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year old betta wont eat

2K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  ArKitEKt47 
#1 ·
i have a betta that's about a year old that i gave to my girlfriend. she recently gave him back to me because she has a new puppy and the fish care was too much for her. my betta doesn't seem to be eating. i am feeding him omega one flakes which he has eaten for the past year. now he seems to just bite into them and spit them back out but never really swallow anything. she said she used to feed him 6-8 flakes a day and he would eat them but with me he's only eating about 1 or 2 flakes. does anyone know why this is? he's moving around fine and seems to be ok but he just wont eat anything.

btw, we tried pellets in the past and he wouldnt eat those either and flakes have been working thus far. also, is krill safe for betta?
 
#4 ·
Hi,

You can try epsom salt water if you think he is constipated, this works well and is easy to do. 1 tsp epsom salt into a cup of tank water mix well and add it to tank. This is what we did with ours and it made such a big difference. Mine also quit eating his pellets, I found that he loves the frozen brine shrimp, he now eats 1-2 pellets (Hakari) in the morning and the brine shrimp in the afternoon. It is best to rotate their food, since they are carinvors. My other betta does the pellets and dehydrated bloodworms. Your fish is also getting old Bettas live 3-4 years and are normally around 1 year old when you get them from the store.

Hope this helps
 
#5 ·
Yes, i began to diagnose him as being constipated because he began bloating very badly. He looked like he was filled with helium and would just bobble around. I tried the epsom salt and it seemed to be helping a little but not much. Apparently it wasn't constipation though... he began "pineconing" and i realized it was dropsy :(.

I did what i could for him... lowered the water level, water changes everyday, increased temperature a couple degrees, epsom salt, etc. but nothing could quite heal him. He died about a week ago.

On a side note, some factors of the move might very well have played a role in him developing dropsy:

-move was stressful
-since i didnt have spring water and needed to establish his tank, i used tap water (with conditioning drops of course). my girlfriend has been using spring water for the past year so the water transition might not have went well for him
-his lack of eating caused a build-up of food at the bottom. i did not realize this would rot and only changed his water ever 10 days or so (my girlfriend did so less often).
-and finally, the fish looked somewhat sick when i got him. he might have already been developing something prior to me taking him.

I just thought I'd mention the above for any other betta owners so they can prevent this from happening to their fish.

Thank you all for your help though. I really appreciate it.
 
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