How do fish react to thermal or septic shock?

Question

My Betta is sick so I have been reading about betta diseases and I can't find information on thermal shock and septic shock. What's the difference and how do you know if your fish has any of those conditions? how do they react?.

I forgot to ask, if your fish has any of those conditions what can you do to help them.

Answer 1

Thermal shock is of course a reaction to a rapidly changing temperature. How the fish reacts depends on how rapid and how much change occurs. Example: If you move a betta from a bowl of 85 F water to a bowl of 50 F water, he would most likely die immediately. If not, he would stop moving or swimming and die within a few minutes. If on the other hand you moved him from 85F to 80F he would be generally lethargic for a few minutes and that's about all. Same basic symptoms for going cool to warm, but that move in temperature is easier on the fish than chilling them quickly.

Septic shock is caused by a systemic or body wide infection. It's an infection that completely and usually rather quickly overwhelms the fish's ability to deal with it. Symptoms would vary depending on the nature of the infection from bleeding gills to bleeding fins to swelling in the abdomen (dropsy) to even some other things.

These two items aren't diseases but general classifications of problems and don't have a particular set of symptoms.

MM

Answer 2

If your fish has septic shock it usually dies in an hour or so, so you are probably dealing with a fish that is in water that is too cold (which cause the fish to be sluggish or non responsive) or too warm (which gives you about the same symptoms, but the fish metabolism can be so high that they starve to death.) The best temperature for your beta is between 80 and 82 degrees F.