My three month old baby bettas began floating today and won't eat. One died, two are struggling, one seems okay. I went to feed them this afternoon and the biggest one was at the bottom laying on its side. I took him out and put him in a smaller container but he couldn't swim to the top and died a few hours later. I thought it would be a good idea to do a complete water change just in case whatever it was was contagious but when I opened the tank to get the other three out, one was in the middle of floating around in circles at the top. Needless to say, I panicked and now they're all in different containers. The two struggling ones are in shallow water because they can barely swim to the top (really have no clue if that's a good idea but it seems to be working). I've been flushing out their water with bottled water every few hours. This is my first set of babies and I thought all the dying and culling was over but I guess not :( Any ideas what it could be? Or how to save the rest?
2007-07-08 18:39:18 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Pets ➔ Fish
They're in a 2.5g tank, which does have a heater which keeps them at 80-82. I had just put a filter in their tank about two or three days before this happened so I guess that could be what did this. There is nothing externally wrong with them that I can see. They're all just beginning to get their colors in their fins. For about the past month they've been eating freeze dried bloodworms (Hikari Bio-Pure) quite happily, at first I cut it up for them but then they grew so fast I didn't have to anymore after two weeks. The one that died and the one completely unaffected are about 1 1/16in, the other two are almost an inch. The only thing I treat their water with is aquarium salt and sometimes AquaSafe but all their water is always bottled. Thank you so much and sorry it took so long to get back today.
2007-07-09 15:55:30 · update #1
Since so many are affected and you don;t mention any external signs of disease, I would think it was probably a water quality issue. The fact that you now have them in clean water should help given time. As Luvin Life said though, don't do anymore water changes for now, let them recover from that a bit and see how it's going.
Please look them over carefully for any signs of disease and add that to your question as well as how big they are and what you have been feeding them.
I'll check back in a few hours to see if you have added any additional information and we can go from there.
MM
2007-07-09 02:28:38 · answer #1 · answered by magicman116 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
What size tank do you have them in? Also do you have a heater in the tank? Betta fry are very fragile. The temperature must stay a constant 80 F. Also do not do anymore water changes until it is time again. You can put them in shock.
Is there any other signs of illness? Velvet? Ich? Red Gills? With alot of them dying all of a sudden I would say you have something in the tank killing them. A parasite or some type of fungus. I will send this along to MM and he should be here shortly with more help.
2007-07-09 07:50:07 · answer #2 · answered by LuvinLife 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This is a great site for caring for the babies.
www.bettysplenden.com
Lots of great info.
I've never bred, but sometimes salt helps. Put a Tablespoon (sorry, I don't do metric) per gallon of water.
2007-07-09 01:46:59 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Your doing fine, turn the heater down to 75.Otherwise everything is ok.I envy you for breeding your betta successfully.
2007-07-12 20:54:26 · answer #4 · answered by Klingon 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋