HITH advice needed

[teamfargo]

I have a betta who I've had for a week....maybe a week and a half. I noticed what I believe is the first sign of HITH. I was cleaning the water every 3-4 days. 1.66 gal. tank. Undergravel filter, green rectangular small world filter with carbon/white floss stuff. By cleaning, I would change out 1/2 of the water one time....90% roughly the next. I bought a minature siphon so I would get the debris from the rocks.

Now, I read that that this is probably caused by environmental stress and/or metals in the rocks. I will admit the rocks could be the culprit. I heard someone on a forum say they used pea gravel. Everyone else seemed to think it was clever. We happened to have some, so I used it. I have it in one other tank and there are no problems there, but who knows. Maybe one bad rock?

I've been adding stress coat to the water. (is that the name of it? Declorinator/de-chlorimine-er)

Now, the sticky post led me to believe that I should just change the water more often. How often? How much? What else should I do?

Thanks!

 

[semper fi]

can you post a pic of the fish? are the marks raised or sunken? do you remove all uneaten food after feeding? did you rinse the pea gravel well before using?

 

[teamfargo]

(His mouth is not mis-shapen. Looks normal in person. Dunno why it looks funny in the pic)

Sorry for the bad photo. I took out the gravel last night just in case and didn't clean the plexiglass or anything.

The gravel: I had rinsed it very, very well before putting it in. Small batches in a collander, rinsed, shaken, rinsed. Maybe a couple minutes for each batch. The water was clear when I was done and I was able to dump it into a tank with water in it. No cloudy water after putting it in. This is currently in a 10 gal. tank also and fish all seem healthy.

Last night: In addition to removing the gravel, I did about a 50% water change. (The gravel was not very dirty at all.)

As for removing uneaten food, he gets micropellets, which are the size of a grain of sand. I give him maybe four or five of those. He doesn't eat them until they start to sink and he will readily gulp them all up, so I didn't think I was over feeding. I was actually worried about underfeeding.

When I do test the water, it has always come out in the acceptable range on my quick dip strips.

 

[teamfargo]

Today, I went to get more Stress Coat for the water. They guy at the petstore told me to buy AquaSafe instead. I ended up with both.

Two fish store guys said two completely different things. One said frequent water changes were a must....the other said it sounded like I was changing the water too often. Just a 20% change every week or so.

One guy also recommended Cycle. He said that he didn't believe in meds, additives, etc. except Cycle was great. Bought it, might return it. Will have to search the forums for opinions. One guy said that HITH cannot happen that quickly. AGHHHH!

I guess I am just a bit more confused now than before I went to the lfs.


I trust you folks here more than them....opinions?