Hi, Queendiamond. I hope Petey is still with us. I think some filtration would improve things drastically. I have mine in a 7 gallon tank that's planted with natural plants and lighting, filtration and filled with pure rain water. I feed mine live food and frozen blood worms. I think maybe the water isn't good quality or toxins are building up in the tank. Get a small filter for the size of your tank and see how you go, if you top up the tank as far as it will go it will slow the serge of the water somewhat, add some charcoal as well. Hope Petey gets better soon, they're too beautiful to lose. Cheers J

I'm no expert, but I think I'd try the blood worms. My son's beta would not eat the prepared food, so he feeds him tiny bits of chicken or whatever meat is for dinner.

Do you treat your water before changing for him?

Hope he does better. Let us know.

he might be dying or old age. I have had many betta's in the past. they were always nice friendly lively. They were happy when i fed them. Then I started noticing that they were not moving around as much or eating all of their food. And then they just died. I was always sad when they did.

Sounds like you're overfeeding your poor betta. A betta's stomach is the size of his eyeball, so you're feeding way too much food.

You might want to vary his diet to keep him healthy - cooked pea, frozen brine shrimp, blood worms, mosquito larve, friut flies, even some beef heart - in teeny tiny porportions mind you - will do him a lot of good. If he's not finiky, as many bettas can be.

Then again, as the othe poster said, he could be suffering from old age. Let us know how your betta fares.

The bulging out of the eyes actually sounds like a sickness called pop eye. It's an infection of some sort, not sure if it's fungal or bacterial, but the medicine is easy to get from the store.

If you've had him for two years and he's been happy up to this point, I'd say you've been doing things right the whole time. If you were doing anything wrong he'd have been sick within the first few months, I'd think.

Some filtration wouldn't hurt at all, just get him a really small carbon filter, some of those power filters are very strong and can stress out your betta by creating a current that he and his large, ornamental fins can't swim against.

I had one that did that on its lowest setting, I had to buy a different filter that people use in small-fry tanks. All it does is bubble, so there's no current. I just have to change the carbon sponge in it once a month.

Good luck, I hope Petey gets better.