One of my girls is sick, went to feed, and saw her kind of flopping on her side on the top of the water (on floaty plants) and her underside, up front is bloated real big, i do not have a camera, parents took it on vacation, i will add one from my camera phone asap. she has trouble keeping herself right. what is this??

First calm down. From your description I would say swim bladder. Feed her boiled peas (pop some peas in, boil it in microwave or stove) and then let it cool. Feed half a pea to her (the insides, not the skin). Don't feed too much or it will cloud the water. I hope everthing works out.

Get a hospital tank, small container, put epsom salt! Hurry, Don't make it too deep. About 2 inch high water and put some plant for her to rest and easy for her to breath. How come only now you saw it?

Wait when you said 'sick', what happen to her before you saw her flopping? Is she in a community?

I have her in small hospitol tank, with a plant, was on that right away, low water, I only saw this now because it wasn't like this before, I give them a good look over atleast twice a day, it happend out of the blue, very very odd.

here is the picture




Will add a touch of salt.

epsom salt right? It looks like constipation. What did you feed her? Live worms?

Have been feeding a mixture of HBH pellets, flakes. would constipation cause swimming problems etc?

**edit** I used aquarium salt.

it looks like bloating. we will see if the epsom salt will work or not.

Ok, I have her in her little tank, with her plant, salt in water, have her in the dark, hopefully she gets better, maybe I should drop a little bit of rolaids in the tank, huh? :P poor thing.

You might as well keep looking at her for the whole night long and don't go to sleep. If she need anything, you be there for her. :)

This is one of the times I wish I did have some IAL :) we did add some black water extract to help.

Yes. IAL always handy and I will asked my nephew in law tonight later.

Aquarium salt isn't going to help much if she's constipated. In fact, regular salt can aggravate consitpation by making the fish's system hold more fluids. You need Epsom salts if this is a constipation problem - it's cheap and you can get it at any drugstore.

Fish need their diets varied - that's why you'll see Yeevia running out looking for daphnia or me posting about culturing bloodworms. I know prepared foods are easier, but it's not enough. Dried pellets and flakes take their toll on a fish's digestive system - you need to try some other things (frozen brine shrimp or bloodworms, daphnia, mosquito larvae, etc.) and change it around.

An update for this morning, she seems to be doing MUCH better, swimming better, and there's a very large poo on the bottom of her little tank, I still plan on giving her a pea in case there's more in there :)

Thanks for the help

dude u got me scared there for a second!!

glad she is doing betta (get it hehe ) but doesnt aquasalt make it worse since it makes her swell up more

anyways great that she is doing better :)

No, salt will use osmosis and pull the fluid out of her if she's bloated. You should have seen her. It looked like someone blew up a little balloon in her belly... poor thing. At least she can swim normally now and doesn't float too much.

Just because I know you all wanted to know, there's a second giant poo in there now, so she's looking and feeling a lot better. :)

Hahaha She eat too much. LOL I think you are conditioning her. LOL

I'm really glad she's okay! You must be relieved... I don't think I'd want to be the person who loses one of Yeevia's babies!!!

Saucy - salt doesn't always work that like that. I can tell you from my experience with goldfish that it can go either way. It's an individual thing - not all fish react the same, just like people don't all respond the same way.

Good job! :clap:

The salty osmosis thing depends on 2 things - the salinity of the water and the salinity of the fish's body.

Water of higher salinity will always flow to water of lower salinity. So, in a case where a fish's body has a lower concentration of salt, it will draw the fluids out and into the water. SO, assuming that a fish's body has less salt in it (pretty safe to assume, I think) than the water with a tad bit of aquarium salt in it, technically fluids should be drawn out of the fish's body.

It's for that very same reason that you need to be REALLY careful that you don't overdose them on salt because they can literally dehydrate to death while surrounded by water.

Odd.

OH, btw - I'm very glad that she's feeling better. I figured somethin was stuck in there. lol

psst - you should save those poos and ship them off to Yeevia.

Bettamomma, not me. SEAHORSE. LOL :lol: :lol: :lol: I like your avatar. LOL
Bettabelieveit, next time using epsom salt. I thought you using that. Bad bad bad. Need to SPANK. Saucy, help me to spank him, seductively. LOL :lol: :lol: :lol:

:weirdo:

LMAO

Oh yeah, horsey it should be sent to you.
Yeev, you are totally nuts. lmao
and someone at work sent me that avatar and said....
"This is jen, if she was 7 years old, red-headed, and had goldfish rather than bettas"

Use photoshop and chance the goldfish to betta. LOL I have 2 NUTS! :clap: :lol: :lol: :lol:

oh dear GOD.

:laugh:

2 donuts. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

:lol: You just made my night....I was smacked in the head with a straw bale...technically head and neck area *I'm more out of wack now than I was before I'm sure* now I feel a little betta...*har har har*

I had 2 doughnuts on Sunday :woo: :whistle:

:rockon: Great !!!

Wow, I leave for work and I come back to a post about spanking, nuts, poop, and donuts ..... I love it :lol:

Ugh, and I went to go give her some peas, and I turn around and my cat's scarfing down the peas! :cuss: :cuss: :cuss: bad kitty