HELP Emergency!!

[wrestlingfreak7]

I came home from my vacation 15 min. ago and check up on my fish.
My betta was covered in fuzzy white dots and its normal blue fins turned black and brown.


What is this and how do I treat and prevent it.

[Mercury]

It is very likely Ick. Do a water change, and ick can be treated easily with ick medication or raising the tank temp to 86F for a while. You can prevent it by keeping water quality high.

[Lakea]

Yeah could be ich, but it could be velvet, that is how I would think to explain the white dots. As for the fin turning colors, I am not sure if that is a symptom of either. Look at some pics for velvet and ich and see what you think.

[joy613]

Fuzzy dots sound more like a fungus to me. Ich looks like grains of salt on a fish.

[TabMorte]

Originally Posted by Mercury

It is very likely Ick. Do a water change, and ick can be treated easily with ick medication or raising the tank temp to 86F for a while. You can prevent it by keeping water quality high.

Whoa whoa whoa careful there.

It is probably ick but how large are the spots, are they raised from the body?
Ick isn't from poor water quality, ick needs to be introduced into the tank with new fish or plants. It can stay dormant until your water quality goes down hill though and then your fish are stressed and get sick from it.

Velvet is the one that striks when ever your water quality is poor. The dots in Velvet are much smaller.

Fortunitely the treatment is the same. Coppersafe is good for most external parasites. If you want to be on the super safe side you can use it in conjunction with one of the Antibiotics by the same manufacturer (I'm thinking Marcyn Plus but I'm not sure that's the one, read the bottles).

If you raise the temp (which I recommend) do so VERY SLOWLY. Yanking the tank up to 86 suddenly with a sick fish is enough to do it in. 2 Degrees a day.

With the Coppersafe I recommend continuing treatement for the whole month even if you see an improvement, just to be on the safe side.

Note: Do NOT use Ick-X (or a formaldihyde based treatment) if you use a sulfa based water conditioner (like Prime or Aqua Plus), it will destroy your benificial bacteria colonies and recycle your tank.

The color change may just be a stress reaction. Betta's turn pale or brown often when they're sick/stressed/unhappy.

[wrestlingfreak7]

thanks for the help guys but the betta just died

[Mercury]

Originally Posted by joy613

Fuzzy dots sound more like a fungus to me.

Fungus is pretty rare. The reason so many medicines say fungus treatment on them is because so many people mistake non-fungus for fungus.

Sorry about your fish man.

[TabMorte]

Sorry about your betta!