Chronic Fin-rot

[r.w.girard]

Hey all, I am posting this here because it is definitely not an emergency but I have a betta, which was given to me as a gift [never, ever give pets to someone without their prior knowledge!] which suffers from something like chronic fin-rot. Its fins grow out pretty healthy and then fall out. Then they grow back, and it happens again. They never fall off entirely. Only mostly. But he is always chipper and swimming around, eating healthily. I do weekly water changes and add quite a bit of aquarium salt to the water, which does seem to help. I wasn't adding it regularly before, and I think the problem was worse. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had any advice. It is pretty heavily planted tank and I do change at least 50% of the water weekly, if that helps.

This ever happen to anyone else?

 

[yodisc]

#1 don't add salt bettas come from rivers not the ocean no salt
#2 take your fish to petsmart and get him checked out
#3 you need to cycle your tank or no good bacteria will break down bad algae witch can cause this fin rot
#4 you should do a half water change every week
#5 and you should have a filter to remove the bad bacteria

 

[sausagewinkle]

Aquarium salt DOES help bettas, especially with fin rot.

Do you have a heater and a filter??

I wouldn't suggest taking your fish to a shop to get him checked as this will stress him out even more during the move.

 

[r.w.girard]

I guess it wasn't clear although I had supposed that "pretty heavily planted" would explain it: there is a heater, of course, although a cheap one on which I cannot regulate the temperature, and a little sponge filter. And, as I stated, I change at least 50% of the water weekly.

I don't know if I can say this and be taken at face value but this is really not a question of mistreatment of animals. Nothing of the sort. I ask only because it seems cyclical: once the fins have grown back nicely they fall out. And I was wondering if anyone has ever had this as a problem previously. That's all.

 

[sausagewinkle]

do you have a picture of him??

no one is questioning mistreatment of animals, but questions are much easier answered with more info and pictures.

 

[r.w.girard]

no one is questioning mistreatment of animals, but questions are much easier answered with more info and pictures.

Laissez tomber, I guess. The point was not to find an answer, but rather to find out if anyone had any experience with chronic fin-loss. The answer seems to be no. That is plenty an answer for me. Thank you for your interest and your good will.

I would suggest that keeping a tropical fish without a filter or a heater constitutes mistreatment. Maybe I am wrong. And I know that that has to be the first question asked. Because far too often that is at the root of the problem. But is another discussion for another time and another place, I am sure.

 

[Flute]

Could it be that he's a tail biter? Or is there really clear indication that it is fin rot? I had a HM betta who would savage his own fins, (they would look absolutely awful, like they'd just dropped off), he'd let them grow back and then destroy them again and again.

I'm sure we'll be able to get to the bottom of this, if he's otherwise healthy and in a good tank (which it sounds like he is!), then I can't see him constantly getting fin rot over and over again. Just in case, might be worth soaking his food in garlic juice to help boost his immune system

 

[Better is Betta]

I've had every problem under the sun with bettas. I have changed my routine to handling them. Problems occur due to water conditions. Your betta stresses then you have problems. I was always changing the water in my tanks and no matter how much I did this on a regular basis, problems still erupted. I have discovered in my experience that bettas hate hate hate water changes. Now a lot of you are saying thats nonsense my bettas love water changes. I'm talking about my experience to what happens to my lot. Everyone has different water supply and I think the water in my area may have problems. I'm no scientist so I can only check for the usual signs eg chlorine ammonia and ph. Any other chemicals lurking in it I will have no idea of it.

So I have changed my routine and its working for me. So far the bettas that have had fin rot are now looking good and the rot has stopped.
What I have resorted to doing now is just top ups. I live in a very hot and humid area and the water evaporates fast. Instead of taking out water and putting in fresh I just top it up. I clean the filters every 4-5 weeks but still only top ups no major clean outs.
I also fast my bettas I only feed them 5 days a week. One of the biggest killers is overfeeding.

When you think about it bettas come from some areas that are stagnant and dirty and the only time they get fresh water is when it rains. Something to think about I suppose.

Some of you will be sitting up and nodding your heads in disagreement but for me its working.

 

[snazy]

I've had every problem under the sun with bettas. I have changed my routine to handling them. Problems occur due to water conditions. Your betta stresses then you have problems. I was always changing the water in my tanks and no matter how much I did this on a regular basis, problems still erupted. I have discovered in my experience that bettas hate hate hate water changes. Now a lot of you are saying thats nonsense my bettas love water changes. I'm talking about my experience to what happens to my lot. Everyone has different water supply and I think the water in my area may have problems. I'm no scientist so I can only check for the usual signs eg chlorine ammonia and ph. Any other chemicals lurking in it I will have no idea of it.

So I have changed my routine and its working for me. So far the bettas that have had fin rot are now looking good and the rot has stopped.
What I have resorted to doing now is just top ups. I live in a very hot and humid area and the water evaporates fast. Instead of taking out water and putting in fresh I just top it up. I clean the filters every 4-5 weeks but still only top ups no major clean outs.
I also fast my bettas I only feed them 5 days a week. One of the biggest killers is overfeeding.

When you think about it bettas come from some areas that are stagnant and dirty and the only time they get fresh water is when it rains. Something to think about I suppose.

Some of you will be sitting up and nodding your heads in disagreement but for me its working.

No, I don't agree and I don't think this is the solution to the OP's problems. Have you tried a better dechlorinator, double dosed maybe just in case? Also, before you leave your tanks for too long with just top ups, read about "old tank syndrome" and what will happen to the tanks kept with this type of maintenance. I would not compare the bettas natural habitat with a tank at all. It really isn't "dirty" where they came from and it rains a lot. This is an advertising trick to make buyers feel good about their bettas in cups and is totally not true.

 

[Baccus]

I think what Betta is Better was getting at is that Bettas don't live in pristine filtered waterways, rather they are naturally found in rice paddies and still or slow moving back waters, also Malaysia and the surrounding countries that Bettas are naturally found do have a dry season where there is little or no rainfall so any natural ponds/ pools/ water collection places will not be getting regular rainfall top ups during this no or little rain season. Also I don't know about Betta is Betters evaporation rates but I know where I live in central Queensland it is nothing to have to add a couple of litres per tank as a top up in summer, plus because of dodgy chlorine adding practices by my local council I am loathe to put any water in my tanks on weekends in summer, this is when the town resivour can not handle the amount of water being used by so many people and the stench of chlorine is strong every time you turn on a tap.- Just to explain my local council has an automatic chlorine adding setup on the resivour, but the resivour has no componants to measure how full the resivour actually is. So the machine injecting the chlorine is set for example every 12 hrs add X amount whether the resivour is full, half full or nearly empty.

I keep quite a few shrimp and not all of them are the easy cherry shrimp, but I have found even using dechlorinators with these native shrimp is not a good idea (and definantly not double dosed) unless the water can be aged for a week outside, this has its draw backs in that by leaving such water outside to age the ever present mozzies go to town breeding in it, and that sneaky evaporation kicks in again or the dogs drink half of it .


So for the original poster, I think it could be a case of a bit of a combination of the fighter perhaps not liking the water conditons and for what ever reason gets into fighters heads it is also tail biting. Sort of like a bird that starts feather plucking, its hard to pinpoint when and why the bird started self mutilating but once they start its an incredibly hard habit to break. If you are certain that all the water specs are what you would expect a fighter to be happy in eg. temp, pH, dH, lighting etc then I could only suggust it is self mutilation and the only way I can think to rectify that is to add some new interest to the tank. Fighters are insanely curious about all goings on both in their tank and any neigboring tanks as well as who or what is passing by their tank. I find even just rearranging the plants "furniture" (logs, pieces of timber, unusal rocks etc) is enough to make my fighters spend ages inspecting everything making sure its still to their liking. I know with a fairly heavily planted tank re-arranging healthy plants is never fun, but if you can add or move anything else to the tank it should make the fighter interested. One of my fighters even has an artificial leaf that hangs over the side of the tank and rests half in and half out of the water and he often sleeps under the leaf or ontop of it where its submerged, and he chucks the sulks if I take his leaf away.

 

[Better is Betta]

Very interesting read Baccus your a wealth of information and one to give good advice. Cronic fin rot....I have had VT bettas that look like plakats when fin rot sets in. I have never witnessed my bettas tail biting so that was ruled out. Most times it is water conditions that causes this nasty thing (Unless you see tail biting of course) So how do you fix the problem......I know what rw girard is going through. I've changed water, cleaned the substrate added salt even medication. They start showing signs of getting better the fins start growing back then before you know it....its back. So again you check the water to see if there is an ammonia problem, ph etc. You make sure the water is de chlorinated the filter is working, add your salt again etc etc etc. Still keeps happening.
In the end I gave up......yep bad I know but I was frustrated. I stopped the water changes. All I did was top ups and low and behold his fins got better. He is back in shape and no sign of rot.
Yes I know about old tank syndrome and of course would not recommend top ups to other species of fish and even tanks that have bettas in with them.
I treat all my bettas the same way. They are all in their own planted tanks with no other fish maybe a couple of shrimps and snails. So far no more problems.
Now Im not telling everyone out there to stop the water changes and only do top ups. I'm just giving you my experience on how I stopped my cronic fin rot. Every ones situation is different, different climate, different water, different filter system etc etc etc.

What works for me may not work for you. In my situation nothing worked until I stopped fiddling with the water.

 

[Baccus]

Very interesting read Baccus your a wealth of information and one to give good advice. Cronic fin rot....I have had VT bettas that look like plakats when fin rot sets in. I have never witnessed my bettas tail biting so that was ruled out. Most times it is water conditions that causes this nasty thing (Unless you see tail biting of course) So how do you fix the problem......I know what rw girard is going through. I've changed water, cleaned the substrate added salt even medication. They start showing signs of getting better the fins start growing back then before you know it....its back. So again you check the water to see if there is an ammonia problem, ph etc. You make sure the water is de chlorinated the filter is working, add your salt again etc etc etc. Still keeps happening.
In the end I gave up......yep bad I know but I was frustrated. I stopped the water changes. All I did was top ups and low and behold his fins got better. He is back in shape and no sign of rot.
Yes I know about old tank syndrome and of course would not recommend top ups to other species of fish and even tanks that have bettas in with them.
I treat all my bettas the same way. They are all in their own planted tanks with no other fish maybe a couple of shrimps and snails. So far no more problems.
Now Im not telling everyone out there to stop the water changes and only do top ups. I'm just giving you my experience on how I stopped my cronic fin rot. Every ones situation is different, different climate, different water, different filter system etc etc etc.

What works for me may not work for you. In my situation nothing worked until I stopped fiddling with the water.

Am I bad I got your name around the wrong way, thats what you get for typing after a long day at work .

Since the new system is working for you Better is Betta, then I would try to stick to it, but maybe look at doing a couple of larger water changes again once the worst of summer is over, I know summer is usually the worst with regards to maintaining water quality, the unrelenting heat and humidity plays merry havoc with all aspects of water quality let alone keeping tank levels up, and lets hope you don't get another cyclone like Yasi. I bet somehow Yasi slamming into north QLD has mucked up either natural water systems or degraded in some way the councils water supply systems. I know where I am the river water is still contaminated by the flooded coal mines water from futher out west that is still getting pumped out of the mines.

And I agree, what works for one, may not always work for another so knowing your own local water and its condition is paramount in being able to maintain your own tank water.

 

[snazy]

It's another topic altogether, but rice paddies have gallons and gallons of water and rice paddies are just one of the many places bettas have been found but it also depends on the type of betta as some do live in huge streams, inhabiting the slower upper parts. During the dry season, many bettas die because they get stranded in small amounts of water with poor water conditions, but yes, they have adapted to it to try to survive.
If the problem is caused by the poor tap water quality indeed, then I don't see how it is a solution to stop changing the water? Maybe one needs to find a better water source in the long term instead. Also, top ups with the same "questionable" water would still cause damage if that was the problem, even worse because all the dissolved solids in the tap water will be allowed to build up to dangerous amounts over time in the tank if only "pure evaporated water" is replaced. Which would lead me to believe Better is Betta's tap water is lacking or has very low content of certain minerals important for the betta's health and topping up the tank allows for these to build up to enough high levels but this way you can't control the amounts and it will get out of hand sooner or later. Also, how much water did you use to change before at one time, maybe the tank water TDS, PH, etc.. are totally different than your tap water causing a shock each time? Have you also tried adding almond leaves to the tanks in order to mimic their natural habitat's water and mineral content? Bettas certainly don't like "bright" water, but this has nothing to do with the water quality. The salt is always not something you should do on permanent basis and is an irritant to fish. As such, it sometimes leads in healing wounds as it will cause excess mucus production and similar. People have put salt on human wounds for certain purposes too, but you can imagine how painful that can be although beneficial in certain cases?

I guess it wasn't clear although I had supposed that "pretty heavily planted" would explain it: there is a heater, of course, although a cheap one on which I cannot regulate the temperature, and a little sponge filter. And, as I stated, I change at least 50% of the water weekly

Is the temperature stable and what degrees does the thermometer read at? I would start testing the water for ammonia and nitrIte daily for a week to see if you get any small amounts at any time, regardless of the regular maintenance and plants because this is most likely caused by some type of water quality stress, so you need to rule out the possible problems one by one, starting with the most important. And also, same applies here, but try changing the dechlorinator. Is your tap water treated with chlorines or chloramines? Is there any ammonia, nitrIte, nitrAte in it? What's the tank's water Ph and what's the tap water(after sitting for 24 hours in an open container). Do you happen to have a TDS meter to check how the water changes over time in the tank and also compare to the tap water. Try adding some dry almond leaves. If the tank is high tech, then the lights could be a bit too bright for him and he feels insecure. And my understanding is that heavily planted high tech tank needs a lot of water flow which is no good for bettas. Does he have tank mates and what tank mates?
I missed it, but how big is the tank also and can we get a picture of it

 

[Better is Betta]

Thank you for your pleasant reply Baccus and your good advice is always a welcome.