New Print and eBook on Amazon Betta Success Doing what it takes to keep Bettas healthy long-term by Robert (Bob) Fenner

Betta splendens, buoyancy/environment issue      11/1/13
Hi Crew
<Gordon>
 I have a question on an event that happened in the following tank. Livestock: 12 x wild caught Paracheirodon simulans, 3 x Ayatopsis <Atyopsis> moluccensis
and 1 x female Betta splendens.
The setup is a 60l, 2’x1’x1’ tank, with play sand substrate, a large piece of “rooty” bogwood, lots of floating Limnophila sessiliflora, no rooted plants and a 600lph filter with spray bar turned against the glass. The plants provide both dead-water for the Betta and shade for the Tetras. I also have a small 200lph peat filter in there, which was unplugged when the tank was put to use for species other than the Paracheirodon. Temperature is 27C.
My question is regarding the female Betta splendens, with what might be a buoyancy issue, but I'm not sure since the water quality went a bit haywire at the same time.
<Oh? In what way/s?>
It was first noticed just over a week ago. She was in amongst the thick mat of floating plants (we never saw her often – those were her domain) but she was on her side. The gilling seemed weak and I thought she was probably on her way out. With nothing else in the tank acting odd, including the shrimp, I put it down to one of those things, turned off the lights and expected to find a body soon.
The next day, and the next, she stayed alive and was eating.
I’ve never yet seen a fish on its side, gilling weakly survive for long. To be on the safe side I checked the tank levels and got an unpleasant result. A high nitrate of 40ppm (too much meaty food for the Bamboos, I think, need to get some Spirulina
powder) and an ammonia of 0.25ppm.
<Yikes>
The ammonia didn’t particularly surprise me since the pH was reading 5, which is the lower limit of the test kit, so it could even have been lower.
<If it's easy to do, I would pull the driftwood, and change out about half the water here... Stat>
Nitrite was nil.
<Any is toxic; debilitating>
 I think the 4” deep mat of floating plants might have been all that saved the day for the rest of the tank's inhabitants. My tapwater has a KH of 2, so this unpleasantness isn’t new to me, although not common. 
<I might add a teaspoon of both sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and magnesium sulfate (Epsom Salt) to your stored, make up/change out water per five gallons... to boost KH, GH>
My first instinct was that the Betta was probably suffering from conditions being too acid
<Along with metabolite poisoning, weakening>
 and it was no wonder the shrimp and the Tetra weren’t bothered. The nitrate was high but I didn't consider it so high that it would cause acute poisoning in this species. I had to balance a fast rise in pH with the weakness of the fish and finally settled on doing a 50% water change with temperature matched.
<Oh! Is what I would have done as well>
 I considered buffering the W/C water
<Mmm, we're thinking along the same lines... I would do this as well>
 but didn’t want to overshoot on
the slowness of raising the pH. The first change did nothing, the second pulled the water to pH 5.5 and the third change to pH 6. Each was an hour apart.
<Mmm, unless a DIRE emergency, I'd only "do" half a water change out in a day>
 I left it there and checked pH the next day. It was back to pH 5 or less.
<... do pull the driftwood... You can experiment, leave it in a "bucket" of water, measure the loss of KH, pH drop...>
I had a small tank sitting set up and cycled that I keep for my Amano when I need to move them out of their tank when they hatch, so I emptied this, took water from the 60l tank and refilled it. I took a large amount of floating plants and added these also. I then caught the Betta in a jar and transferred her. I brought the pH back up to 6 in the same manner as before. The next day I took the pH to 7 using buffered water changes in increments. The hospital tank is now stable at my tap water parameters - pH 7, KH 2. Lesson learned - I should have done this in the first instance instead of mucking about in the 60l.
<You're doing fine; have done well here>
With this drama over, she was perking up a bit. Still on her side but was using her pectorals a bit more. I hoped she would perk up further but that didn’t seem to happen. It was then it occurred to me that it might be a buoyancy issue, rather than a water quality problem.
<Mmm; doubtful>
She was a devil for going after the decapsulated brine shrimp eggs I feed to the Bamboo and the Tetras’ flake, despite being hand-fed frozen meaty foods as her main diet.
I had a search about on WWM about Betta buoyancy issues and found out that it could be due to a blocked gut or physical damage through handling.
This sort of fit the bill. Since she hadn’t been handled recently, I went with the advice to feed pea or brine shrimp and add Epsom salts to the tank. Luckily, I had been feeding her frozen brine shrimp recently, when she was on her side in the 60l, so I thought it was probably better not to give her any more than she’d had. I didn’t fancy my chances of getting her to eat pea either. I added Epsom salts to just over 1 tsp per gallon and dripped into the tank over 4 hours. This was six days ago now and still there is no change. No food has been given in 8 days. 
<"These things take time">
I am not certain whether this is stress from the low pH level (and subsequent bounces in pH) or a buoyancy problem.
<My bet is on the simple too low pH and nitrogenous et al. (likely) metabolite exposure>
I’m unsure whether I should be feeding her to build up her strength or fasting her until her gut clears and I don’t know how long I should expect the salts to take to relive her if it is a buoyancy problem due to a gut blockage.
Or I could be barking up the wrong tree altogether.
<Possibly... could be a genetic distortion for instance>
If any of the crew could find some time to advise me on the best way forward for this fish I’d be most grateful.
Cheers
Gord
<Again; I'd do the wood experiment, start bolstering the water quality per the above suggestion, and look for, read Neale's works on WWM re water hardness in freshwater systems. Bob Fenner><<Have sent on to Neale for his input>>
Re: Betta splendens, buoyancy/environment issue <Neale; anything further...?>   11/1/13
<<Not much to add beyond Bob’s comments. Yes, I’d agree that raising the carbonate hardness (classically, through use of calcium carbonate-rich material, like coral sand, but equally easily, if not better, through the use of “Rift Valley salt mix” at 25-50% the quoted dose). You’d be aiming for 4-6 degrees KH, which should provide admirable pH stability around about 7.5, which is well within the tolerances of farmed Betta splendens, and most community fish, but probably not optimal for Paracheirodon simulans. If you wanted to keep a stable pH at 7 or 6.5 for their benefit, then you’d leave the KH alone (almost by definition raising KH raises pH as well) and instead use a phosphoric acid-based buffering solution, i.e., what usually gets sold as “Discus buffer” or similar. Of course pH levels below 7 can/may cause problems for shrimps, so balance the benefits of going below pH 7 against possible problems. Do also not that biological filtration works less well below pH 7, and below 6 barely works at all (hence such tanks need to be very under-stocked and sparingly fed, and preferably stocked with fast-growing plants that absorb ammonia directly). As Bob suggests, exposure to increasing ammonia and nitrite levels, even if slight, but persistent, can/will cause health problems. Fortunately, any such symptoms usually pass once the fish are (carefully, slowly) adjusted back to normal pH levels. I will observe that in outside of breeding fish, in very few cases is there any benefit in aiming for a pH below 7, so much better to maintain this mix of livestock in moderately soft (around 5-10 degrees dH) pH 7 water adequately buffered using the commercial pH 7 buffer of your choice. Cheers, Neale.>>

New Print and eBook on Amazon Betta Success Doing what it takes to keep Bettas healthy long-term by Robert (Bob) Fenner