Disease Prevention
Preventing your bettas from
ever getting ill is much easier than trying to treat them. Here are a few tips
in keeping your bettas healthy.
1. Clean,
clean and even cleaner water!! Make SURE and do those water changes. Dirty water
is the #1 culprit in causing illness
2. Add
Aquarium salt & Aquari-sol after each water change. Add Aquari-sol to your
community tanks once per week. Both of these are great at preventing many diseases.
3. Quarantine
any new arrivals that are to go into the community tank. You should do this
for more reasons that merely disease prevention. It is good to do for 72 hours,
in my opinion.
4. Do
not let uneaten food decay in their bowls. This will foul the water, then you
have dirty water. Dirty water = illness.
5. Be
EXTRA careful when sharing nets. I HATE to use the same nets on
ANY two fish. Once one gets sick, then they all get sick. Sometimes one may
be ill and not showing the signs yet. I hate it when that happens. So what I
do is in between each fish I run my net through scalding hot water and let it
soak until I am ready for the next fish. I of course then rinse the net in cool
water, don't want any net patterns burned into those beautiful fish!
6. If
a Betta has been sick or died due to an illness, bleach their bowl. I keep a
squirt bottle full of straight bleach. When I am cleaning sick fish's bowls,
I give a couple good squirts in scalding hot water, and let it soak for about
10-20 minutes. Then I rinse, rinse and rinse some more. Once I have rinsed it
good, I fill it with water and add a dechlorinator and let it soak for another
10 minutes or so. Then do you know what I do? Rinse again. Bleach and I have
a love/hate relationship. I love that it kills all those nasty diseases, but
I hate how easily it can kill my babies. So be very careful when using it, but
don't be afraid to. Just make sure to rinse very well and soak it in
water with dechlorinator then when you setup the water for the fish, add extra
dechlorinator!
7.Wash your hands often
during water changes. After using hand soap,
don't forget to rinse VERY WELL!! (Soap is poisonous to Bettas and most other
fish, don't take any chances)