The Puffer Forum

29 gallon tank
6 female betta, 4 danios, 1 bloodfin tetra, 1 glow light tetra
Water params:
Nitrate: 10
Nitrite: 0
PH: 7.4
Ammonia: (I'll post this as soon as it develops, it takes 20min.)

Feeding schedule:
Flakes in the morning (2 parts betta flakes, 1 part tropical fish flakes), Frozen food at night (either bloodworms, brine shrimp, or glass worms) mixed with garlic (garlic guard) and vitamins (Kent Zoe).
Water Changes take place once a week. (30-50%)

It's been set up for two weeks, I cycled it by putting the filter on from their old tank along with the gravel from the old tank. I also used about 70% of the water (they used to be in a ten gallon tank).


Yesterday I noticed one of my female betta looking a little, off, I guess, her scales looked a little out of place and she seemed a bit larger than she usually is. I wasn't sure if it was just my imagination, or if there was something wrong, and since my quarintine tank is full of crabs at the moment I had no where to put her. I decided to add some melafix and see how she was doing the next day. This morning I had to rush off to work and didn't get a chance to even feed my fish. I just got home about twenty min. ago and as always, the first thing I did was check on my fish. I was especially concerned about Ambient since she hadn't been looking too well the night before.
Today she heaps worse. I'm 99.9% sure it's dropsy. I moved around some fish and put her in a 2.5 by herself. She looks terrible. Her belly is swollen and her scales are sticking out everywhere. I don't know how she got so bad so fast. She's still active and acting hungry, I'm just about to give her some blood worms.

What should I do? I'm in a complete panic trying to figure out what to do.

*Supposedly* you can pick up Dropsy medication at a LFS. I've heard that there was nothing you can do about dropsy, but I might very well be wrong. If you've got the time, maybe take a trip over to the LFS and see if you can find some for it. I don't know all that much about dropsy, other than the symptoms (which you've mentioned) and that it happens a lot with Bettas, it seems.

I gave her an epsom salt bath, it seems to have helped a little bit.
But just looking at her, it doesn't look like any amount of medication will help.
I'm torn between trying to medicate her and trying to keep her alive for as long as I can and just, putting her to sleep. She's still active and swimming around, and I'd hate to just end it, but the more I look at her, the more I feel like it's hopeless. I think I will go look at the LFS and see if I can find something.

I kicked the crabs out of the old 10 gallon, and I noticed another one of my girls isn't looking too good, she's got a scrape on her side. (What the hell is up with my fish today!?) So After the 10 gallon is all set up and everything I'll move her over and treat it with melafix.

Today is just a really bad day.

^That's what she looks like now.

I don't think thats dropsy - she's only swelling in the face and belly, dropsy is usually all over, like a pinecone. I'd try daily antibiotic baths for one hour in one gallon of water with enough medicine for ten gallons in it. You have to mix new antibiotic every day, it's quite unstable once dissolved.

Nick wrote:I don't think thats dropsy - she's only swelling in the face and belly, dropsy is usually all over, like a pinecone. I'd try daily antibiotic baths for one hour in one gallon of water with enough medicine for ten gallons in it. You have to mix new antibiotic every day, it's quite unstable once dissolved.

What kind of anti-biotics should I use?

Erythromycin would probably be fine.

Nick wrote:Erythromycin would probably be fine.

Thanks- I'll seeif I can pick some up today

I'm starting to see a lot of people lately having this problem with Bettas. Just an insane amount of bloating, looks a lot like dropsy but just doesn't seem to have a reason for it.

I wonder if some disease is running through the population right now?

My two bettas became bloated the other day. They aren't constipated, I've seen them pooping and I fed them peas. The became bloated on the exact same day, they share a separated 10 gallon tank. I was going to wait and see if they got better on their own because they aren't acting sick, still swimming and begging for food.

After looking today it does look like the bloatedness has gone down a bit but they are still bigger

I picked up some Erythromycin and I'm currently treating as you directed. I appreciate the advice.

I was wondering what the reasoning behind treating this way as opposed to adding it to the tank was though? And how many days should I continue this treatment? The package I got says to treat for 4 days, should I do that and then see how she looks after the four days?

The meds break down fast in an active tank, and FW fish drink next to no water, so little actually gets into the fish even though they're in it all day. With a bath, the concentration is so high even gill absorption is measurable and the small amounts of water consumed are concentrated enough to have more effect. Additionally, the medicine breaks down very little in an hour, so it's very active the whole time the fish is uptaking. Antibiotics also weaken or kill the biofilter bacteria in addition to the ones you are treating for, making ammonia or nitrite spikes possible. I keep antibiotics out of my main tanks period, melafix is usually the only thing like that I'll use.

Thanks for explaining, I appreciate it. (I like to take every opportunity to learn something).

And recommendation of how long I should continue the baths?

Until it's fixed, or you run out of medicine, about ten days either way most likely.

Thanks for your help Nick. Unfortunately she passed away a few moments ago. I think whatever it was did some internal damage. I thought about doing an autopsy, but just didn't have the heart.

Hopefully all my other fish will be okay and whatever it was won't spread to the rest of the tank. I'll do a few water changes and hope for the best I guess.