Betta on Hunger Strike

[eolith]

I brought home a betta about a week ago. He's in a planted 10 gallon with consistently good water parameters. He looks healthy and happy. Nice color, beautiful fins, cruises around all day and comes to check me out when I am near the tank.

The problem is, he doesn't eat. I've tried multiple types of pellets, flake food, freeze dried food, frozen brine shrimp, etc. He's either not interested at all, or he'll try one piece and then regurgitate it more often than not. Since he's spitting up some of the foods, I thought maybe some of the pellets were too big or hard. I've provided some micro pellets and finely ground flakes however with no real luck.

I'm getting worried that he's just going to gradually fade away at this rate. Any ideas?

[Zenzo]

On 9/24/2021 at 9:15 AM, eolith said:

I brought home a betta about a week ago. He's in a planted 10 gallon with consistently good water parameters. He looks healthy and happy. Nice color, beautiful fins, cruises around all day and comes to check me out when I am near the tank.

The problem is, he doesn't eat. I've tried multiple types of pellets, flake food, freeze dried food, frozen brine shrimp, etc. He's either not interested at all, or he'll try one piece and then regurgitate it more often than not. Since he's spitting up some of the foods, I thought maybe some of the pellets were too big or hard. I've provided some micro pellets and finely ground flakes however with no real luck.

I'm getting worried that he's just going to gradually fade away at this rate. Any ideas?

Have you tried live foods? While not ideal on your end as far as effort, they may help in the short term if you are worried about him fading away. Maybe something like daphnia that can swim and live in the tank if he doesn't eat them right away?

[quikv6]

Have you tried frozen bloodworms?

[eolith]

Live foods are a little more than I wanted to sign up for at this point in my fishkeeping journey. 😅

Since he keeps spitting up what little he will try to eat, I was thinking that bloodworms might be too big. I could be wrong though. (Wasn't counting on buying 5+ varieties of fish food one week in either 🤑)

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

@eolith welcome to fishkeeping!! We all have shelves full of foods. I've been in your situation before with a betta. I concur with the bloodworms answer. Get the small block frozen, put it in a designated container overnight in your fridge. Personally I target fed my singlton fish- so get yourself a pair of non pointy tweezers and feed them one bloodworm at a time. I probably would only start with one big one, maybe 2. If you target feed, you know how much food they are actually eating. Unfortunately with only one fish you will end up throwing away most of even the tiny blocks of bloodworms, I toss them when they start to turn from red to well, not red. 

Edited September 25, 2021 by xXInkedPhoenixX
to clarify

[Colu]

Does he have any white stringy poop or bloating  if he's not eating it's could be internal parasites what I would do is treat with paracleanse 2-3 course of treatment 2 weeks apart and add seachems garlic guard to his food it acts as appetite stimulant to encourage him to eat

[Torrey]

On 9/24/2021 at 6:05 PM, eolith said:

Since he keeps spitting up what little he will try to eat,

This is a common thing to see and in my experience indicates a couple of possibilities.

 

If the betta spits anything he tries to eat out, and does not try to re-eat at all, I would suspect parasites. 

 

On the other hand, if he bites the food and then chases it to eat it after spitting it out, that sounds more like the food is too large.

[Kathy F]

I would definitely try frozen blood worms, very few things in my fish room can resist bloodworms.  Frozen Dapnia is another favorite but it doesn't cause nearly the same level of feeding response as bloodworms.  Not sure if it is the color or the smell but bloodworms has been irresitable for everything I keep.   Bloodworms got my gold laser corydoras eating again after the stress of shipping.  Another option is to soak the food in garlic to make it more enticing.    

I agree with treating for parasites.   A good all around parasite med that doesn't need to be ingested is API General Cure/Fritz ParaClense (same med just different brands).   I had glodanios ship in with internal parasites 2 weeks back and the meds started working right away, the sunken bellies slowly disappeared over a 3 day period.   

[quikv6]

If there is drive to eat, and then spitting out, stubborn parasites are a real possibility. I have 2 cases of this recently, with the same spitting symptom, and sunken bellies. I tried General Cure with no luck. I even tried Levamisole, with no luck. The only this that worked in these two cases was Flubendazole. In both cases, after 2 doses (3 days apart), the fish were able to keep food down, with no spitting. Weight gain immediately followed.

On the negative side, Flubendazole is not the easiest to work with, and is tricky to find as well.

Edited September 27, 2021 by quikv6

[eolith]

Thanks for the input from everyone. I wouldn't have thought of parasites as a possible cause so I'm glad I asked. I will do a treatment for parasites and offer bloodworms.