Recently, I’ve noticed that one of my bettas has a bent spine, like she’s curved sharply to the left. She can straighten out, although she doesn’t appear to do it often, and when she does, she seems overdeveloped on the right side. Maybe swollen, but more like the muscles on that side of her are larger. She’s still eats enthusiastically, so I don’t think she’s sick. Did she somehow injure herself? She does have a tendency to bonk her face on the glass, but this might be a result of her bent spine, not the cause.
The most distressing part is when she gets excited about her food pellets, she’ll kink up into a right angle and kick/spasm over to eat them. It looks extremely painful to me, and she doesn’t swim quite straight when she does this (although she still manages to get the food in her mouth). Should I be concerned about this?
Betta fry sometimes develop bent spines as they mature. It might be a genetic thing or possibly the result of poor water or food quality. There’s usually not much you can do other than keep them in shallow water if they have trouble swimming, or cull them if they seem to be suffering.
If the betta is an adult who has never had this problem before, it might possibly be related to constipation. Sometimes they float or swim strangely when constipated. Is her tummy swollen? If so, try fasting for a few days or give her a small piece of pea. It could also be some sort of swim bladder infection, which will either make them float too much or too little and have trouble swimming.
I’m no expert, but I’ve owned quite a few bettas and those are my first thoughts.
Well, after a few days of fasting and pea-eating, there’s no improvement. She has a hard time going after the pea. She tries to come for it head-on, but ends up circling around the food. She does float far more than the other betta, and occasionally she’ll gently sink, tail end first, down to the bottom of her tank. Is there an easy way to diagnose a swim bladder illness? I don’t want to mistakenly treat her for something she doesn’t have.
If she has some sort of swim bladder problem, she will be having troubles with her buoyancy. Look for that.
As for the pea feeding, I have read (but never tried myself) that it may be easier to stick a glob of pea onto the end of a toothpick and feed it to her, instead of dropping it into the bowl like normal food. The glob of pea also has the tendency to disintegrate and cloud the water, so you can better control that this way.
I have a male betta and I got him about a month ago from my local pet store. I chose him because he had a lot of character and every time I walked over he would swim right up to the glass and shake around at me.
In the past week his spine seems to be bent to the right and the right side of his body is swollen right at the end close to his tail. He has no other symptoms of tb he swims fine he eats fine he has no bouyeney issues he is still very bright and shinny red and blue and seems fairly happy after I got him a new tank.
I’m currently tank hunting as the pet store people told me he only needs to be in about one litre of water but after reading up online that doesn’t seem to be the case. Could his spine be bent because of the smallness of the tank and swimming in the same direction in circles?
I’m concerned because I love this fish.
