Miranda Marie

You can never go wrong with more oxygen. Do her gills look red or swollen?

Are there any other signs of illness? I'm so sorry your little friend isn't doing well.

It was definitely very hard to decide. I feel like I should've done it sooner in the end, but she kept going through brief phases of bouncing back a little...and then plunging back into terrible again. I will look for some clove oil. I know that probably would've been easier on me, but I was more confident at the time in the swiftness of a quick blow. Especially after she had already been lying almost unresponsive on the tank's bottom for so long. Plus my sister had our car those last two days with her at jury duty, so I didn't have a way to get into town when she took that final worst turn. I love this hobby a lot, but days like this are definitely sad. Romi was a very fiesty and fun fish and I'm glad I got to care for her for a while.

I'm really sorry you went through the same as well. It's hard to have no idea what you're doing wrong or what else to try. So far, I haven't seen similar symptoms in the neon green rasboras or the ember tetras, but it seems like neither set is as susceptible to either option as bettas/livebearers/etc. So I don't know if they're okay because they're less likely to catch the options, or if this was just a problem specific to her. I'm mostly struggling to determine what to do next. Do I nuke the tank she was in and start from scratch, or leave it running but wait a month or two for new fish? Do a deep clean and add more meds to kill off anything lurking in the water? If it was TB, it sounds like that wouldn't be enough, but I don't have any way to determine that for sure. I'm just nervous to get new fish and then repeat the last few months all over again.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. It's just really sad to see a beloved pet slowly waste away and nothing you do helps. 😕

Trigger warning: Severe fish illness and euthanization. As some of you know, I euthanized my betta Romi after two months of agonizing hospice care. I'm still trying to work out what happened, to figure out how to move forward with the tank. Unfortunately, the only disease that seems to cover her huge wealth of symptoms appears to be wasting disease/fish tuberculosis. She became extremely and frighteningly thin, lost random patches of scales, had strange lesions, repeated and untreatable bacterial and fungal infections, extreme fin loss, etc., and no amount of medication (I tried everything the Co-op sells in multiple treatments) stopped the progression. Towards the end, she became essentially paralyzed, couldn't even lift her head off the gravel, and lay for two days gasping on the bottom. I kept telling myself, "She'll probably be gone next time I look..." only for two days to pass like that. I finally removed her unresponsive but still breathing body from the tank and crushed her outside. She didn't even try to flop around or seem distressed at being removed from the water. 😕 So my questions are: Is fish tuberculosis something that actually happens in the hobby or is it one of those scary rumors and I'm thinking too much into this? If it is wasting disease, what are the chances my other tank is infected, considering I got her at the same time as a couple of the schools in there and they quarantined together a year ago? What protocol needs to be used on Romi's old tank to make it safe? I can only find one halfway useful article on this online and it basically says "throw everything away and bleach the entire tank". Is that accurate? So much was put into this tank, including a huge number of Crypt plants. And if my community tank is infected and the disease is lying dormant... I don't even know where I'd start with that should they start getting sick. Am I overreacting? Is this even a possibility? Am I just really bad at treating sick fish? I'd really like some outside perspective. ~Miranda The tank and Romi before vs when she started getting really sick. I didn't have the heart to take a photo of her towards the end. She looked like a zombie fish.

Well, today I made the decision to euthanize. None of the meds were doing anything anymore and she hadn't moved at all since early yesterday morning. It would've been harder, but she didn't even resist me netting her out at all or even flop around when I placed her on the rock to crush her. 😕 She wasn't gone, but she seemed to be almost completely paralyzed. I'm sad and still at a loss on what was wrong with her, since I tried every med the co-op sells and nothing seemed to help. At least she's no longer suffering. 💔

So she's still alive. Yesterday she looked very rough, but today she is swimming more (albeit listing onto her side a *lot* still). Here's a better picture of the side that looks strangest. I went ahead and started another round of the med trio and added salt. I'm gonna order Prazipro and Maracyn 2 I think? I dunno at this point. If she doesn't get better soon, we'll have to consider Euthenuzing because it seems cruel to leave her struggling to swim...

I'm not familiar with the medication names. Are these the same as Expel-P and Paracleanse?

I don't think she's going to make it through the day. She's declining very rapidly now. 😕 I'm gonna guess the initial infection damaged her internal organs and that's now the cause, but I think she's close to passing now.

She spends half the time laying in the bottom of the tank among the crypt leaves, looking exhausted/weak, and the other half hovering at the surface. I haven't noticed her gasping for air, but her gills do move fairly quickly. No spitting out food or flashing that I can see. Today she's definitely looking very weak and lying down more than usual/doesn't come up to beg as much as usual when I am near the tank, which has me pretty worried. 😕 The camera over exposes the color, so she isn't quite as vibrant as in the photo, just as a heads up. Though she isn't super pale either. She's quite thin looking, looking down from overhead, her head looks too big in comparison to her body size. The addition of Expel-P this week seems to be making her more lethargic, so I might do a water change and see if she perks back up... I don't really know what to do at this point.

Hey, guys. I could really use some advice. My betta fish - Romi - has been struggling since the beginning of July with some illness I can't identify. It started out with some weird colored patches on her body, turned into mild swim bladder problems (she lists over on her side when trying to turn around and looks "floppy"), and her fins are ragged like she has fin rot. She's also very thin but continues to eat ravenously. Even though she is floppy and weak seeming, as soon as she sees me, she comes to the top to beg for food. Tank perimeters/details: Ammonia - 0ppms Nitrite - 0ppms Nitrate - 5ppms Aquarium co-op heater Aquarium co-op sponge filter Lots of Crypt plants Nothing sharp in the tank Tank mates: 1 nerite snail, 2 dream blue neocardina shrimp At this point, I have tried everything except salt (because of the plants). Two full rounds of the med trio. A round of Expel-P incase it was a different kind of parasite. Switching up foods so we're alternating 3 different high quality kinds. Increased water changes to 2x a week. At this point, I am considering adding aquarium salt as a last ditch effort despite the fact it might kill all the crypts. She looks so sad and I hate seeing her so floppy. I did see Irene's sonic the betta fish video about the electrical current and thought maybe that was it. I can't feel an electric shock when touching the water, but I don't have great feeling in my hands either. I'm considering buying a new heater just to see because at this point, I am at my wit's end. 😕 Any and all ideas you guys could give me would be greatly appreciated. Should I do a salt bath for her? Risk the plants and add a low dose of salt to the tank? Get a new heater? I'm willing to try pretty much anything that might help.

You could try some green neon rasboras. I have them in my 20g long and they're insanely active swimmers. Compared to my ember tetras who hover a lot, the neon green rasboras *never* stop swimming. I got mine (school of 8 ) from aqua huna for $30. They're a bright true-neon green (much brighter in color than green neon tetras), though, not a red color.

I soak mine in a plastic tub prior to adding to the tank, because it tends to get *disgusting* in the first couple weeks. When I got my latest batch of wood, I put it in the tub for 2 weeks to water log, and when we took the lid off to take it out and rinse it, the water smelled like death itself and was filled with dark brown globs of biofilm. This was aquarium-specific, sand blasted wood that was smooth and pretty when it first went in. When we took it out, it looked and smelled like a bog had made its home there. All that said, there's a decent chance it wouldn't have gotten so disgusting in a developed ecosystem vs a bucket of regular tap water, but I don't think I'd be brave enough to just toss the wood in the display tank and hope that's the correct assumption LOL.

My female betta lives with a nerite snail and a single dream blue neocardina shrimp. Not sure why she decided that particular shrimp is okay, since she killed all the others the first week she was added LOL. (They were not meant to be in that tank. They were stowaways from my huge colony who hitched a ride on the sponge filter I seasoned in my 20g tank, so I wasn't concerned if she ate them.) The three of them have been living happily together for about 8 months now.

When I order fish from Aquahuna, they generally arrive 5 days later. I live way out in the middle of nowhere so that's fairly normal. So far, I've had no DOA and not lost any fish they have sent me. Just as an confirmation that fish are more resilient than we give them credit for sometimes. Not saying that'll always be the case for everyone, but I've had success with long ship times on several occasions now. (I do avoid shipping in summer and winter though.)

Romi's tank got a large water change and new meds added today. She's a bit perkier after the first round, and the parasite meds came today, so we're doing a full round of the trio to see if that kicks whatever she has. 💙

The plants are doing fabulous and look great! I really need to do a deep clean on it and get new photos. 😆 It's been a while since I did. But Romi the betta is dealing with a bit of a bacterial infection of some kind, so I am trying not to stress her while she is going through med treatment. 💙 So a plant trim and new root tabs are being held off until that finishes up. Currently, she seems more perky, so I'm hoping the meds kick it and she does better soon.

I love it so far! It'll look amazing once the plants grow in.

Messy aquarium, needing a trim, but making me very happy today nonetheless. 💙 I really love this hobby, even in the in-between seasons of a tank just running itself.

I'm glad you're looking into filter modification! Cartridges are such a ploy to get our money and make a filter rather useless, except for water movement, in my opinion. I used them when I started out, and once I switched, I noticed a huge improvement in my tank's stability. Plus not having to buy them every month and mess with the filter constantly is much nicer.

Earlier this year, I saw someone make themselves a strainer of sorts that fit perfectly in the corner of their aquarium, below the lid, attached to the rim. It just stayed there, snug and secure, making adding water back into the aquarium very simple. Sadly, it was someone's personal project (with a 3D printer) so it's not available to the public as far as I know. But it looked so handy and useful!

Right now I alternate Easy Fry and Fish Food and Xtreme Nano pellets. I just ordered Bug Bites and Xtreme Krill flakes this week to use as alternatives so their diet is a little more varied (and also to help enhance the color of my ember tetras). Mostly I just hop over to the food tab on Aquarium Co-op every so often and pick a food to try out. XD I'm not a live-food type of person, though, so I just vary the prepared foods.

Just to be clear, are you replacing *all* of your filter media or just the carbon? You should never replace things like the sponges/biomedia balls. That's where your good bacteria lives, and they last basically forever. A quick rinse in a bucket of dirty tank water every couple months is all you need to do with those.

Hopefully pulling back on adding that will help then! 🤞