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I'm not exactly sure what happened, I turned on the tank light ten minutes ago to try and spot my new snail, and I see two of my betta girls in tatters!!

The one that is the worst is my big black one. Her right side looks like it's been descaled. I can see white flesh along 1/4 of her side. She has a few ruffled scaled on the rest of her, and all her fins are split. She's her normal colour. She's eating. And she's swimming okay.

The other one isn't too bad. She's the middle sized one. She's torn on both sides behind her gills, and her flesh is just barely showing. Her fins are in pretty good shape. However, the fins on the sides (Sorry, don't know what they're called) are shredded, and she has to work them about five times as fast to move. She's her normal colour. She's eating. And she's moving around the tank alright.

Somehow, the little one is just fine.

All three are acting fine together. No chasing, no flaring. They're swiming past each other very closely, they ate together just fine. They're not even acting like they're injured.

I don't know if the two big ones got into a fight or not. Everyone seems a lot calmer then they have been. I noticed a molted shell from one of my shrimps. I'm wondering if they didn't both try to eat it, and then fought over it. Or maybe they got caught on the decorations...


Anwyays, what can I do to prevent a secondary infection? With open wounds like that, I want to take every precation that they don't catch a bacterial/parasitic/viral infection. I just cleaned the tank three days ago (small algea bloom I had to clean up). I've got a bunch of shrimp and two oto-whatever catfish, so the tank does stay spotless. What would be a good medication to add? Any recomendations for food that will help them heal? I do feed them a mix of flake/pellet/freeze dried/frozen. And I do use aquarium salt (about 2/3's of the recomended dose).

Please, help!

I definitely sounds like the two larger ones fought with each other. I would put some more plants/rocks in the tank so they can have more places to claim their territory.

As for the wounds, I would use Maracyn Plus. Very effective antibiotic, and doesn't harm the biological filtration.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I did add a "castle" type decoration about five days ago. I'm starting to think that they fought over whose territory it would be. I do have a heavily planted tank. I couldn't fit anymore in there. They never had problems with territory before, and it's been a month and half. I added the "castle" as a hiding place for the ghost shrimp and catfish. But they're fine together now. I'm not going to separate them unless they start fighting again or start picking on each other.

Thank you for medicine recomendation! I'm going to set my alarm early so I can get to the pet store before I go to work.

I had to send my mother to pet store for me, and the girl who worked there told her my fish had parasites, and sold her Maracide? Could it be parasites? They're not acting strange.

Did they say what kind of parasites in particular?

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

According to my mom, the girl just said, "It sounds like the early stages of a parasitic infection". And then gave my mom a bottle of Maracide and a package of Parasite Clear, and told her I need to use both at the same time to get rid of whatever it is.

As if. I'm not putting anything in the tank 'til I know what, if anything, is wrong. As far as I can tell, they're just cut up, and that's it.