Help! It's a betta emergency!

[Anpa1019]

Help! My betta fish had some moderate fin/tail rot that I had been treating for a long time. I moved him from his 1 gallon to a 6.6 gallon, heated, filtered tank on Saturday. His tail was looking great and I was beginning to see a lot of new regrowth. I was super excited and just wrote a post the other day saying how great he looks like. When I woke up this morning I saw a new rip in his tail. I thought maybe the part that was healing might have re-riped so I figured I would wait until I got home from work and see how he is doing. I just got home and almost started crying when I saw him. His tail is twice as bad as it was during the fin rot. It looks like his tail and fin went through a blender. There are huge chunks missing and the pieces that are left hanging are really ragged...they weren't this ragged when he originally had the fin/tail rot. I have been doing 50% water changes and adding prime as the conditioner. What happened? What did I do wrong? Is his fin rot back? Can it get this bad in 8 hours? I did a 100% water change and now am relying on help from you guys. Please help, I am so worried about him.

[welchrock]

if you have other fish and/or already have some on-hand, Stress Coat wouldn't hurt. your fish is likely just stressed from a)fin rot and b)the new tank change. hopefully he'll hang in there and this is just a situation where it needs to take a step back to take two steps forward.

[gil_ong]

100% water change?

[mykidsmom]

Have you had the water tested for ammonia and nitrites? Tank may not be 'cycled' and ammonia or nitrites might be causing or contributing to the damage. (I have read that ammonia damage can look like fin rot, so maybe it's possible that it was never actually 'fin rot' but ammonia damage from the beginning.) The water changes and Stress Coat should help, or maybe add a little aquarium salt (it is supposed to help fish withstand the presence of some ammonia when a tank is 'cycling') but nothing will help long term if there is an ammonia or nitrite problem that isn't addressed and monitored closely!

I don't have any bettas, but for my cichlids, I like to use Melafix to help heal nipped fins.

Hope your beautiful boy recovers quickly!

[hacket]

I wouldn't recommend changing so much water at a time. That will just stress the fish out even more. In a filtered tank of that size I'd recommend 30%-50% a day while you are putting medicine in. If you were putting medicine in before and it cleared it up, start doing that again in the 6.6 gallon, and doing what I recommended for water changes. I've never had to deal with fin-rot on a betta, so I don't know how long you will need to treat him, but this is a good start. The biggest thing though is to make sure your water parameters are correct for a betta, and to not change so much water at time.