Please help! Parasites on Elephant Ear Betta

[Flinkbag]

Hello there!

My once-beautiful Elephant Ear Betta, Raj, has been looking scrappy and droopy for a while now, and today I noticed he has what I suspect is either velvet or some other nasty external parasite mainly on his head and somewhat on his back. It looks like a slight fuzz has grown on his head, and he's not been himself lately. His fins look worse than ever (he looks more like a crown tail than an Elephant ear) and he's been swimming pretty listlessly and tiredly.

He lives in a 16l unfiltered, heated tank with live plants. I know unfiltered is not ideal, but I have no choice at the moment. To somewhat compensate, I do bi weekly water changes of about 40-60% per w/c, depending on how dirty the tank is, and I always add the correct amount of prime and conditioning salts. Flourish is added every water change in low doses, and Excel is added daily. Im very careful not to overdose. He gets fed every 2nd to 3rd day, and eats well. Water parameters are:

PH: 7.5
GH: 140ppm
Nitrate: 5ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Ammonia: 0ppm

So my question is, can anyone correctly identify what Raj has, and how I can treat it? Additionally, can anyone give me advice as to how his tail could've gone from delta to crown in the space of about 6 months? There is nothing in his tank he could catch his tail on, and fin rot typically presents itself as black edges, which I have not seen on him at all. I have tried salt baths and adding a tiny bit of squeezed orange, with no luck tail-wise.

Attached photos are a Then VS Now comparison, as well as a look at what kind of parasite Raj has on his head (2nd photo). Please help me get my betta back to normal!

Thanks!
Sophie

 

[Demeter32]

Poor little guy, he looks so miserable in the second picture. I would try a fungal treatment rather than a parasitic one. Parasites don't usually cause the fins to fray like his tail has, so you might be looking at fin rot, but I'm not too sure. Basically any fuzzy growth points to a fungal infection. Could you perhaps get a better picture of his head? I can kinda see what your talking about but its hard to get a clear view.

I may have an idea as to why his fins look frayed but show no signs of fin rot. I'm assuming you bought him when he was still pretty young and growing, so perhaps he actually does have a bit of crowntail in him and it just took a few months for that to show in his fins. If the change was rather gradual, in a normal growth pattern, this may be the case.

As a side note, I think you should be feeding him a few pellets every day. My sister was unintentionally starving her dumbo plakat by only giving him a small flake once a day. I knew something was off with him because he was rather lethargic and didn't beg for food like every healthy fish should, and he was really skinny. After I corrected her and got him eating pellets every day, his behavior completely changed. Now he flares at me and begs for food, plus he's gained a bit of weight. What amount (number of pellets/flakes) do you usually feed him?

Also, what kind of conditioning salts are you using? If it's the aquarium salt used for fresh water I would stop using it because it harms live plants, plus it should really only be used to treat diseases. So if you want to use that to treat your betta, I would put him in a different tank.

 

[NickAu]

He gets fed every 2nd to 3rd day,

Why?
I feed my Bettas twice a day, They get 4 Atisons Betta food pellets or 4 Dainichi Discus FX pellets at each meal

 

[Demeter32]

The more I think about this, the more I feel the cause might just be not giving him enough food. Depending on how long you've had him, prolonged malnutrition could be the reason why he acts so tired. I would take a good look at him and compare his body mass to that of a healthy betta. To get him back on track, I'd feed him 3 times a day, 2 pellets each meal. Also give him a bit of extra fatty/protein rich foods every few days, like frozen brine shrimp or blood worms. Once he's better you can go just twice a day, a pellet or two each time.

 

[NickAu]

tiny bit of squeezed orange,

Squeezed orange?