HELP HOW DID My BETTA DIE???

[usucirocyay]

oohh no i just found my betta dead in his bowl!! i came home after an overnight trip and there he was!! he was a veil tail from the pet store (my baby) and his gills were covered in this white stuff. The rest of him looked pretty much normal (except for the unmestaikable deadness) and i dunno what happened. I have one other betta who has all different nets, plants, gravel etc. but i want to know what happend and how i can prevent my other betta from getting whatever it was !! please help me im a beginner to bettas and i want to protect my poor bettas!!

[usucirocyay]

someone please tell me

[manda]

sound like ich doesnt it guys? well we cant tell you too awfully much without knowing your water ammonia and nitrate, and nitrite levels. we need to know more about how he lived. but either way it sounds like ich. if your other fish gets white spots on his gills are anywhere else, just get him some medicain. they have ich away at walmart.

[Sprite42]

Bettas go through so much before the come home with us, it is really hard to guess what the cause might have been, especially without any outwards signs.

How often did you change your water and what type of conditioner did you use in it? Whay type of tank was he in? How much did you feed him?

[usucirocyay]

ooohhh thanks is ther anything i can do 2 prevent it from happening to my other betta??

[usucirocyay]

ok i changed his water every 2-3 days, i used aqua-safe, he was in a 1/2 gallon plastic one, i fed him 2x a day a few little pellety things and a freeze dried bloodworm

[manda]

sounds like you took good care of him.
if you see your other fish acting wierd just medicate them. thats really all you can do. dont get discouraged, like said before bettas go though alot, it probably wasnt something you done

[Sprite42]

Keep in mind that a bettas stomach is about the size of one of his eyeballs. You should feed him no more than will fit in that size per day. Soak some of the pellets in some conditioned water and see how big they get, you will then know how many to feed him per day.

When you do your water changes, make sure the temp is about the same in the new water as the old water so as not to shock him too much.

[usucirocyay]

thanks i luv my little betta

[usucirocyay]

oh gotcha that causes stress right? the temp difference?

[Sprite42]

Right! Bettas can handle temp swings (as in nature) just not all at once. It will cause them some stress.

Bettas are tough and very resiliant little critters. You will find that they have tremendous personalities, too! I don't think you did anything wrong. Sometimes a betta that seems perfectly healthy in the morning, dies by evening. You just gotta love 'em while ya got 'em!

[Ben Mazur]

It would be easier to tell if you got the water tested. My guess was going to be that there was rotting food and poo in the gravel. Unless you changed the gravel to?

[emc7]

Dead fish in soft water alway seem to grow fungus. The white stuff might be post-mortem. Almost impossible to tell what killed a fish after a few hours. The people who do fish autopsies prefer a live fish, that they then kill (yuk!) and then cut up immediately. Nasty but sometimes worth it to save everyone else in the tank.