Dead Betta :(

[Tenshi4eva]

I'm a little bit depressed right now. I have always loved bettas and about a year ago I bought a beautiful red betta from a local petstore. I at the same time set up a wonderful tank for my sisters son (which is in wonderful condition)...

anyway, skhigh, my betta had a small 5 gallon tank all to himself. he had a cave to hide in and what I thought was a nice little place. I bought the right water, I kept his tank at the right temperature, I cleaned it properly, I fed him regularly. He was ALWAYS a "perky", active fish.

for the past week however he'd not been doing too well. He didn't eat and I often found him "laying" on the leaves to his plants. He died this morning after I did just about everything the guy in the petstore told me to do for him.

I'm already determined to buy another betta....but i'm worried....did I do something wrong?

 

[Leopardess]

Probably not if you had him for over a year. Bettas have relatively short life spans...and if he was "mature" when you bought him, he'd be getting old in betta years.

A couple things I can think of are:
Unless you've got some funky stuff going on with your tap water, it should be fine to use instead of buying water. The problem with bought water is that it is often really purified and can lack important minerals/vitamins/nutrients that the fish use by absorbing them through their skin.

How did you clean it? How much water did you change out and how frequently? Did you use dechlorinator to neutralize the chlorine in the water? Was the tank filtered?

Do you know what your nitrate/nitrite/ammonia readings are?

I don't think that any of them were a problem, but they'll be helpful to monitor (if you didn't already) for any future fishies you get

And, A+ for keeping him in a good sized tank and not a small bowl!

The symptoms you mention just sound like he was getting old. Some live longer than others, some, unfortunately, don't Even when you do everything you can, some still die I lost my favorite betta right around the Superbowl and I still miss him.

May I ask what the guy at the fish store said to do? My other advice is to rarely, if ever, listen to the people at the pet store unless you check it out first - here's a great resource for that! You'll find that most of them are more than clueless about fish


Sorry about skhigh

 

[Tenshi4eva]

Thanks. My boyfriends sister breeds and sells exotic pets and she always was coming over and checking things on his tank and it's filter, so I assume everything was ok with it. I never changed more than 1/3rd of the water at a time. the man at the petstore gave me an antibiotic to give him...but it obviously didn't help.

just to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with the tank or such...how should i go about making sure my tank is perfectly clean for my next fish without using anything possibly dangerous to clean it with?

thank you for your thoughts

 

[Leopardess]

I'd just rinse it out with good *hot* water. Gravel and tank and decorations too.

It doesn't sound like it was anything you did....

 

[Iggy]

Sorry for your loss. Sometimes betta's die without showing symptoms like yours. A agree, use tap water if its not 'farm' water instead of bottled water. I use Prime (red lable) conditioner and it works like a charm for removing chlorine and heavy metals.

If you want to 'sanitize' a tank.. here is what I do.

1. Take everything out, rise the gravel and put it in a plastic pail or metal bowl. Then I add boiling water to the gravel container and let it sit for a while to kill any bacteria lurking inside. After about 20 minutes, dump out the hot water and rinse the rocks off again using cooler water.

For the tank, plants, rocks, I use a vinegar and water solution to rub everthing down and rinse it really well. I prefer vinegar over bleach because trace amounts of vinegar will not kill your fish while bleach certainly can.

Let everything dry, including the gravel. If you are in a rush, you can use paper-towel to wipe everything. Some people also suggest baking your gravel at 350f, but I find it removes the epoxy coating some gravel is coated with... so I now just use the boiling water method.

 

[Tenshi4eva]

OK, youre all going to think i'm nuts.... when I left for work this morning I asked my little brother to get skhigh and put him in a cup and to burry him in the backyard, in classic little brother style, he only did this halfway. He put skhigh in a cup and set him on my table. I just noticed this and went to move him and noticed that ...well....as odd as it sounds...his fins are moving. he's fatter than normal, i thought this was bloat from..well..being dead.... but when I picked up the cup he swam. He's in horrible condition. I'm afraid i'm going to have to mourn losing him twice instead of once now. He was definately not moving nor showing any life this morning...i'm very weirded out right now...

 

[Leopardess]

Wow, that is weird.

What happened? Has he passed on yet?

If he's still alive and struggling, you may want to think about euthanising him

 

[Tenshi4eva]

Skhigh died...again. I'm really torn up over this. I know it sounds sad as well..he was just a fish. but I'm on my own and my fish and my cat mean a lot to me. He was a great fish...I didn't know fish were friendly with you until I bought him.

i'm heartbroken, but at least I know he's not "half dead" and suffering now.

 

[Iggy]

Hey Tenshi4eva.... it sounds like Skhigh had something called 'dropsy'. Its common symptoms are bloated stomac, inactivity and floating, and more often the scales pultrude out (like a pinecone) in the bloated area.

Dropsy is not a disease name per say, more a symptom of a variety of possible diseases, including kidney failure, bacterial infection, or maybe viruses. I don't think anyone really knows 100% what causes dropsy, but it is fairly common in betta's and gourami's as a species.

I lost 2 bettas and 1 gourami to it as well. Its practically uncurable, from most accounts, no one I have spoken with has ever sucessfully cured a fish from dropsy symptoms.

I had to kill one of my betta fry today. I was cleaning his jar using a modified syphon and he got stuck in the intake and it literally yanked his insides out through his stomac. I took some scissors and cut him in half quickly to stop his suffering.

Its no fun loosing fish, and it even harder when you have to kill a sick or damaged fish.

Just so you know your not alone, we have been there and its perfectly ok to grieve and have a ceremony if it helps. There is even an Obituary area under general you can post your RIP for Skhigh.

Hope this helps a little. Don't loose faith!

 

[mcshell]

Sorry about your lost.
At lease Skhigh has someone cared for him in his last days.
I think I can understand that feeling as I had to kill a sick young betta that I've been with since he was an egg. He was just slightly over 6 months old. Tough, tough.