter housing.

Meds on hand: Methylene blue, Hikari Betta Revive, Furan-2, Triple Sulfa, Kanaplex, Aquarium Salt

I was able to pick up Garlic guard and Vita Chem 2 days ago at a fish specialty store just in case, I haven't used those yet.

I'm thinking Furan2 since I haven't tried this medication yet, it's supposed to be broad spectrum, topical, and it apparently works well in lower ph/softer tanks.

 

Okay so you shouldn’t have used Maracyn 2 as it is a common misconception that it treats the type of opportunistic bacteria which causes fin rot which it does not. Kanamycin does treat finrot but only when combined with furan 2 but I wouldn’t recommend this bc it’s better to save for more serious situations. Start with some mebromin for the bleeding, then some baths with salt and methylene blue, and possibly a medicated wonder shell

Mebromin can be swabbed it is available in the product wound control
 

Beth recipe is
1 gallon of tank water
1 tsp aquarium salt
2x the average tank dosage of methylene blue

Extras
An airstone
Some crumbled pieces of wonder shell
You can add antibiotics as well (triple sulfa would work well)

Wonder shells (medicated and non medicated)

Regular
 

Medicated
 

Maracyn plus may be helpful for the infection
 

You may also want to purchase some 3% hydrogen peroxide which is available at the drug store (cvs, rite aid, wallgreen’s, etc)

 

Ok, I don't have easy access to merbromin because I'm in the US. My plan was to prep a salt bath with the 1g tank, so 1tsp, this methblue is Kordon brand and calls for 10 drops per gallon, so 20 drops. Bathe for how long exactly? And then dose the tank directly with regular dosage of triple sulfa?

 

20-30 minutes for the bath and yes 20 drops, dose triple sulfa in the bath. Mebromin is available in the US.

 

Hey, so how long can I do these medicated salt/methblue/sulfa baths for? I've done 12 days (i missed one day in the middle unfortunately) and I think her bottom fin has improved since a bunch of the black edging has disappeared but her back fin hasn't improved. Rather it looks like she's lost a piece of it. Is 12 days too much? I'll try to post a pic tomorrow asap, I can't tonight.

Good news is she seems to tolerate these salt baths very well, still in good spirits, still jumping for food and the bottom fin improved so I am optimistic.

 

Now it’s time for phase two, you should now promote growth if the rot is gone and use something like res-q, lots of water changes, and Indian almond leaf extract. I’ll have to see a picture but you may be in the home stretch. Get a pic ASAP.

 

Ok, several pictures attached because shes a bit difficult to get a proper pose (I don't think she likes cameras!) from and the lighting/color is hard to catch accurately. I don't think the rots totally gone but I think the bottom fin looks a ton better. This is the 2nd day since I've stopped the baths.

Ph: 6.8-7; Ammo: 0; Nitrite/Nitrates: 0 (filter is fishless cycling again)
Temp: 79F (It was very warm today, heater doesn't let it drop below 77)
Half gal changed daily out of 2 gals total, treated w/ Prime

Medicine Cabinet right now:
Aquarium salt, Methylene Blue, Maracyn Plus, Triple Sulfa, Kanaplex, Furan2, Hikari Betta Revive, Api Fungus Cure, 3% Peroxide

Non-medicines:
BettaFix, Vita Chem, Garlic Guard (putting this in her food a few times a week, not daily)



Edit: Thanks so much for helping walk me through this, I would've never considered these baths, as they sound much scarier and complicated than they actually are.