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I was away for a few days, had my parents feed my fish =)

Anyway, when I came back I found my red veil tail with a slight white stringy 'poop'. His tail was also very tattered.
It was late so I figured all I could do was wait until the morning to get a closer look.
When I woke up this morning his tail has several long 'rips' that go right up to his body, and the stringy looking poop has become longer, and the base of it almost looks red.

I'm not sure how it could have happened, but is it possible my fish has parasites?
He eats and behaves as usual but I worry even that might not last if I don't get him some medicine fast.

When you say red, does it look like little red hairs or very thin worms poking out? Does he have a pot-belly?

The rips sound like they are secondary. Do they look like actual tears or are they more like stringy disintegrating fins?

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

This morning he's just got a little white string sort of barely hanging out, the rounded somewhat red part seems to be gone?
It didn't look like little worms though, more like just a red spot, kind of like a blood spot maybe, though I really hope it wasn't.

The tears do look like someone just literally grabbed his fin and ripped it from bottom to top, doesn't look like it's disintergrating, and there's some slight regrowth happening.

Edit: He doesn't have a pot belly, looks normal at the moment.

And deleted my other post, accidently double sent the message

treat him with a bit of melafix to make sure the regrowth iss healthy and no bacterial infection occurs.

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

I'd do a basic worming treatment also, but I'd get the fins fixed up first as the fish wormers tend to knock them around a bit.

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

I've been told to use melafix at half strength when it comes to treatment, is this how I should go about it?

If you are concerned about gill issues (some people have reported difficulty with Melafix and bettas) then just put in half the amount that it says to. I tend to dose at or above recommened and without adding extra surface movement and have never had an issue, but I'm very careful about dose rates, treating when there are respiratory problems and I've been using the old style of Melafix, so perhaps the problems people have are just a combination of factors that I'm yet to hit on.

If you are trying to dose a small bowl, I think it worked out at 3-4 drops/L so try 2 drops/L. (check my maths, but I think that was right if your dropper is 20drops/mL)

Clean water and lowering stress are going to have more of an impact than Melafix, full or half dose. Keep him warm, don't poke around in his tank too often and watch that he isn't being hassled.

I have no idea how he has ripped his tail, but if he was trying to scratch or was stressing out at possible parasites then I'd just be aiming to clear up the tail rips a little so that you avoid infection and then moving on to working out the root issue.

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

His tails mending nicely =)
Today was tank cleaning so I added some melafix and cleaned the water as per usual, also did a bit of tidying (removed dead plant leaves etc). Hope I didn't startle him too much but he seemed calm about it. Guess out of paranoia I wanted to take out the 2 rotted plant leaves I found...