talixlynn
- #1
Hi all,
I've had my betta for about 2 years. He lives in a heated, filtered 5gal tank with live plants and some decorations for him to enjoy. He'd always been a very active, friendly boy until about a few months ago. It's been going downhill, but it started with him just being less active and has progressed to him basically just laying at the bottom of the tank not moving. He won't even come up to eat. I've been trying to scoop him up in a net to at least bring him to the surface and try to get him to eat something but yesterday he refused to eat at all even when I tried to force him.
I haven't been the most diligent about monitoring his water parameters but his tank has been cycled for months (I moved last March, and I kept my same filter from before the move). I checked his nitrates a couple weeks ago and got 20-40 (I would say closer to 20, but those colors are hard to read sometimes so on the side of caution I'll say 20-40), so I bumped up to 2 water changes a week, but he's only gotten worse. I know our tap water has 1ppm ammonia in it so I always use seachem prime when doing water changes. And just for accuracy, I checked now and got 0 for ammonia and nitrite and 10-20 for nitrate.
My room is colder than it used to be, so I considered that his water is too cold. I actually held off making this post because I wanted to buy a second thermometer but I got one today and now both of them show around 80F. I did turn the heater up last night so it's possible it was colder before but my thermometer has never really shown anything lower than 78F...
There isn't anything physically wrong with him that I can see, his fins look normal and colorful, no tears; his gills look fine, he's not breathing hard, and his swimming is not lopsided. For the most part, he simply doesn't move, except when I try to catch him in the net in which case he starts darting. But he certainly doesn't have any trouble escaping me... I try not to chase him with the net because I don't want to stress him out and make things worse but I also don't want him to starve to death or suffer. He hasn't been eating properly for weeks now, although I've gotten him to eat some partial meals.
Any help would be appreciated... my current course of action is to try to get nitrate down to 0ppm, but what if that doesn't work?
I've had my betta for about 2 years. He lives in a heated, filtered 5gal tank with live plants and some decorations for him to enjoy. He'd always been a very active, friendly boy until about a few months ago. It's been going downhill, but it started with him just being less active and has progressed to him basically just laying at the bottom of the tank not moving. He won't even come up to eat. I've been trying to scoop him up in a net to at least bring him to the surface and try to get him to eat something but yesterday he refused to eat at all even when I tried to force him.
I haven't been the most diligent about monitoring his water parameters but his tank has been cycled for months (I moved last March, and I kept my same filter from before the move). I checked his nitrates a couple weeks ago and got 20-40 (I would say closer to 20, but those colors are hard to read sometimes so on the side of caution I'll say 20-40), so I bumped up to 2 water changes a week, but he's only gotten worse. I know our tap water has 1ppm ammonia in it so I always use seachem prime when doing water changes. And just for accuracy, I checked now and got 0 for ammonia and nitrite and 10-20 for nitrate.
My room is colder than it used to be, so I considered that his water is too cold. I actually held off making this post because I wanted to buy a second thermometer but I got one today and now both of them show around 80F. I did turn the heater up last night so it's possible it was colder before but my thermometer has never really shown anything lower than 78F...
There isn't anything physically wrong with him that I can see, his fins look normal and colorful, no tears; his gills look fine, he's not breathing hard, and his swimming is not lopsided. For the most part, he simply doesn't move, except when I try to catch him in the net in which case he starts darting. But he certainly doesn't have any trouble escaping me... I try not to chase him with the net because I don't want to stress him out and make things worse but I also don't want him to starve to death or suffer. He hasn't been eating properly for weeks now, although I've gotten him to eat some partial meals.
Any help would be appreciated... my current course of action is to try to get nitrate down to 0ppm, but what if that doesn't work?