Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => Fish Health => Topic started by: Diz1 on August 11, 2015, 08:42:34 AM
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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.
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I've not come across tumours on bettas before but that doesn't mean they can't get them. I had a betta that had lymphocystis which started as a raised scale, then a lump, then a big lump. But this started within a couple of weeks of getting him. After 14 months, if it was that he should have shown symptoms a lot earlier.
If you can get photos it would be a help :)
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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!
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It's a bit hard to tell from the photos :-\
Have a look here (http://www.thinkfish.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,104.0.html) at the blue betta (not the red and white one) and see if your fish is starting to look like mine did.
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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
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Is your betta on his own, or are there other fish in with him?
If he's on his own, even if it is lymphocystis he can live with it. With my blue one, the first lump got so big it was into his gills which is what caused his decline.
If he is on his own but you have another tank I would strongly recommend getting a second set of cleaning equipment and being very strict about keeping one set just for him. It is better to spend a bit of money on a siphon tube and bucket than risk another tankful of fish.
If it turns out to be a tumour, it shouldn't be infectious.
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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?
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A nerite snail won't catch anything fishy.
I always go by behaviour. That's what made me put the blue betta down, his behaviour altered in such a way that would represent suffering if he was human.
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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 :cheers: