# fishes aint cooperating.....



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

My fish are not cooperating with me. My fry are hanging at the top with their fins clamped, my plakat pair has velvet and the male has dropsy. They were in the same tank so the female probably has it. My 1.5 has velvet, my 2 gal has two bettas in it. One has internal cysts and the other fin rot. My 15 gal has one little imbellis that is lyng on it's side and breathing rapidly. I don't think it's gonna make it. Fish can be so trying sometimes... That's why I'm downsizing to only imbellis and my current plakats and I am also getting rid of a small tank. I'm pretty sure my plakat pair won't make it because the fish that was in their tank before them had dropsy which killed it. I bleached the tank and left it outside to sterilize it with UV, but that obviously didn't work. If my imbellis get sick and die which is likely if you look at my current luck with fish keeping, I'll probably try to get mahachai or smaragdina and breed only those. Another thing which makes matters worse is the my multiple tank syndrome is dying off which could be considered a good thing except that my fish are sick which makes it worse. And to top that, I'm close to broke. And I'm talking broke for a kid which is less than an adult..... *Sigh* at least my fry will most likely make it........ Fish can be SOOOOO trying.
:chair: :chair: :chair: :x


----------



## bullseyejoey (Aug 30, 2012)

That's too bad . I hate when fish don't like cooperating with me. I only have one tank so if anything happens, it happens to most of the fish in the tank like a chain reaction. 


Sent from my iPhone using Petguide.com Free App


----------



## FRIENDLYFISHIES (Aug 7, 2012)

Bummer bettaman, I guess it happens :/ ...I was so sad when I downsized and rehomed 2 of my favorite bettas, but now im like wooo! life is so much easier and I can really give Moonie the care he needs for his fin damage and spend what money I do have on him, Miyagi and the Gups. I was soooo stressed when I was trying to help out the rescue, care for No Nens fins, Moonies fins, the gups and miyagi the plakat. Now I can put my time and effort into planting my tanks and keeping the water super clean and the tanks well cared for. *Sigh* bittersweet for me I suppose. Sorry your going through it though, its really sad and a shame. I wish you luck with your fry! Hopefully your other fishes will pull through.


----------



## Guest (Nov 7, 2012)

Sorry you are going through this. It is always hard when fish get sick. I have four one gallon tanks and meds, I can help get the bettas better. If you can somehow find a way to get 4 of them to me, then I will help you out. I will need to know what they have so I can dose them properly.

Fortunately, when halfmoon was alive he only had ich once.


----------



## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Do you find the "wild type" betta to be healthier? IME "wild-type" fish tend to be more sensitive to water conditions (to the point of death), but less disease-prone than line-bred fish.


----------



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

Actually, the imbellis are much more active and appear hardier. They are fry from wild types so they are more used to being pets. I have extremely soft water and it's perfect for discus. My bettas really like it. I have found that the wild types are much more intelligent. When I go to capture them, they are much harder to catch. Angelclown, thanks for the offer, but I don't think that 2 of them would make it and I would have to talk to my parents about it. The little imbellis died last night. I am planning on my red halfmoon doubletail to die soon because of internal cysts and sbd along with ripped up fins.


----------



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

I feel your pain. Am having lots of probs with 1 tank too.
Too many tanks to keep track of for MY age and health.


----------



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

Same here. School is really making me busier. I lost my delta tail female this morning. Probably because of velvet. My red delta male is looking really bad this morning. I am starting to doubt that my plakats have dropsy, but with the way my luck has been going I don't know. At least their velvet went away as far as I can see. My betta fry are looking happier too.


----------



## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Only thing I suggest is go bigger. It sounds counter-intuitive, but larger tanks are easier. You have to worry about them once a week instead of twice a day like a 1.5.


----------



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

With one betta in a 1.5, I only have to do water changes twice a week.


----------



## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Last time I had a fish in a 1.5, I overfed and he was dead by morning. IMO, too much precision needed. If you at all sloppy, the consequences are fatal. If you are having trouble w/ a little tank, move the fish to a 5 or a 10 and see if it gets better.


----------



## FRIENDLYFISHIES (Aug 7, 2012)

Betta man said:


> With one betta in a 1.5, I only have to do water changes twice a week.



wow, I only got away with a once daily 50-70% change and one 100% every 4-5 days, if I didnt change them daily I had constant fin rot/depressive fishes. Just moved the double tail to a 10 gal...soooooo easy....I change 30-50% 2-3x weekly and already see bubble nests, signs of regrowth et. 

I dont appose 1 gals, they can work, but even with plants I didnt trust it. Maybe try a 5 gal?


----------



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

I feed my fish sparingly. There's rarely any food at the bottom.


----------



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

Lost another one to velvet.


----------



## Guest (Nov 14, 2012)

I would send the ones that are the healthiest to me, they would probably make it. I would like to help out with getting your bettas better. But if all of them are pretty far gone, then I can probably help over internet or even phone.

Do you have medicine for the diseases that your bettas have? You can use ich medicine to get rid of velvet. What diseases are you actually dealing with? Please list the diseases that you are dealing with.


----------



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

I have meth blue. That treats velvet. I have one with chronic fin rot, but I'm keeping him as a pet. I am dealing with dropsy, fin rot, and cysts. I can't treat dropsy, but the fin rot is easy. I only have one that I would get rid of and he has internal cysts. He can't swim correctly and would be a waste of shipping costs. He's in a 2 gal that's heated and filtered, so he's not in a bad tank. I've lost several fish lately, and there are more that I'll be losing soon. Thanks for the offer Angelclown! My mom doesn't want to ship things too much and I don't have shipping stuff yet. I don't know what type of dropsy my fish have, but it happened quickly so I'm guessing fungal. I am hoping it's not TB, but I've heard that bleach won't kill it and I bleached the tank and it still got in, so there's some question.


----------



## Guest (Nov 14, 2012)

Ok. You can treat dropsy as it is a bacterial infection. There is an anti-bacterial medicine that treats it. The active ingredients are formalin, benzalkonium chloride.

Feed veggies to your bettas which aren't swimming right. It could be that they have swim bladder disorder as well as the disease they already have.

With fin rot, you already know what to do. 

As for cysts, I am not sure what to do for them. As I haven't had that issue before with my bettas that I had.

Definitely keep the water clean, pristine clean. Keep feeding them, as you are already.

I hope that you can get your bettas feeling better. Keep an eye on them like a hawk. That is what I did when my biggest clown loach was sick while I was treating her for the diseases that she had. A friend of mine and I pulled her through the diseases and it took three weeks to get her better. She was a fighter. I still have her.


----------



## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

dropsy isn't a disease...but it is a symptom of something else going on with the fish internally...treat as AC said with an anti-bacterial medication and lots of water changes...
do not use salt as it will only add to the problems..
how could you know if your fish have internal cysts ???did you get MRI scans done ?
personally ; i doubt that you take as good of care of your fish as you say you do...if you did , you would not be having any of these issues....


----------



## Guest (Nov 14, 2012)

I was thinking the same thing lohachata. How can anyone know when a fish has internal cysts without doing an xray or something. But hopefully Betta man will listen to the advice I gave him and his bettas do get better.


----------



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

lohachata said:


> dropsy isn't a disease...but it is a symptom of something else going on with the fish internally...treat as AC said with an anti-bacterial medication and lots of water changes...
> do not use salt as it will only add to the problems..
> how could you know if your fish have internal cysts ???did you get MRI scans done ?
> personally ; i doubt that you take as good of care of your fish as you say you do...if you did , you would not be having any of these issues....


If bleach didn't kill the dropsy, I don't think an antibiotic will help, but I will try your advice. The internal cysts or whatever they are cannot be fixed and when I got the fish, it already had it. The finrot is a chronic problem as the fish is blue and blue fish are more sesceptible to fin rot.


----------



## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

i try to be straightforward and honest...in all things.....i will not cowtow to anyone that thinks honesty is ill mannered when it pertains to them...
take just this one species of fish...BETTAS.....you have lost more bettas in the past year or so than i have ever lost in the 40 years i have been in this hobby...and i have bred and raised many thousands of bettas..
over the years i have screwed up a bunch of times...and often got my butt chewed out for it...i stood up like a man and accepted responsibility for it....
what does annoy me(and others) is that you put yourself out there as something you most certainly are not...you dole out mounds of advice about almost everything ; and you can barely keep your own fish healthy..you talk about being a successful and experienced betta breeder.....,YOU ARE NOT !!!!!!!...you are not even close.....
as i have told a few folks here...i am probably one of the nicest people you will ever meet in your life...
personally i think you need to step back a little and mature a bit and learn to be honest about yourself.....
you may think anything you wish about me; it doesn't matter..i know who and what i am..


----------



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

I have been quite successful with my imbellis so far losing only one because of bullying. The only reason my fish caught dropsy was because it somehow survived bleaching. You could say things in a different way that is not rude. I doubt you will choose to as you haven't in the past. Loha, you just said that you have lost less than 5 adult bettas in 40 years. Somehow, I doubt that. Though I have not raised the fry to adulthood, I have spoken with breeders and asked them questions. Also, what ever happened to those petstore bettas you were going to breed? Somehow your spawn log didn't get updated.....


----------



## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

i still have the bettas but decided that i was not set up to breed them...i just don't have the space to set up the 100+ containers needed to house the males...i will be giving them to our club so they can raffle them off to help support the club..


----------



## FRIENDLYFISHIES (Aug 7, 2012)

Dropsy is a sign of organ failure in bettas, they don't catch it, it would be secondary to disease or parasites right, an 85% - 99% sign of death? Some can occasionally be saved but their lives are drastically cut short correct? Good speculation on the the tb though, id wonder how possible this could be? Any bent spines? Physical abnormalities as of recent asside from dropsy? Now I'm Curious as to what is causing the organ failure? I almost wonder if there was a free college lab that would be interested in studying any deceased fishes? I almost think tb is more common than we realize in bettas, I rescued mums betta a few yrss back, he had fin rot, Pop eye, bloat, swim bladder, survived everything after AQ salt treatments...finally 6 months later he developed a bent spine, couldn't swim well, followed by dropsy (organ failure) and ultimately death :-/ poor guy. During that time I did come across quite a few articles discussing betta tb. I feared that's what it may have been, and to this day do not know, but it does make me wonder how possible it could be? He was a simple $2.99 Walmart betta, if he did infact have it, how many others might? Regular ppl who buy them probably assume the fish is sick, it dies and nothing goes any further...


----------



## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

We had a fish vet in our club and she said dead fish were almost useless. Formalin or freezing or decay all messes up the ability to diagnose. You'd have to bring her a live fish, which she would chop it up on the spot before making slides. But being able to identify the disease organism and what kills it could save the rest of the fish. Its actually getting common for discus keepers to spend a couple hundred on a microscope so they can diagnose. You can get one with a digital camera and upload images to the boards.


----------



## Guest (Nov 15, 2012)

Betta man: you have had more problems with your bettas than I have had with mine when they were alive. You are still learning how to keep a fish alive. I have researched fin rot in bettas. None of the things that I have read said that blue bettas are more susceptible to it. The ones that are more susceptible to fin rot are bettas with long flowing fins, no matter what color they are. Fin rot happens when there is poor water quality. It has nothing to do with the color of the betta. Here is a link I want you to take a look at Betta man: http://www.bettafishtalk.com/content.php/138-Fin-Rot-in-Betta-Fish

Another thing: I think that you should apologize to lohachata for being rude to him. He was being straightforward which isn't at all being rude. You say that you were taught to respect people, yet you are rude to lohachata with your response to his post. I believe that lohachata knows more than you because he has been in the hobby longer than you.


----------



## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

loha is loha. Leave him be, you get used to him. He really only comes down on people who don't listen. If you don't want to read his posts, add him to the ignore list. But his experience is worth his manners.

After you fight a few fish diseases, you feel like a pro. But until you can keep a fish alive consistently from egg to old age (maybe 5 years for a betta, 40 for big cichlid), you have more to learn. I've been in and out of fish for 30 years and I am still learning. 

If you keep on having disease issues time and time again, you do need to look to improve you husbandry. Check everything: water (don't forget temp and O2), nutrition, exposure to disease (QT sick fish and bleach stuff that contacts the QTed tank, buy from a new source). Only new fish should get sick and they should do so in QT.


----------



## Guest (Nov 15, 2012)

emc7: I was just letting Betta man know that loha was being nice. Betta man was being rude to loha. 

I like loha's sense of humor and his knowledge about fish, he knows his stuff. He also doesn't pretend to know everything about fish.

lohachata: don't worry about Betta man, he just thinks that he knows more about fish than anyone on this forum. He is a beginner, based on the info that he has provided about bettas. I don't even know everything about fish, as I am still learning.


----------



## Betta man (Mar 25, 2011)

I do not think I know more about fish than everyone on this forum. Why would I ask questions if I thought I knew more than everyone. I am sorry that I was rude loha, and I request your forgiveness. I have felt insulted by him in the past and I was fed up. I lost another one this morning due to dropsy. My brother did read an article that said blue and black bettas are more susceptible to fin rot than other fish. It's something to do with something in their fins...


----------

