Betta Ich isn't healing!?

Question

I have my male betta in a 2.5 gal minibow tank with a filter, gravel, live plant, and a cave type thing. About a month ago I noticed a little dot on my betta's "chin". I just waited for a few weeks and it didn't do anything so I just thought maybe he's changing colors or something. But then another white/gray dot showed up near his gill, and another dot was on his gill. (but not inside). I am dosing him with melafix. It isn't helping at all! I've been dosing him for over a week. And I know that you shouldn't turn on the filter during the treatment. What should I do?

Also the temp is okay and I feed him betta pellets along with freeze dried blood worms.

And also, is this ich or something else?

Okay MM, here's your details.

The dot on the chin is about the size of a pinhead. There's three of them so far. They're white. (at first I thought alittle piece of a bone was sticking out of his chin.) It's hard to tell about the one on the chin, but the ones on the side of his face are raised. Those are about half the size of a pinhead. I cant tell if they look fuzzy. Hope its enough.

Answer 1

you can have and should have your filter on during treatments, just remove the carbon from it.

to treat ich, there are a few things you should do:
*do a 30% water change to get rid of some of the parasites in the water
*add aquariiumd salt to his water (dissolve in water during before adding to the tank water). about 2.5 teaspoons for your tank.
*get ich treatment, ich is a parasite, so look for something that treats parasites.
*slowly raise the temp in your tank to about 82°F - 85°F

Answer 2

It's possible that it is ich, but highly unlikely. Ich moves much faster than you describe. It will go from one spot to hundreds in a week. Since you haven't seen this kind of increase in the spots, I would seriously doubt that it is ich.

Turn the filter back on and do a good water change, then tank a look closely at the spots and see what else you can say to describe them. Size, are the raised or flat or more like a hole in the fish? Do they have any fuzzy look to them? Any extra details you can see will be very important in determining what the problem is. A photo of course would be great.

I would really recommend you not use any additional medication at this point. You need to figure out the problem before you add any more medications to the tank. I am also not a fan of the all in one treatments, they usually cause serious problems for you cycle in the tank and often don't target the problem hard enough to cure it.

My first impression is that you may have a case of fungus or columnaris that the melafix isn't curing but is slowing down a bit. More info would help me to be sure though. Please add the additional info or feel free to email it to me.

MM

Answer 3

Save your self the melafix is for bacterial infectians only. You need a anti parasite med if the dots are salt sized if bigger you need anti fungal medication. Make sure to take out the carbon and zeolite filter medias and keep the filter running. If it is one cartige just put a big aquarium sponge to replace all the filter medias. I recomend an everything med.