Injured Betta Fish

[BettaFish08]

My daughter was being naughty this week and terrorized our betta fish by sticking in her hand in the fish bowl and tearing off most of his tail (she's 4 and half years old). She also puffed inhaler medication into the bowl. I found her not too long after so not sure if the medicine got to him any. Bowl was pretty messed up after and he's still skittish. He won't eat his food so I'm trying to find the best food to try and tempt him to eat. Right now we have Tetra BloodWorms (freeze dried) and HBH Betta Bites and they haven't interested him.

I'm not anywhere near an expert on Betta fish and we got him as a family pet sometime in the late spring. I'm also not familiar with water pH and all that stuff. We mainly just change out his bowl once a week and added the chemicals mentioned below.

Tank size: 1 1/2 gallon fish bowl
pH: Unknown
ammonia: Unknown
nitrite: Unknown
nitrate: Unknown
kH: Unknown
gH: Unknown
tank temp: 70-76 (usually room temperature)

Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior): After the incident he sort of floated around, struggled to swim and sort of lay on the bottom for a while, looked like he was breathing hard. I thought he was going to die from stress at first but so far he's survived. Hasn't eaten since his injury, black tips on what is left of his tail, swims around ok and I've seen him go up and down, float near the surface or on the bottom, against fake plants.

Volume and Frequency of water changes: Injured 11/21/12 around 7:00 pm. Did immediate 100% water change because of human medicine put in water. Waited two days and did another 100% water change at about 11:30 pm 11/24/12.

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank: Tetra EasyBalance and BettaSafe. Also used BettaFix today.

Tank inhabitants: Just him.

Recent additions to your tank (living or decoration): None

Exposure to chemicals: Daughter used an inhaler (Flovent) and puffed some into the water. Not sure how much.

Digital photo (include if possible):
Before -

After -

 

[MrsM]

awwww poor thing, hope he recovers ok...id just keep up with the water changes for now maybe leave the feeding for a day and just keep him in a quiet darker room to reccover from shock, i dont really know much about bettas but maybe get some water conditioner that helps heal fish, i use stresscoat when do a water change, it says it can help heal fishes fins etc....hope someone with a little more knowledge comes along soon, im sure he will be fine with some tlc, and if kept WELL out of kids reach

 

[Baccus]

One of my male fighters recently suffered some horrific injuries to his body thanks to jamming himeself into a gap between the top of the pump and the filter in his tank. Thankfully he has a heated and filtered tank so all I really had to do was ensure he had clean water, I also added some terminalia leaves (Indian Almomd) to raise the acidity in the tank and help stave off secondary infections.
Since your male mainly only had his tail damaged it should regrow with regular water maintenance, they are incredibly resiliant fish.
Best of luck and hope he recovers quickly.
Also the only other option I could think of for the inhaler your daughter pumped into the tank would have been a huge water change (which you did) and run some carbon in the filter in the hope the carbon would trap any more of the wayward chemical.

 

[BettaFish08]

Well, he's in a fish bowl, not a tank, so we don't use a filter. I've thought about adding some aquarium salt to his bowl. Would that help stave off infections as well?

 

[Baccus]

Aquarium salt can be useful in making the body secrete more slime which in turn can prevent bacteria/ fungal spores from taking hold, it also is a mild(ish) disenfectant. I would be very careful however of using aquarium salts in an unfiltered bowl with no filteration where you will probably be needing to do daily partial water changes. It would be very easy to overdose the salt because it wont evaporate and could potentially just get stronger if you kept adding some more after each water change.
If possible I would look at getting something like Bettafix which I believe is designed for injured fighters, or some Indian Almond leaves. But hopefully with just regular water changes he wont suffer secondary infection. Only if he does start to show secondary illness or goes completely off his food would I look at adding chemcials or salts to his bowl. Treating a potential illness prior to it occuring just reduces the effectiveness of future treatments when they really are needed.
Best of luck with him.

 

[BettaFish08]

That's one of the issues though. He hasn't eaten since his injury and hasn't shown any interest in the food that I have. I was wondering what would be good to tempt to him to eat besides what I have (brands mentioned in the first post)?

 

[Baccus]

None of my fish like freeze dried bloodworms, but I bet your fighter would gladly scoff down some defrosted fresh bloodworms (usually kept in a fridge or freezer at most LFS/Pet shop), he might also go for defrosted and rinsed brine shrimp. If all else fails can you get your hands on some mosquito wrigglers? I haven't found a fish yet that can resist live mozzie wrigglers. If not you could even try live fruit fly pupae but they may be a bit to big for his mouth.
Also my fighters like Tetramin micro pellets, they love them and know the container I keep the pellets in.