Betta not happy

Hi Everyone,
I have this bad feeling about my male betta. He just somehow doesn't
seem himself. He recently had a viral infection called lymphocystis
which turned out to be precipitated by some rotting bogwood in his tank.
Cleaned the tank out, did some big water changes, added Melafix and some
Optima tonic for a week and everything's fine, and has been for 3 weeks
or more. However, we never see him swimming around his tank any more and
he's very passive when I'm cleaning out the tank or moving stuff about -
he doesn't even move when I put my hand near him and the other day I had
to nudge him out of the way to get to something behind him.

It's an 8.5 gal tank with built-in, internal filtration plus an
additional sponge filter. The water parameters are pretty much stable:
pH 7.0, KH 14, no ammonia or nitrite, nitrate 25 ppm (my tap water is
15ppm nitrates, so it's virtually impossible to keep it down very low).
As it's a small tank I do a 15-20% w/c once a week. He has a couple of
live plants (a java fern and a dwarf anubias) plus some plastic weed for
him to hide in (which is basically where he lives). He shares it with
some very sedate black neon tetras who are the sort of fish who'd
survive a nuclear holocaust. There are 8 of them. The only thing I
noticed the other day was that they were darting around a little
abnormally after a w/c, but I couldn't find any reason for it - I
assumed maybe the pH had risen a little (I hadn't checked it before the
w/c). Another theory is the temperature as it's been very hot in that
room lately and on a couple of occasions I've had to turn the lights off
and open the lids.

He's eating, although not voraciously and when he sees a mirror he will
display to it as normal.

Another odd thing is that I have a snail outbreak in the tank - very odd
since I am not aware there's anything for them to eat in there. Maybe
I've been over-feeding? How long can snails exist without food? My betta
hasn't touched them which is odd again, since I once had to remove a 2"
golden apple snail from his tank because he tried to eat it!

Any ideas or is this just paranoia?
--
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
mailto:

Anna's Pregnancy, Parenting and Autism page:
http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Everybody is somebody else's wierdo" - Dilbert (by Scott Adams)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Everyone,
I have this bad feeling about my male betta. He just somehow doesn't
seem himself.


You can do a few more water changes, or increase your water change
amount. Also, how old is he? I noticed that my bettas just seem to slow
down when they get around 2-3 years old.

get those snails out of there asap

In article ,
Peter Smith writes
get those snails out of there asap

Like... how?

You know what snails are like - as fast as you pick them out, they
breed.
--
Anna Hayward, Alien Visitor
mailto:

Anna's Pregnancy, Parenting and Autism page:
http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Everybody is somebody else's wierdo" - Dilbert (by Scott Adams)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

get those snails out of there asap

Like... how?

You know what snails are like - as fast as you pick them out, they
breed.

I found out the hard way that snails add to the bio-load of a tank, and my
betta suffered from it, never to repeat that mistake, I now allow a few, but
limit it to a handful.... every week, I take atleast 50 to the LFS and get
$2 credit for it... so far I'm up to $35 with most of it being from
snails.... MTS to beat all.... they can't get them, I can't get rid of
them... I would ask them to take this tank and give me another.... but I
don't think I will...

Get a Yoyo loach... and snails will be gone. ;-)

Fishboy


"RedForeman ©®" wrote in message
...
get those snails out of there asap

Like... how?

You know what snails are like - as fast as you pick them out, they
breed.

I found out the hard way that snails add to the bio-load of a tank, and my
betta suffered from it, never to repeat that mistake, I now allow a few,
but
limit it to a handful.... every week, I take atleast 50 to the LFS and get
$2 credit for it... so far I'm up to $35 with most of it being from
snails.... MTS to beat all.... they can't get them, I can't get rid of
them... I would ask them to take this tank and give me another.... but I
don't think I will...