Ich is one of the most common aquarium fish ailments. It is so common that many pet stores put a squirt of anti-ich treatment into the water when they bag fish.

Goldfish are notorious for getting ich, but betta fish get it just as often. Fortunately ich is no big deal: It is easy to treat and rarely life-threatening. The problem is that it is extremely contagious.

What is Ich?

Ich is a parasite. Ich is actually all over the place — you can never completely get rid of it, and so long as its populations do not explode it is not a problem. When it grows to the point that we can see it on our fish, then its a problem.

The Life Cycle of Ich

This is not “must-know information”, but it will help you understand how and why you are treating your betta. Ich has three stages:
Trophozite, where the parasite has dug into the skin of your fish and you can see it as raised white spots for salt
Trophont, when the ich falls off your fish and breeds in the bottom of the tank.
Tomite, a three day period when then ich is free swimming, looking for a new host.

The only time you can effectively kill ich is in the tomite stage, when the ich are free swimming. Trophozite and trophont ich are not much affected by ich medication.

The three stages are happening simultaneously in your ich population. Even with the heat turned up, some of the ich will stay stuck in your fishes’ skin, and some are down in the gravel breeding. This is why ich treatment lasts two weeks – you have to wait until all the ich (or most… you won’t get it all) pass through the tomite stage and die.

What Ich Looks Like

Basically, fuzz or “dust” on your fish. Some bettas show it as slightly raised white spots. Some people think it looks like chicken pox on the fish. More specifically, ich may make your betta fish look like its been sprinkled with very fine salt. The “salt” may cover your fish’s entire body, or it may just be on the fins or on the head, or just in one spot. Early detection is key. This is not to say that you can not save a betta that has even advanced ich, but it is much better to catch the problem when the first little patch of ich has appeared.

The Difference Between Ich and a Fungal or Bacterial Infection

Fungal or bacterial infections can be black or white or grey. Unlike ich, they will look more like goo or cotton or even have a gel-like quality to them. Ich generally looks more like salt or dust.

It is not impossible for a betta fish to have both ich and a fungal infection, but that’s fairly rare. I wanted to emphasize this difference between fungus and ich because the treatment for the two conditions is a little different, and I’ve met a lot of betta owners who aren’t completely clear on the differences. It is not the end of the world if you do mess up the diagnosis and treat a fish with ich like it had a fungal infection, but you’ll lose precious time by misdiagnosing.

How Bettas With Ich Behave

Your betta’s behavior will probably change if it has ich. Some bettas may dart around erratically. You might see them trying to rub against things in their tank, or they may rush into things in an attempt to scratch. Other bettas may get sluggish and clamp their fins to their sides. They may stop eating and may just be lying on the bottom of the tank.

If One Fish Has Ich, They All Have Ich

First you have to realize that all of your fish gear is probably infected with ich. If you have a community tank and one fish comes down with ich, you need to assume the entire tank has ich and treat the entire tank.

*Optional first step to treatment: Do a 50% water change

So often ich outbreaks are the result of poor water quality. The water quality stresses the fish, their immune systems are weakened, and then the ever-present ich make the most of the weakened fish. Bang: You have an ich outbreak. So if you have any remote concerns that the water in your fish tank is not clean (as in, would you drink it?), then do a water change to at least give your fish a break on the bad water while they undergo their ich treatment.

Raise the Water Temperature to 85 Degrees

Do this slowly — three degrees an hour or every other hour is best. Cranking the heater from 75 degrees to 85 in one step is going to stress your betta even more, and that’s the last thing they need right now.

At 85 degrees the ich parasites will begin to let go of your fish and will become free swimming. The ich are easier to kill when they are free swimming.

Medicate

Aquarisol is best for ich, but any product that has copper or Malachite Green will work. Most pet stores will have Coppersafe, Maracide, Jungle Ick Guard or something similar. The treatment will cost you $7-12. Follow the directions on the bottle and continue to treat the ich for 14 days, even if you do not see signs of it anymore and your fish look fine. Continue to do 30% water changes every other day during the two week treatment period.

Ich Prevention
Adding a 1/4 to 1/2 a teaspoon of aquarium salt per gallon to your tank’s water is a good preventative against ich and a broad spectrum of other diseases. Only use aquarium salt — table salt will kill your fish.

If you have not been adding salt before, start with just an 1/8 of a teaspoon, then wait a week for the next water change and add a 1/4. Add the salt only to new water you put in during water changes. Do not dump 5 teaspoons of aquarium salt directly into a 10 gallon aquarium.

How To Disinfect Ich-Contaminated Fish Gear

Wash your hands with hot water and soap after every contact with your fish or fish nets or the aquarium water. If you have to disinfect a tank that had a full-scale ich plague, get a solution of 1 part Clorox bleach and 20 parts water. Soak the tank and all the other fish gear for an hour. Then scrub and rinse everything at least twice.

Bleach will kill fish. Even a whiff of it is extremely toxic to them, so if you have any doubt about there being some leftover bleach after you’ve scrubbed and rinsed twice, then scrub and rinse a third or a fourth time. Putting the fish gear out in the sun is a good way to be extra sure the last bits of bleach have been cleared.

After all the work you’ve gone to to create that special environment inside your tank, don’t muss it up by adding a sick fish. Here’s the rub: all new fish are potentially sick fish. Even if they look great at the pet store.


Enter the quarantine tank. This is a small tank kept in addition to your large show tank. You put all new fish in there for a week to a month (some fish people really do a month) to make sure they’re healthy before you add them into your community tank with all your healthy fish.

Quarantine tanks are also helpful for fish that become sick in your community tank. At the first sign of trouble, you take the sick fish out of your display tank and put it in the quarantine tank and treat it there.

Quarantine tanks have the usual components of other fish tanks – a heater, filter, and a backup thermometer to make sure the temperature is right. Sick tanks are kept a bit warmer than normal, as this helps the fish recover faster.

I’ve kept a lot of fish over the years, and only had a quarantine tank when I had my huge planted discus tank. Frankly, I am a bit too lazy to do the full and proper screening of new fish that quarantine tanks represent. However, there is a real risk to not having one. If you do get a sick fish in your primary tank, you are then basically dealing with not one sick fish, but an entire thankful of sick fish. If you picked up a really nasty illness or infection, there is a real chance most of your fish could die.

If you have a planted tank – live plants that you may love, that you bought expensive lights for, and lovingly tend to – the consequences are even worse. Many of the medications for even common fish diseases are not plant friendly. Neither are they filter friendly – antibiotics kill bacteria. All bacteria. If you have to use a strong dose, you may end up having to recycle your filter again, or at least build it up again from 10% of its previous capacity. It can be a real pain. (Remember why I like the no-tech single betta in a glass bowl?)

All that said, I have successfully treated ich and hole-in-the-head in a planted tank. You can still treat diseased, even in big fancy planted tanks. Its just a wee bit riskier. Still, if you take the time to really inspect your fish every day, you’ll probably catch an illness before its out of control. And that can make all the difference.

The following list of behaviors are not normal for betta fish and should put you on alert immediately. As soon as you notice them, check your fish’s water conditions (you did get that water test kit, right?) and check the temperature of the water.


If either of those two things are off by even a little, that could explain these symptoms. Even temperature changes of 2 degrees can weaken a fish, especially if its health has been compromised (and if you bought it from almost any pet store, its health has already been seriously compromised.)

Not eating. See the feeding section on page for what to do about a fish that won’t eat.

Swimming much slower than usual or not at all. If none of the other symptoms in this list apply, you may have a problem with the water, or the temperature in your fish’s tank may be too cold. Check both water and temperature. If both are OK, try raising the temperature 2 degrees and see if your betta becomes more active.

Swimming sideways. This could be a problem with your fish’s swim bladder. You’ll need to treat your fish with an antibiotic in a shallow tank, in about 3-4 inches of water. Do frequent water changes – every other day. Swim bladder problems can be a result of a physical trauma (like the fish actually getting hit somehow) or by chronically bad water. It is difficult to treat and does not have a good outlook for recovery.

Floating upside down. Again, possibly a swim bladder problem. You may be seeing the last throes of dropsy. See #12

Rubbing itself again tank decorations. This could be parasites, the beginning of ich or velvet, or just poor water conditions. As with any problem, check your water and temperature first. Then inspect the fish very carefully. Are any parts of its body or fins grayish or cottony or are there any small white, grey or tan colored spots? If so then you’ve probably got ich, velvet or a fungus. If you see any thread like things hanging from your fish’s vent (where it poops from) or its gills, then you’ve got a parasite problem. If you see nothing abnormal, you may have caught a problem early – do a 30% water change every other day until the fish stops rubbing or the symptoms develop enough for you to identify the problem.

If you see the grey or white cottony patches, it’s a fungus or more likely a bacterial infection, and should be treated the same way you would handle fin rot (see #8). Get either mercoruchrome, gentian violet or methylene blue and spot treat with a qtip. The ifsh should be isolated from all other fish, and you should clean off all equipment that comes into contact with this fish with a 10% bleach solution, then rise them clean. If a bacterial infection is advanced, you may lose the fish.

If you saw the little grains of salt, your fish probably has ich. This is an extremely common problem and is quite easy to treat. You don’t even need a hospital or quarantine tank, because by the time you can see ich, it has already infected your entire tank. Don’t panic, but don’t wait around, because ich will spread fast and if left unchecked, it will kill your fish. Get some ich treatment from the pet store (either formaline or malachite green or whatever your good friend the smart pet store employee recommends). Treat the entire tank per the instructions on the bottle.

After all the fish look good for a week, do two 30% water changes to get most of the ich treatment out. And don’t throw that ich medicine out: you’ll probably need it again.

Fins clamped tight against its body. Ammonia. Way too much of it. Do a 70% water change immediately, and do another 50-70% water change again the next day. Seriously consider adding or upgrading your filters, and commit to cleaning your tank and doing way more water changes. This is, of course, unless you have a new tank (less than 2 months old) or you just added a bunch of new fish. If that’s the case, your ammonia problem is because your tank isn’t cycled properly.

Skin or fins discolored or covered with what looks like cotton, salt or fine dust

Fins getting smaller. If your fish is in a community tank, one of your betta’s tank mates may be chewing on his fins. Observe carefully to see who it is. If your betta is alone, and the shrinking fins don’t look torn, its probably fin rot. This is a common problem, and is caused by really nasty water conditions.

Immediately change at least half the water in the tank, and do it again the next day. Going forward, you need to clean the tank at least twice as often as you have been. Fin rot can spread fast, but it is treatable and the fins will grow back… but it will take time, and they may not be as beautiful as they were before. To treat it, get yourself either mercurochrome (many households have this on hand in the first aid drawer), gentian violet or methylene blue. The last two are available from pet stores. You’ll need to catch the fish in a net, and spot treat the affected areas with a cotton swab dipped in either 50% diluted mercurochrome, or the gentian violet or methylene blue. To boost your fish’s recovery add 1 tablespoon of aquarium salt (or kosher salt, but not regular table salt) for every 5 gallons of aquarium water. Keep testing your water to make sure it is 100% ammonia free. Fin rot can be accompanied by secondary infections, but the salt treatment may help or prevent those. Don’t let fin rot get out of hand – it really eats fins fast. If you see if at night and can’t get to the pet store until morning, at the very least, do that water change and add kosher or aquarium salt. If will make a difference until you can spot treat the fin rot.

Cloudy or protruding eyes

Floating to the top… not swimming, but seemingly unable to stop itself from floating to the top

Struggling to get off the bottom of the tank, and eventually just staying on the bottom of the tank.

Any part of the fish bloated or swollen. This could be a tumor, but more likely its dropsy. Dropsy is bad. Its fairly rare, but you are witnessing major organ failure in your fish, and probably its last days or hours. Recovery is unlikely.

Staying next to the heater all the time. Your fish is cold. Either turn up the heater or get a more powerful heater. If you have a very large tank (more than 40 gallons) you may need two heaters placed on either side of the tank to keep it toasty.

Feces trailing behind the fish. This is a sign of constipation, and means you have been overfeeding your fish. Cut the amount you feed by half and this unslightly problem should go away. If it doesn’t cut back on how much you feed again.

Its just a betta thing to do. Of course, the main reason they do it is to build a bubble nest. Betta splendens (the kind of betta we buy from pet stores) are nest brooders, as opposed to most other kinds of bettas, which are mouth brooders.


Mouth brooders keep their fry (their babies) in their mouths to protect them – no, of course they don’t eat them. Nest builders, specifically bubble nest builders, keep their fry in the bubble nest to keep them safe when they’re just born, and for about a week to ten days after they’re born.

Most betta sources will tell you that building a bubble nest is a sign of the happy, healthy betta, but that’s not always true. It can be a sign of sickness. To know the difference between a happy nest builder and a sick bubble blower, take a close look at the betta and the nest. If the betta is swimming around, eating and generally active when its not blowing bubbles, you’ve got a happy betta who’s nest building. If your betta doesn’t do much of anything between blowing bubbles, or keeps his fins clamped close to his body, or spends a lot of time lying on the bottom of his tank, you have a sick betta.

The bubble nest itself will tell you, too. If there are only a few bubbles, and they are large and easily popped bubbles, you may have a sick fish. If there are a lot of bubbles, and they’re small, you probably have a happy fish. Please note that just because there are only a few bubbles doesn’t necessarily mean your fish is sick – take into account how its behaving, too. If it looks fine and is active, don’t worry about the state of the bubbles.

Its not unheard of for female bettas to blow bubbles, too. They don’t do it as often, but it does happen. I know a few ladies who change the oil in their cars… just because its generally a guy thing to do doesn’t mean us ladies don’t partake every so often.

The short answer: 2-3 years is most realistic. If you are really good to them, its possible they’ll live up to 5 or more years.


A longer answer: The first thing you should know is that your betta fish is probably a year old when you bought it. It may have been even older. Betta fish take at least six months to fully develop those beautiful fins, so pet stores don’t even try to sell them until they’re 9 months old or so, and then you lose a few months to transit time and how long it takes for someone to buy them in the store.

If you want to keep your betta as long as possible, get it a tank that’s at least 5 gallons. Heat the water in the tank to about 78 degrees. Change the water frequently & get an ammonia test kit to be sure the water never has even trace amounts of ammonia in it. Treat your tap water before you put it in the bowl. Do not overfeed your betta, and when you do feed, give them high quality, high protein food like freeze-dried brine shrimp or freeze-dried bloodworms. Have only the betta fish in the bowl, or carefully select very non-aggresive fish as companions.

If you follow those guidelines, your fish should live at least 2-3 years, and might be lucky enough to make it to the wise old age of 9.

Betta fish kept in small (less than 3 gallon), unheated, unfiltered bowls will be lucky to live two years. These conditions are stressful to the betta and compromise their health over the long term. A small bowl also greatly limits how much exercise they can get, and exercise has been directly linked to betta fish longevity.

In a university study, graduate students actually “chased” bettas around their tanks to get them to move about. They did this every day for years, and the bettas that got the exercise lived 9 years or more, compared to the inactive bettas that died around age 4-5 years. This doesn’t mean that chasing your fish or traumatizing it is a good idea – it means that giving the fish at least a full foot to size back and forth in is going to help. Some small aquariums have very gentle filters that some betta fishes swim into to get exercise, sort of like a fish treadmill.