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Question: I have a tank with 4 female Bettas that have been safe for a year now. I come in to feed them today and realize one of them is bloated and the stomach is sticky out way more than normal. I have no idea what to do here and want to try my hardest to save the fish. I have already quarantined the sick fish to another tank. Please help.
Reply from Admin
People would be fast to jump to conclusions of your fish having one of the common sicknesses like “ick” or others. I hear about this all the time and I’m not going to call it a
sickness
but instead a digestion problem. These fish are actually very know. To have lots of digestion issues. Lets first jump into how you should fix your fish.
It’s good to always quarantine your fish with the issue so you did that perfectly. What your going to do now is not feed the betta fish for a couple of days. Long story short, a lot of these bloating issues occur from people feeding these fish too often. Their stomach is tiny and don’t eat as often as we think. It takes a betta 2 weeks to starve to death. That’s a long time.
Also what is occurring is competition over food because you have multiple females together. Not that females are aggressive but fish in general will grow competition tendencies come feeding time. It’s a lot like those of you that came from large families. Whoever eats the fastest gets the most food. The betta might be scarfing down food even though its not hungry but more or less “competing.”
Starve her for a couple of days and see what that does. After the third day of no eating, feed her pieces of a pea. They help tremendously with their organs of digestion.
I’m almost positive these factors will bring the bloating down. If a week goes by without the bloating going by, I would do strict 50% water changes in your quarantine tank. While doing water changes, also research some recipes on adding small amounts of marine salt to the water to help kill bacteria and such in the water. Make sure not to touch your aquarium filter’s media because we want that to stay established.
If the issue is not within the fish’s inside body then it is some sort of water contained bacteria that the fish has. The same treatment that occurs for “Ich” might be a good last resort to turn to. Other than these procedures.. I don’t know of much that anyone could do. Unless you know a fish surgeon somewhere (joke that probably is not funny. Sorry for dry sense of humor).
Reply from Author
Starving him for 3 days straight actually fixed the entire issue. Who would of thought that. Without asking that.. I probably would of kept feeding him more to give him the most energy to fight the illness.. in turn maybe killing her. Thanks so much. Your dry humor was just fine now that you saved my fish. Forever debt with you.
Note: image source: http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/fishpictures/