u/AllThingsFish1

Hi everyone,

My wife and I got Paintbrush our betta on January 1 this year and he’s very sick. We’re at our wits end trying to treat him so I’m hoping you all can help.

Some background on the tank: it’s a 5 gallon planted tank that was cycled when we got the fish. Parameter have been nearly perfect from the beginning and I do 10 to 15 percent water changes every other week or so. Water is about 78 degrees. Tank mates were some ghost shrimp and now a nerite snail.

The problem started a couple of weeks ago when we noticed his fins were ripped up a bit. I realized the jungle val was serrated and removed it all thinking that was the issue. The next day, he was very lethargic. He could barely swim, wasn’t eating, and could barely get to the surface to breathe. I got some bettafix and aquarium salt and we did a full treatment after I did a water change. He got a little bit better for a couple of days but then deteriorated again. My wife noticed some white stringy poo so we got general cure to treat for parasites. That was 8 days ago and paintbrush is getting worse and worse. Now his pectoral fins are almost gone and he’s struggling even more to swim and breathe. He needs us to hand feed him extreme aquatic foods betta pellets and dried blood worms. After some research, we think it’s callanus or tapeworms that might have gotten into the tank from the reputable lfs. I had a 20 gallon and 29 gallon community tanks in college and my wife kept bettas for years so we’re not totally inexperienced. We’re just so far out of our element and have no idea what the heck happened. Paint brush went from a healthy awesome fish to this in 2 weeks. Any help? We’re also worried about our goldfish in an outdoor pond. We threw in the jungle Val not thinking about cross contamination. If anyone has thoughts on the risk to the goldfish that’d be appreciated also.

I’ve attached a video from today. I’m writing this at work based on memory so I might not have exact details right. I can answer any questions on that front tonight when I have the log book in front of me.

Thank you so much in advance!

I’ll post a video when I figure out how

Is this tree of heaven?

Big Fish in the Heartland: The Story of Sturgeon in the Missouri River

Help with very sick fish