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Ok. here goes...
I have one betta that just died of dropsy. Poor thing looked like a pinecone. Since he was almost a transparent white, i noticed that he developed a strange dark area in the bottom of his abdomen. Was that like his system being backed up? I was just wondering if it had anything to do with dropsy or was he just having a lot of problems.

Also i have a female that is extremely swollen at what would be her chest if she were a dog. her behavior and her appetite haven't changed. but she has been swollen for about 3 months now. she gets less food than my other bettas because i thought she was just getting fat. but she hasn't lost any weight. her poop is normal looking, not extremely big or too much of it.

I also have a female that has constantly clamped fins. I've tried a bunch of different medications (over a 8 month long period)but none of them seem to work. she just lays in the bottom of her bowl. I keep all my bettas water clean with regular water changes. hers is the only one that gets dirty looking. It has a yellow-orange powdery substance on the bottom that i assume is her poop because there are no little pieces of poop anywhere. her color and appetite are good. Can anyone tell me what she may have and what i can try. she is my favorite fish and i would hate to loose her.

I have had a couple of fish die of dropsy, and mine did seem to loose their color. Dropsy is not a disease itself, but rather a sympton of some other disease. Your fish most likely had a bacterial infection of some kind. Often, there is something going on with the water.
The female with the swollen chest, may be egg bound or just pregnant.
The one with the clamped fins, may be cold. Do you have a heater? What size bowl is she in? Or she could be sick. Treat her with something like Melafix/Primafix for a few days and see if that helps her.
I hope this helps.

I treated the one with clamped fins, but she isn't getting any better. I guess i could try to breed the female that is so big, maybe that would help. I do not know any other way to get her to release the eggs. I just don't know what i'm going to do with all the potential babies... So many potential babies!!

What are you feeding them? And what is the size of the tanks? And how much water do you change? And are they filtered? And as Two Tanks asked, are they heated?

It's possible that the pine coning is the fish being constipated. And the clamping could be from poor water conditions.

If you want to give a little bit more a description about your fishes living conditions it might help a little more.

they are in half gallon glass/plastic containers. I clean their water twice a week, full water change. They are not filtered as i have lost 2 bettas to filters. They are not heated. the water stays at a fairly constant 73 degrees F. The rest of my bettas are fine and healthy. Just the 2 females are left a bit under the weather.

Ok you have a couple of problems, a full water change will consistantly kill a lot of the bacteria needed to keep the tank cycled. You should only ever change a proportion of the water, perhaps 20% or so, up to 50% for the big changes. You will probably always have occasional water quality issues in a tank that small, its verging on too small for the maintenance of fish, even a betta. I would urge you to buy at least a 5 gallon, buy a small filter such as an eheim aquaball (theres no way a betta will get sucked into one of those), and allow it to mature. Until then I suspect you will continue to have water quality problems and your fish's immune system will remain low , and highly susceptible to infection. Its also very difficult to use meds in a tank that small, and the treatments might annihilate what is left of beneficial bacteria on the plants and in the gravel etc.

I dont think I could turn a fish around from dropsy in a half-gal.

Long-haired git, she said it's not filtered so it wouldn't be cycling... and there is no way you could cycle a 1/2 gal anyways.

Don't stop the 100% water changes. If your fish are not in a filtered tank you will need to keep doing 100% water changes. However, these do stress the fish out. I keep all of my bettas in unfiltered tanks and do 100% water changes, but the tanks are 5gallons min. You need to get bigger tanks for all of them. They just can't live happily in something that small. Despite what the LFS will tell you.

In a 1/2 gallon tank it's very likely that your clamped fin betta is sick from the poor water quality. Maybe ammonia burns. Get a bigger tank for her and give her some melafix.

I wouldn't recommend trying to cycle a 5 gallon tank. I don't think it would work all that great.

What are you feeding them?

As far as I can see these are your main problems:

1. Tanks are too small and are causing bad water conditions and are stressing the fish. Solution: Get bigger tanks.

2. You are changing the water too regularly and stressing out the fish. Solution: Get bigger tanks and only do 100% water changes once a week.

3. What you are feeding them may be casuing them to get stopped up. Solution: Give them a varied diet and make sure your foods are in date. Foods lose nutritional value after a few months. If you have been feeding your female live foods it may have caused her to start her breeding process.

4. Long periods of medicating. Solution: Besides from long periods of medicating allowing the bug to build up its immune system, if something doesn't work after that long it is possible that you are not medicating for the right thing. And it is always better to look at the preventative measure instead of the cure.


You really need to do what longhairedgit and get bigger tanks.

Lol, well I was trying to break it to her gently. Id go for a 15 gallon. I dont believe in keeping even bettas in less than a 15 gal, its just too likely to problematic.

You can cycle almost any amount of water incidentally, as long as its not overloaded with stock. A betta really needs a 15 gal with a filter although I have seen people keep then in filtered 5 gals ok for quite a long time. Cycling is not totally dependant on the use of filters, but they sure do help, and about 99.999% of fishkeepers will need one in one form or another.Its either that or huge tanks for one small fish . A half gal is really just a puddle.

A betta in less than a 20 gal will need one.

bettas are originally from small muddy puddles. Besides i haven't had any problems with the rest of my fish. just those 3. ( i was trying different medications separately for short periods during an 8 month long period)And one was in my biggest tank. One had a gallon. the other 2 are in 1/2 gallon plastic tanks. I had one in a 5 gal. all he did was sit on the bottom then he got his fins trapped in the filter and i found him stuck to it dead the next morning. I do not have the money to buy or decorate that many tanks ( i have 10 fish now). Aside from the money, i am not allowed to have more than 10 gallons of fish in my room here at school. Most of the fish i have were rescued from living in their little cups that they were purchased in. The girl was keeping them in the stupid cups and wanted to flush them all after school was over for the semester. All the rest of them are healthy now. I just can't get rid of the bugs in the 2 sick ones that are left from the 6 i rescued. I have taken them to my grandmother's house. hopefully the well water will be more beneficial than the treated city water that i have here at school.

That small mud puddle thing is a lie. Also, these fish you have, have probably been bred in captivity, not in the wild.

I know you probably don't want to listen to us because money is always a factor. Ask around and see if someone can take some of them off your hands. I know what you mean by the cups, it is cruel. But your fish are just going to keep getting sick and will probably have a shorter lifespan. You have a problem, and you are going to keep having problems, and this is the solution you are going to get off people. There is not miracle medication that will fix your fish. You need to make their water quality better.

"Bettas are called "labyrinth fish" (a name also given to anabantids) because they have a labyrinth organ in their heads that allows them to take air directly from the atmosphere rather than via their gills. This means that they can survive in smaller spaces and in poorer conditions (i.e., stagnant water) relative to other aquarium fish. However, this has led to the common misconception that they are happier in these spaces. While they may survive in puddles, they are otherwise like any other fish, in that they prefer (and thrive in) large spaces with clean, well-oxygenated water.

In the wild, the Siamese fighting fish inhabits standing or slow-moving water, including floodplains and rice paddies, at temperatures of 24 to 30 °C (75 to 86 °F). Carnivorous, it feeds on zooplankton and mosquito and other insect larvae."

That's from Wikipedia.org.

See! They don't live in mud puddles and they do need a bigger tank!

Don't worry. We've been in your position. The reason we know is because we too make mistakes. But we then fix it and learn from it.

Nicely summed up there.

I think a comprehensive test kit would be proof positive of the toxicity of the water. More than just lack of oxygen will be a problem in a half gallon. An unfiltered half gallon will push way beyond the acceptable limits for any species of fish. The REAL standards of good fishkeeping come as a shock to many people.

Don't fall for the blurb from bad petshops,or bad product marketing and do what you can to move yourself away from the lowest common denominator of fishkeeping habits.

Half gallon aquaria are suitable only for small plants, and maybe the odd snail, and that really is it. Fish of any species require much more space for stable water quality to happen.5 gal is workable if you are very skilled, 10 gallon better and actually beginning to be humane, and 15 gallon infinitely kinder. That really IS the truth. If you cant provide that, then you really do have to think about passing the fish on. I applaud your motives in getting the fish out of cups, but the standard is higher for correct maintenance than you may realise.