I have a betta (Barry) that has been behaving very odd the past 10 - 14 days or so and was wondering if I could get some help in figuring out how to address it. Notably, he has been lethargic, breathing heavily and not eating.
We initially noticed he wasn't eating about 12ish days ago and when we tested the water there was an ammonia spike (to about 1ppm) due to a dead snail. We did water changes daily until ammonia was back to 0 and figured he would start eating a couple days later once he recovered; however he never went back to normal so we did some more research. We then thought he might be suffering from some infection or other such illness because he looked fine, he just wasn't acting like himself. At that point we decided to do daily methylene blue baths: 1ml of MB per gallon of tank water for 30 minutes each day. After a few days, we noticed he was moving around a little more (actually going up to the surface for air) but still not eating. At this point it has been about 9 days of daily MB baths and he's still not eating but he is moving around more.
On top of all that, I just noticed that his scales are more... noticeable? Almost spikey and his belly looks bloated. Googling around I found that it might be dropsy but, to be honest, I feel lost trying to diagnose him and I feel like I've tried so much and nothing is working 😔
I had considered buying the quarantine medication trio from Aquarium Coop and putting him in a hospital tank for a week or so but from what I've been reading I'm not sure if that is any different than the MB baths he's been getting daily; however, at this point I'm willing to try anything. Any help is much appreciated
Water parameters: Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, pH 8.2, temp 78ish
Here are a couple photos I took of him today:
And here is a photo of him from January