fin rot??

[emilyekk]

Hello!

I am inquiring to see if you think my half moon betta has fin rot. I have had him for about 3 weeks. When I purchased him from the store, he was beautiful, but did appear to have cloudy eyes or a film over his eyes. However, he was going to be the only fish in the tank - so I really didn't mind nursing him back to health.

The tank was fully cycled and planted before adding him. I have a water testing kit and everything is normal. The day after placing him in the tank, I noticed approximately one scale missing from each side of his body. Since then, his actual body seems to be doing better and I assumed maybe this was due to adjusting to the new tank.

However, this past week I got busy and neglected to change the water. I also let my nephew feed him a few times, and I know there was food on the bottom of the tank (I usually only feed him 4 pellets, this was like 15 so some settled on the bottom uneaten). Upon doing the water change (I did about a 60% water change because I noticed his tail) I also realized that the heater I bought for his tank was not plugged in (I apparently never flipped the switch to turn it on. Dumb). I live in Miami so it's not insanely cold - but its been dipping down to about 55 degrees some days. So now his tank has the temperature set to 80 degrees and I am hoping this is the problem.

Another possibility I am considering is that the filter is too strong? Although I feel like this does look like fin rot. My fish is in a 2.5 gallon fluval spec. Its planted and has Tahitian moon sand. My fish loves to hang out by the intake filter. At first I thought maybe the filter was too strong, but sometimes he seems to want to lay against it and then he'll happily swim away??

My fish is acting completely normal, eating, and swimming around happily. He is making bubble nests and seems well, I am just concerned it's going to get worse.

I feel like it could be any possible combination of these issues so I wanted to be thorough to get good advice. If you need any more information, please let me know! I haven't done anything other than keep the water clean and turn on the heater since I noticed the issue two days ago. Please let me know what I need to do to help my poor fish! :(


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[Slaphppy7]

Fresh, clean water is best...did you vacuum all of the food from the substrate?...keep the food out of the reach of your nephew

2.5 gallons is quite small to keep ANY fish in; the small amount of water will be somewhat difficult to keep stable

If the fish is acting fine and eating well, I wouldn't fret too much over the fins...don't skip (or skimp) on WC's for such a small tank

[fishmommie]

+ to above. I'd do daily W/C for a while making sure to use a good conditioner. Fresh water will go a long way to curing fin rot.
Would be great if you could get him a bigger tank - as Slap said, it's more difficult to keep the water conditions optimal in such a small tank and increases the chance of something like this happening :o(

[Boundava]

+1 to the above. I have heard of bettas nipping their own fins because they are heavy and impeeding him. Maybe this is what is happening?

I know our delta is starting to do that, its sad to see him do it, but I have seen it.