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Hi!

About 2 months ago i got 2 vail tail bettas, they both where fine, just very passive but you know how that goes, they used to live in cups. They where doing fine, eating fine, pooing fine, just not swiming much, resting a lot on the bottom of their tanks (1Gallon). They both came from the same store.

They had 2 WC a week with a small dose of melafix in their water.

Two weeks ago they both started to act erratically not swiming up right and laying on their side, they are not bloted or have any phisical sympthom of being sick. when i did a WC that week i added some salt to their water but didn´t help.

On their last water change they both went in to shock twitching and not moving at all after, they stayed kind of bent up position for some minutes, I´ve seen this happen before, so i just held then in my hand for a while near the surface and talked to them till they started to reasume their normal swiming position up right again, after that both of them seem to not be able to move one of their side fins, takes a lot of effort for them to go up and breathe and they are not active at all, kind of a partial paralysis.

Do any of you know what this is, and what can i do to bring them back to health?

souhds like a knid of shock... do you condition the water? you need a product like aquasafe if you dont, also make sure the water ebing added isnt too cold and is about the same tmeperature...

a while back i lost a jubie clown knife fish to a similar case, but it was due to cold water to a tropical fish... before i had a heater and i used cold water from the garden hose...

good luck.. also do with stress zyme and melafix...

\\\\\\\"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure\\\\\\\"

Hi brandeeno, thanks for the tip, i do use water conditioner and the same water for the rest of the tanks, never had a shock before.

As for update, one of the bettas died, the other is still struggling but not making much progres. It´s now in the big tank hoping that that will help.

I agree, it does sound like shock or possibly even some sort of poisoning.

Are you using water that is too hot or cold in the changes? Do you use dechlored tap water? Is it possible there was a flush with some chemical or treatment?

Was the dechlorinator or Melafix new? It might not show in your other tanks as presumably you'd be changing a smaller percentage of the water so whatever it was might be more diluted and have a lesser effect.

Any way to run a test on the tapwater to check the basics, or maybe check with the water company?

In the meantime, use water from a known source, possibly even get it from your larger tanks for a while.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

have your readings been coming up normal?if you havent done one recently i would and tell me how it goes. i was thinking maybe 2 waterchanges a week is a little much. over doing those is bad, your bacteria gotta get a break from ya for atleast a week at a time to set up camp. twice aweek may be too often for them. im someone who thinks bacterial filtration is probably the most important. i over do it sometimes! tell me how your reading goes,if you have too much amonnia and nitrites, try giving your tank a biological boost and add the proper dose of bacteria for aobut 5 days. that may not be the problem though. do that test and let me know! im interested to see what the deal is.

i like feesh

I'm with callatya on this one, it seems to me that there is something going on with your water source. Some city or county water is just unsuitable no matter what chemicals you add to it. Another thing and it may just be a guess but is your betta getting up there in age, when they get older they get more restless and tend to lay in a plant or on the bottom more than usual. I am interested to see what your water readings are, if they come up fine and he is still eating then I think his age is catching up to him.

Justin

Colts Fan For Life
30g platy tank: 2 sunburst wag platys, 2 redtailed white calico platys, 2 red wag platys, 1 fry(not sure who it belongs to), 1 Golden CAE.
Bettas:1 VT male