Am I doing all I can for my betta?

[Sean5006]

Hi I noticed that a family members Betta was very sick (fin/tail rot, floating sideways on top of water almost never moving). I thought he had swim bladder disease. The tank was fairly messy with a big catfish as the only other inhabitant and a very poor filter.So I isolated him in a 1 gallon bowl with no sand or gravel or anything. I conditioned the water, put half a teaspoon of Top Fin Conditioning salt in beforehand, as well as half a teaspoon of Splendid Betta BettaFix Remedy each day. To my surprise he stopped floating sideways right away so i guess he didn't have swim bladder (maybe he was depressed?), and he has been eating 5 small pellets of Hikari Betta Bio-Gold twice a day. So my question is how often should I change the water in the bowl? It says on the BettaFix Remedy to put it in for 7 days before changing the water but I think that is too long with fin rot? Also the bowl has no heater, I keep it wrapped in a towel and sometimes put a heating pad with thetowel

[KylieAnne]

instead of the heating pad and such (which will cause fluctuations and are worse than a steady cold temp) just put him in the warmest part of your house. a good spot is on top of the refrigerator. I'd get him a heatable size home as soon as you can as he is trying to fight off a disease and needs optimum living conditions. are you using betta fix for the fin rot? if so, trash it. it's nothing but watered down meds. instead get something like jungle fungus elinminator or fungus cure, both of these treat bacterial and fungal infections known to cause fin rot and work great. best of all you need to retreat every 3 day with them which is the perfect amount of time between water changes in a 1g bowl. I'd cut back on feeding, a lot. his stomach is only the size of his eye, so he'll get constipated fast at the rate he's going. I'd switch to 3 pellets twice a day instead. good luck in treating, the good news is fin rot is rarely serious, so with good care like you're providing he'll recover in no time

[HannahW]

I would say do a 50% water change every day. Thats the only thing that helped my betta. Also you might want to get a turkey baster to suck up the poops on the bottom, otherwise his fin rot will never go away.They make small heaters for 1 gallon bowls that you might want to invest in. Warm water will help him get over any diseases. They are made by a company called hydor and they are about 15 dollars at petco.Keep a close eye on the little guy, bettafix has been known to kill bettas. The active ingredient is toxic to their lybrinth organ. Some betta's handle it fine, and others do not (like mine)If you see him not moving and breathing really hard then you should consider changing medicines.Good luck and I hope he gets better : )