How to Treat Fin Rot on a Betta Fish

Your bright and beautiful Betta is looking great, until one day his fins look a little dull, and before you know it they are becoming more and more tattered. Suddenly you find yourself asking how to treat fin rot on a betta fish, and as it turns out, theres hundreds of different kinds of fin rot. What do you do? What CAN you do?

Fortunately, fin rot on a betta tends to be either bacterial or fungal, Even better, both of these can be fairly easily treated!

First things first though.  Quarantine your Betta! If he has live plants in his tank, any snails, or a fish such as an otocinclus, it's time to get your betta in to it's own tank.

Once your betta is in it's own tank it's time to pick a medicine.  Unfortunately, it's really hard to figure out whether or not the finrot is bacterial or fungal. But fungal is the cheapest, so most people treat for that first, usually with Pimafix.

If Pimafix fails, it may be bacterial. If this is the case Melafix is a good first step at treating a bacterial fin rot infection on a Betta. If this fails as well though, it's time to look at some serious antibiotics such as Maracyn.

Maracyn tends to clear up nearly any Betta's bacterial infection quickly!

Once your fish is looking better, try adding Stress Coat to your fish tank, it will help your fish heal up completely!

How to Feed a Betta Fish

Your Betta might look like it will happily chow down on food forever. Unfortunately, their stomachs are small, around the size of their eyeballs.  So it's important to remember that when you are considering how to feed your betta fish, that size matters.

You will find different advice on Betta care on different websites and on different food packets. I prefer to use Hikari Betta Bio Gold pellets. Hikari produces some of the best fish food out there, so you're in good hands!

I feed my betta fish four to five pellets twice a day, and my fish maintains a steady weight and swims happily around without fatigue. As a treat, I sometimes feed him a dried bloodworm, chopped into two to three pieces as well. A single container of bloodworm will last about as long as your Betta, since they can't eat more than one or two in a single sitting!

If you're new to keeping a Betta the best way to judge how much to feed your betta is by observing him.

If he doesn't eat all of his food within a couple of minutes, serve him less.

If he looks overweight then feed him less

If he becomes lethargic he may have too much or too little food in his diet.

We hope this helped you learn how to feed a Betta fish, it's really not that difficult, and it's a simple enough task to keep your Betta well fed and happy!

My Betta Care is coming soon! We look forward to helping you learn how to own your Betta, keep it alive, even get your own baby Betta's!