Sick Betta - Help Required

Melj

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I rescued 2 male Betta 3 weeks ago that were in a small glass bowl and with a glass sheet seperating them & nothing else in there. I bought a duo 20lt tank with filter, heater. Boys settled and fine. I changed the water Sunday (with conditioner and temp to 26 degrees) and boys went back fine. Monday PM one is fine, swimming and eating, the other is lethargic, sitting in the bottom of his tank floats under the filter nozzle, and won't eat and hasn't done since Monday PM. I have googled what I can and I have gotten nowhere. Anyone know what this could be and how I fix it. No raised scales, no colour loss, no velvet appearance.
 
While it's good to hear that you rescued them both and gave them a larger tank, you may have rushed into it a bit.

A tank needs to complete the Nitrogen cycle preferably before adding the fish. The bacterial colonies that break down the harmful fish waste into less harmful substances have not been established in your filter. This means that any waste (ammonia) the fish are producing isn't getting broken down an converted but is in fact harming them. This would cause the bettas to act ill and not want to eat.

I would do another water change of 50% right now, and them you might want to think about getting an API master test kit to monitor the levels of ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. You will have to more frequent water changes (ever day or every other day) to keep the levels at a safe amount until the tank is cycled which can take quite a while and it will be easier to monitor and tell when the tank is cycled if you have the liquid test kit.

How strong is the filter output? Is the one ill betta getting pushed around easily? Bettas don't really like a ton of flow especially the long finned males as it makes it hard for them to swim.

You probably aren't going to like this part, but you should of bought a tank twice the size of the one you have now. 20l is about 5 gallons, which is the smallest tank I would keep a betta in. You have the tank split so now each betta gets 2.5 gallons, which is just too small and for the betta on the side with the filter, he can't get away from the flow very easily. It sounds like the divider cannot be removed so I suggesting buying at least a 10gal (38ish liters) tank and then splitting it with a divider.
 

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