Female betta swollen abdomen help!

are their scales petruding kind of like a pinecone? if thats the case then it could very well be dropsy

if not. feeding frozen foods could cause them to bloat up a lot.

do you have a QT tank?

try feeding a shelled pea if the scales arent pineconing

I'm not a betta expert, so correct me if I'm wrong here...but I remember reading somewhere that females can become egg bound-especially if they were "near" a male or within view of one. I also read that you can take them out and hold them(I'd use a washcloth dampened with tank water) dampen a Q Tip, and try rubbing gently on their belly area to try to release the eggs.
But, I think with your water quality, it may be dropsy. You can also try feeding them a pea(the insides of it anyway) in case it's a constipation issue.

Your tank may have originally been cycled, but if you added all 3 at the same time, it may have been enough to through it into a mini cycle with the extra fish in there. Especially with the nitrates showing up, that would be my guess. Keep doing the daily water changes, also try using some Prime. I'm not for sure, I think it will still give a reading on the ammonia, but it's supposed to convert it to a non toxic form.

Actually, female bettas do tend to have a very swollen belly area if they are 'gravid'... or full of eggs. Here's some photo references to help you.

Normal female betta:http://z.about.com/d/freshaquarium/1/0/R/S/betta04G.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ta_closeup.jpg/800px-Female_betta_closeup.jpg
Note that there is no swell to their bellies, but it's not sunken in from starvation, either. A average and healthy look for a young female or a female too old to produce eggs.

Well-fed female betta: http://z.about.com/d/freshaquarium/1/0/S/S/betta05G.jpg
http://www.bettatalk.com/images/F_opaque_female.gif
These girls are well-fed and are either being conditioned through good feeding to produce eggs or were photographed just after a heavy meal. See the slight belly-swell?

Gravid female betta: http://www.bettatalk.com/images/too_much_food.gif
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/MiscFishPIX/betta1.jpg
http://www.petfish.net/articles/pics/betta_egg_tube.jpg <== Upper Right
These females are bursting at the seams with eggs. This is normal for the first couple of years in a female betta's life. If she hasn't bred within 2 years, she usually stops producing these big round bellyfuls of eggs and is no longer suitable to breed because she will no longer desire to. Females don't need to breed to be 'relieved' of their bellies. They will reabsorb the eggs as they become too old to fertilize, so she will go through fat and thinner phases as she does this.

Female betta with dropsy:http://www.nippyfish.net/flashdropsy.jpg
http://www.bettatalk.com/images/dropsy_copy.gif
http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/images/dropsy2.jpg
http://www.aquariumcorner.com/images/dropsy pic2-photo contributed by Tom Byrne.JPG
The last image was a male betta, but you can see how easy it is from the previous photos to confuse a gravid or full-bellied female with a sickly, bloated, or possibly dropsied female. The best clue is to look at them from a top-side view. In the 'dropsy pics' before the last two, you could clearly see the scales standing up when seen from above. If the female is merely full of food, fat, or eggs she will have normal, smooth-scaled sides.

Hope this helps!!

that white dot is her ovipositer, which is where the eggs come out. they become more visible when the fish is in breeding condition.

tikitiki said:

I'm not a betta expert, so correct me if I'm wrong here...but I remember reading somewhere that females can become egg bound-especially if they were "near" a male or within view of one. I also read that you can take them out and hold them(I'd use a washcloth dampened with tank water) dampen a Q Tip, and try rubbing gently on their belly area to try to release the eggs.

Click to expand...

Never heard of this or experienced it. My females went through cycles of being full of eggs and then empty, and then refilling. Sometimes the girls will expell the eggs all on their own without a male and eat them and sometimes they reabsorb from within. Unless the female is showing physical signs of distress and discomfort with no sign of other possible reasons for her ailment, I'd not tamper with them so far as yoinking them up out of the water and rubbing their slime-coat off with a wet Q-tip.

Seems too extreme... like using a shotgun to kill a fly on a cow's rear. Probably cause more harm to the cow than good.