Heat rise! Could this be causing my Betta to flash?

d0nuT

d0nuT

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Dec 16, 2004
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London in the UK
Heat rise! Help needed please! Could this be causing my Betta to flash?

Hi Guys!

Um, we've got a bit of a heat wave here! The temp on my 20 gallon has risen from 24 degrees celsius to 30 degrees celsius (75-86 in farenheit :D) pretty much overnight. I've noticed my Betta is flashing off pretty much anything he passes but only on his left hand side. I've got the hood up on the tank to relieve some of the heat, also got a fan running across the surface and I'm doing gradual water changes of cooler water to try and lower the temp too. My question is this - Would the change in temperature cause my Betta to start flashing? I monitor my fish closely and he has not done this until today with the temp rise. Is there anything else I can do to lower the heat? Would any of you recommend turning off the light? There is plenty of natural light! (loads of sunlight!)

Thanks in advance

D

P.S D'oh, now he's flashing on both sides, still favouring his left side though at the moment. *cries* He's not showing any other signs of distress, still breathing at regular intervals, still doing his usual "inspection" of the entire tank. Also I can't actually *see* anything on him, either in the gills or outside of them. He has silver scales on his left gill, but he's always had those.
 
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Heat of course reduces Oxygen, but with a beatta I don't know that that would cause a lot of stress at the temps you are talking about. I would worry about things like ammonia, ich, gill flukes etc. Higher temps tend to speed up the life cycle of most parasites, which will cause them to create more irritation. The other thing that makes me doubt the temperature is the cause is the simple fact that when we treat these parasites with elevated temps, flashing stops during the treatment, so high temp really doesn't add up to flashing in my experience. Parasites, and ammonia do add up to flashing. Gill fLukes in particular seem to hide very well and only manifest themselves strongly when the situation changes for some reason. Ammonia production may have increased for some reason and your fish may be getting some gill burn from it. Have you done a water test?
HTH
Dave
 
Thank you for replying! :)

Ammonia is up a little but the rest are normal. Just noticed 3 out of my 5 cory cats doing the same. The temp seems to have stabilised. Was wondering whether or not to maybe treat with salt to see if that helps at all? Or would that only make things worse? A lot of the stuff on this site about treating leans towards salt so I'm willing to try that, especially as now some of the cories are doing it too. Does salt work on flukes? I can see what looks like a very thin layer of greenish/silver stuff on the underside of my Betta (althhough this *could* be his colour changing because he's upset by something), but I can't see anything on the cories yet. They are the only inhabitants of the tank, so there's no danger of stressing out other fish who aren't flashing as yet, cos there's only two left that aren't. I thought about the high temp thing stopping things too which is why I'm puzzled.

Thanks for your response :) (and sorry about the eye strain that I'm causing with the long post replies :D)

D
 
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Water changes will be of the most help if you have elevated levels of ammonia, as far as I am aware, salt does not help fish cope with ammonia burns on the gills.


Can you give the exact values of your other test (nitrite/nitrate most importantly)?
 
Hi!

Unfortunately, I can't give the results because they were thrown away by a friend trying to help! Grrrr. (Friends, who'd have them? :) ) Also any test I do now will be diffrent to the original *gets frustrated*

Everything was within the normal for the tank, ammonia was up a tiny bit. I'm doing 20% water changes every hour or so, there's no sign of any stress in the fish, except for the occasional flash off of one of them. The Betta seems to have calmed down a little, not flashing off of everything he's passing anymore which I hope is a good sign? I've just looked more closely at my Betta with a calmer frame of mind (I.E not panicking that all my fish were gonna float dead to the surface suddenly as I'm prone to panicking :D) and what I thought was fungus *is* silver scales, he's gone a little paler because of whatever is bothering him by the looks of it *blushes*. Sorry about that! :)

I'm keeping up with the water changes, hopefully I'll see a response. Would salt treat a possibility of gill ***es if this behaviour continues? Is there a particular "all round" med that you can recommend that would help? (I'm in the UK)

Thank you for replying. I'm feeling calmer now. :)

D

P.S What would I do without you guys putting up with me? :D
 
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I am even questioning the that there may be gill flukes. Ammonia irratates the gills, which could very well be why they were flashing. I would hold off on any treatment and see if the flashing persists once the ammonia level goes to 0ppm.

HTH
 
Ok, will do! Thanks ever so much! I love my little guys and don't want them to be distressed at all. I get teased by my friends but I don't care :D

Thanks for your quick responses! I'll keep you posted and up to date.

Off to do another water change now :)

D
 
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Hi

Just finished the water change. Already the Betta is flashing a *lot* less! Hopefully the ammonia rise was the problem and not anything else *crosses fingers*. I'm off all next week so I can do several water changes a day in that time. After that I'll do one every day and gradually wean it back down to its weekly. Is is better to have more water changes in the summer? Even if it's just for the oxygen levels?
How many 20% daily water changes would you recommend? I've done two so far.

D
 
Good to hear everyone's acting better!

I would only do 2 waterchanges a day.

As for the summer, if you have a HOB than you probably won't need to worry about oxygen levels.
 
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