Does anyone know about Bettas? Mine has popeye :(

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Pikaia

Gonna keck your butt ;)
Joined
Sep 15, 2010
Messages
1,504
Location
Ohio
I have a dragontail betta named Pierre that I got last June. He is in a 1 gal filtered tank. He's always been real spunky, eats good and just a joy to watch. He developed popeye (which I didn't even know what it was, I thought his eye was just deformed or something) and I bought some bettafix- which was the recommendation of the petstore he came from. I gave him the bettafix for 7 days and follwed instructions. There is a little improvement, eye isn't cloudy and fins look a little brighter- but his eye is still bulged out.

I read on the internet today that bettafix isn't a good cure and I need to get Maracyn (antibiotic). Then I read you can treat it by adding aquarium salt and monitoring temps. Do any of you have experience with this? I love my Pierre and even though he is still eating/moving around, I don't want this getting worse. He has probably had it for months, but I've been keeping his tank clean so it hasn't affected him much.
 
My beta recently had to be treated with maracyn about month ago, and he is back to his happy healthy self now (not Popeye, but a different bacterial infection). Here is the outline of what we did:

-Put betta in hospital tank (or a large enough bowl to hold him for a few hours)
-Full water change
-Clean substrate well with the little siphon vacuum thing
-let the tank cycle for a few hours just to be on the safe side (substrate was a LOT dirtier than I expected!)
-Put betta back in, making sure water temps are the same
-Remove carbon from filter (it might filter out the maracyn)
-Add maracyn as directed on package (I used maracyn 2. 1 and 2 are just different types of antibiotics so you should have similar results with either one)
-50% water change every week for a few weeks

From what I understand, aquarium salts are more of a preventative measure than a treatment. So I went ahead and put some salts in after the maracyn cycled through.

Hope this helps!
 
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