Our poor Betta got stuck in the filter intake, I feel especially bad because I didn't see him when I came home and just assumed he was hiding, we found him last night when we were going to bed, shut off the filter and he swam out. He's missing almost all of his fins, he'd clearly been in there most of the day. There is only the clear/white part remaining of his bottom fins. He seems happy and alert, I read quite a bit about this last night around the web but wanted to post here for advice too. I thought for sure he was toast but he's swimming around happy as can be.
I assume that there is an underlying problem or he wouldn't have gotten stuck? I've seen him down there a lot before, there's plenty of places to hide and this is one of the areas he goes to, he's never been stuck before and his fins were all pristine before this so I know he hasn't had any issues with it. He used to sit on the bottom of the tank for a few minutes sometimes but hasn't been doing that lately at all since we cut down on feeding him. We now have the filter all the way down (it was on a medium flow) it's a 3.5 gallon and the levels are all normal. There's a pygmy Cory, 5 Norman Lampeyes and Betta in there. It's the 3.5 gallon glofish kit (long story on how we got that..I swear this tank is cursed.) There's a heater in the tank but it's not adjustable and stays at 75. I left the lights off today so there is a little residual light in the room but I had seen where that could be soothing for him to recover.
I've read about using aquarium salt and doing extra water changes, should I move Betta to another tank and do that? I didn't want to move him immediately after all that trauma and freak him out even more. I plan on getting a sponge filter for that tank so this doesn't happen again, opinions on that would be appreciated too.
I assume that there is an underlying problem or he wouldn't have gotten stuck? I've seen him down there a lot before, there's plenty of places to hide and this is one of the areas he goes to, he's never been stuck before and his fins were all pristine before this so I know he hasn't had any issues with it. He used to sit on the bottom of the tank for a few minutes sometimes but hasn't been doing that lately at all since we cut down on feeding him. We now have the filter all the way down (it was on a medium flow) it's a 3.5 gallon and the levels are all normal. There's a pygmy Cory, 5 Norman Lampeyes and Betta in there. It's the 3.5 gallon glofish kit (long story on how we got that..I swear this tank is cursed.) There's a heater in the tank but it's not adjustable and stays at 75. I left the lights off today so there is a little residual light in the room but I had seen where that could be soothing for him to recover.
I've read about using aquarium salt and doing extra water changes, should I move Betta to another tank and do that? I didn't want to move him immediately after all that trauma and freak him out even more. I plan on getting a sponge filter for that tank so this doesn't happen again, opinions on that would be appreciated too.