Possible Tumor On Betta

Morning fishy friends!

I am a bit worried about my male Betta, Barquentine.

He is about 14 months old (I've had him for 10 months) and I have him in a 55 litre Aqua nano tank, with 1 nerite snail. The tank is decorated with very mature plants on wood and lava rock.There are no sharp edges anywhere, and I'm very careful about this. He has always had the same decorations, I just move them round at each water change to give him a new environment to explore. He has a wee ping pong ball that he gets to play with, and I have a few 'nodding' or otherwise moving objects outside the tank to entertain him. He also (as a rare treat) gets to watch an aquarium app on my son's iPad when I can nick it from him for a bit!

Food-wise he gets hikari gold betta pellets and live frozen. He is very active and nosy and greedy – nothing about his behaviour has changed. The water is changed every week (30%) without fail.

Recently, he developed what I can only describe as a raised area of scales on the back of his head. These scales look a bit like they would in a fish with dropsy, but they are only on 1 patch, and there's no sign of redness or injury. The rest of his body is normal. I thought at the time that it might be something that happens with maturity, however, it now seems to look like a definite lump. I'm now worried that this might be a tumor. I'll try to get my son's iPad to take a picture (my phone camera is rubbish).

Are tumors common in Bettas, and is there any thing I can do for him if it is a tumor? As I say, he's behaving completely normally at the moment.

Hi,

managed to steal my son's iPad and take these. Apologies for the quality and also in one of them, he looks like he's got pop eye, but it's just the angle  his eyes are fine!

Hi Sue,

Oh dear, it does look a bit like the first blue betta (especially the position), but the lump itself doesn't appear to be as dark (compared to the rest of the body) as the one in that picture

Yes, he's on his own apart from a nerite snail (which I presume isn't in danger of catching anything).
I'm happy enough to get an extra syphon etc. He's a very spoiled boy already, so this won't make much difference!

I presume that the measure of whether he's suffering or not is the normal behaviour (eating, activity, etc.).
If he carries on like this, without any changes in his behaviour, then he isn't suffering?

Ok, I'll keep a close eye on him. His tank sits on my office desk and I work in there every day, so I'll be able to see if his behaviour alters at all.

Thanks again Sue