My girlfriend has a male betta in a 5.5 gallon tank. He lives alone. She said she saw white "specks" floating in the water and some looked like they might have been swimming. Also, she thinks she saw a speck on the side of his body. She also said that the specks crawl on the glass.

What could they be and how could you cure/treat it?

The only thing that comes to my mind is hole in the head. Any help is appreciated.

It sounds like planaria, which is a sign of uneaten food in the tank.
Check out this link planaria pics if you click on the pics it will take you to the original page the pic is from which usually has more info.

o.O

Wow...I never heard of planaria infesting fish tanks. I'm surprized the betta hasn't eaten them up. You have any pictures?

It is aactually pretty common in instances of over feeding as Dtroup suggested.

hi. i'm the girlfriend with the betta. i don't think i overfeed him...i only give him about 3 pellets once or twice a day and he eats them all. i did leave his water uncleaned for a while :( a few weeks probably, but he's only a little fish in a relatively large tank so i didn't think it would get too bad. i changed his water today, and there aren't as many of the "swimming specks" left, seeing as i tried to vacuum as many out as i could. my mom thought they might just be dust, but there were other particles that had gotten stirred up from the cleaning that just floated around and aside from that didn't seem to move much. i don't have any pictures because my camera batteries are dead (they're charging at the moment), but i'll see if i can get some...i think they might be too small to get a picture of though.

okay, so that's a horrible picture, but it was the best i could get. if i try to take a picture of them in the water they end up not showing up against the background. but if they are infact planaria, how would i go about getting rid of them?

Just to clarify planaria are little whitish worms, typically as long as 1/2 inch. If they are planaria then stop feeding and do small dailly water changes making sure to vacuum teh substrate. Pay good attention to the fish as it should begin eating them.

If you don't want to do a total tear down on your tank you can do several water changes over time using a gravel vac to stir up the bottom and suck the little buggers out.

That doesnt look like planaria to me.
Some sort of water lice maybe? Does it have a tail?

i tried looking at them with a magnifying glass and they still don't have much shape. on occasion i thought i could see some tiny legs, but for the most part they were still just little blobs. so maybe they have a tail? i'm sorry i'm not much help!

If the fishes behavior is okay then they may well be harmless. Up the water changes and reduce feeding to inducing the fish eating them.

You can suck them out with a turkey baster and flush down the toilet. when I remove waste from my betta's fishbowl, I put the waste in a small glass bowl until I'm done, then pour the matter in the toilet and flush. Hopefully there aren't like a hundred of them.

:)