OHM betta with fin rot: which antibiotic should I use next?

[mostlycichlids]

Thanks, akapaul. I imagine traveling in a bag from Thailand might be a tad stressful, hmm? But he's here now; I can't control what happened to him before his arrival. The fin rot started about a week after he arrived.

He has no signs or symptoms of parasites--normal colored poo, no darting, rubbing, scratching, spots or fuzziness; just disappearing fins. He's the only fish in a 5 gallon, so he's not overcrowded or bullied. His tank is filtered, so the oxygen levels are well beyond what his ilk would suffer in a rice paddy or lily vase. The water quality in his tank is pristine: 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, < 20 nitrate. I don't mess with my pH and don't plan to start; there's no pH up, pH down or pH sideways additives at our house. He's already been through two 50% water changes this week.

He is fed a varied diet of Hikari betta pellets, thawed frozen bloodworms and super veggie kelp flakes (to help keep him regular), all recently purchased, and is not overfed (a max of 2-3 pellets, 2 bloodworms or two veggie flakes per day).

Bettas are not brackish fish and I am extremely hesitant to add salt to the tank of an obviously stressed freshwater fish. I've read up on the pros and cons of salt, and come down firmly on the "no salt" side in regard to bettas (cichlids, I imagine, are a completely different matter).

Sorry, I'm no fish surgeon--there's no way I could trim his fins myself, even if I wanted to. What I want to do is give him the proper medication to knock out the bacteria at play to give him a chance to heal himself. In short, his stressors are minimal, his water quality is ideal, he's failed two antibiotics and the disappearance of his fins is occurring at a frighteningly rapid rate--it's time to pull out the big guns or there will be no betta left to treat. You think tetracycline might do the trick? (I haven't seen oxytetracycline or chloromycetin locally; do you have a brand name I might look for?)

Here is a site where you can get all of the antibotics I mentioned. I would try Tetracycline Hydrochloride first. You want something that is going to treat gram positive and gram negative bacterial infections.

http://www.nationalfishpharm.com/products3.html#O

 

[yourchoice]

Google search " betta talk diseases".Might be your best option trying what they say.

 

[gingerinaustin]

linariel, that's a good point if I were going to add the salt to the tank--but I'm not. I'm considering a salt bath, but only if the overwhelming opinion is that it would work without further stressing out the fish, and so far, I'm not hearing many folks here advocating salt in this case.

akapaul, great link--thanks! My only concern with the tetracycline is that my pH is right at the limit of 7.5 where the pH might deactivate the tetracycline. (Using the API master freshwater test kit, the water reads 7.4 on the low-range-pH test and 7.6 on the high-range-pH test). Any suggestions on how to deal with that? The two meds I've tried have not killed off my biofilter, so I can only assume they aren't killing off much of anything else, either.

yourchoice, bettatalk recommends tetracycline for bacterial infections, kanamycin for "serious" bacterial infections, and ampicillin for gram positive infections. She says maracyn I/II are ok for mild problems but aren't effective for serious stuff. Can't find kanamycin or ampicillin and there's an issue with the tetracycline and my pH, so I'm not sure what to do at this point.

The rot is still progressing, albeit at a slightly slower rate than yesterday. UGH!

 

[gingerinaustin]

Before (photo taken by breeder in Thailand):

After (photo by me this morning). The rot on his anal fin is new this morning. The rot on his caudal fin is where it all started, and the rot on his dorsal fin has been evolving all week. He even has a bit of rot on his pectoral fins but, oddly, none on the ventrals.

 

[UCF-Planted]

What a beautiful fellow. Good luck with getting him back to being healthy again.

 

[Featherfin]

maybe you could try some live plants. mine really seem to appreciate some anacharis or hornwort or anything so sit on.
natural plants might reduce stress

id say try aquarium salt, too.

netting and bathing the betta in salt would be a totally awful idea.

mix the recommended dosage on the aquarium salt carton in a pitcher and drip/siphon it into his aquarium very slowly.

 

[gingerinaustin]

Thanks, UCF-Planted. He is beautiful. I hope his fins grow back to some semblance of normality.

Featherfin, I don't think I have enough light to grow plants in an Eclipse Hex 5. My one attempt at anubias resulted in rotting plants. Plant rot + fish rot doesn't sound good to me. I put a big hunk of wood with a hole in the middle of it and two silk aquarium plants in his tank last night--he seems to like them. The tank looks more natural, anyway.

Still not sure what to do here. The articles I've found on the use of salt in freshwater tanks to treat disease are in reference to ick, not fin rot, and it seems the calcium and magnesium in my hard water may bind up tetracycline. The fin rot does not seem to have worsened this morning but I see no regrowth. What to do, what to do?

 

[Star_Rider]

How long was the betta in shipment?

I'd bet those are ammonia burns..not fin rot.

I don't see tell-tale fungus or any weird bacterial slime etc.

if the fish was more than a few days in transport..even ammo-lock will not remove the damaging affects of ammonia.

I have seen similar fin damage in wild angels I have recieved.

keep the water clean..salt won't hurt as it inhibits bacteria.

you can keep the fish in a hypersalinity mix for a short period(few days) with no ill effect.

 

[gingerinaustin]

star_rider, the betta was in transport for several days; he traveled for several days (3?) from Thailand to a 'transhipper' in the US who repackaged the fish and 2-day mailed it to me. When he arrived, he was in a bag of bright yellow water (antibiotics added??) packed in styrofoam and packing materials. The weird thing is that his fins looked perfect for an entire week after he got to my house, then they just started disappearing. You would think that if it was ammonia burns, the rot would have been more apparent sooner.

I am keeping the water crystal clean; I test it every single day and I'm averaging 50% water changes between the doses of antibiotics.

I noticed more fin rot when I got home today, all along the caudal fin (the big hole has now spread along the full length of his caudal fin). Even though the pH is at the borderline of deactivating the effectiveness of the tetracycline, I threw a dose in his tank tonight anyway, out of sheer desperation. I have some rock salt I could use instead of the marine salt--so how much should I add? I know how to make up a brackish mix and I have a hydrometer--any suggestions as to quantity or an endpoint on the hydrometer I should shoot for? It's a 5 gallon tank but now I have a big hunk of wood in there so it's probably less than 5 gallons of water.

 

[gingerinaustin]

We're three-quarters of the way through a full tetracycline treatment, and I've added salt to the tank (3/4 teaspoon rock salt--barely registers on the hydrometer at 1.001), and the rot continues to progress. Except for the very front of his anal tail (closest to his head) and his ventral fins, all of his fins have rot on the edges. The pics are oddly colored (tetracycline turns the water red) but you get an idea of how the rot is continuing to spread. And this time, the arrows point to the sections that have been spared from the rot.

What should I try next??? I've tried erythromycin, nitrofurazone & furazolidone (in the Jungle product), salt and tetracycline and the betta's no bettah...:help::sad: