# Bloated Stomach & Lethargic



## InuGirlTeen (Oct 26, 2008)

I have four betta splendids. Three are females living together in a ten gallon and one is male, living in my sixty gallon.

A week ago I noticed that one of my females has an bloated stomach and she's extremely tired it seems. She doesn't swim around anymore and just lies there on the bottom on the tank against the glass. I was pretty positive that it was dropsy so I treated the tank and nothing has changed. Now my male in my sixty gallon aquarium is exibiting the same symptoms. He was fine yesterday but today he is bloated and tired.

Here is what the male looks like as of a few moments ago:









What do you think? They both have stress lines constantly but my other two females are perfectly fine, although I'm watching them constantly.

Their diet is a mix of adult brine shrimp, bloodworms, and shrimp pellets.


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## Toshogu (Apr 24, 2009)

eh, after that one guy told me about em I recommed getting it to eat blanched shelled peas. worked for my platy. just microwave some frozen peas and shell em. isolate the one female so it's the only thing she can eat. looks like constipation.


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## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

I just had this problem with one of my females. Your diet for the bettas is rather high on the protein side- too much protein = constipation. The pea did not work for me so I had to resort to epsom salts.
there are varying formulas on the internet for how much to use. I ended up using 1/4 teaspoon to 1000 CC of tank water. I put the bettain a small 1000 cc container with epsom salts dissolved in it and left her for a couple of hours.Put her back into it the next day too. it took 2 days of treating before she had a huge poop. She is now just fine.
She had been eating too many crushed snails and shrimp pellets.


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## Toshogu (Apr 24, 2009)

yep, anytime fish looks like that, it's prolly constipation. with the platy it didn't have a distended belly, only sign of something not right was that it lost all orientation and swam funny. It's probally an indication of other things as well as constipation, but it is the easiest, and simplest reason to try first =)


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## Guest (May 17, 2009)

i swear by the pea meathod for my fishes. in fact this was recomened by SueM and ever since i have been feeding all my tank peas every 10days. on the 9th day i starve the tank and on 10th i feed them boiled shelled frozen peas.


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