Betta fish swollen belly

Topic:I have 3 gourami fish in my 20 gallon aquarium and one of them has a swollen stomach. It’s almost like the bottom of the fish body is bloated. What could be wrong or what is going on with my fish? I’m really worried. How can I fix this so I can get them back to feeling healthy and normal again?

Price Disclaimer

*Awarded Answer
It can be one of two things. Natural bloating or “dropsy”.

The most common reason a fish gets Dropsy is due to an ammonia spike. Something is wrong with the cycle of the tank and there is too much ammonia in the water. The fastest fix to this is to do a large water change. That’s were you remove a percentage of the tank water and add new water. I advise using a “water changer” its a device that hooks up to your sink and a hose goes to your tank with a switch that pulls water out and then pushes it back in. They are AMAZing! Here is a link if you need one (click here).

2. Bloating is a very common issue for Betta fish and gouramis. The first assumption to jump to is constipation. It is said that a cooked pea will cure the constipation but I’m not sure how much I believe in that. When my fish get this swollen like bloated stomach, I start with a series of steps and it seems to work.

First step, I stop feeding all the fish for 2 days. Fish can go a long time without eating and it would take them around 10 days to completely starve to death. This helps their body to have some time to sort out digestive issues and so forth. On the second day, I do a 40% aquarium water change. This just helps insure any virus or weird bacteria that could be in the water. Then for the next couple of days continue the water changes to cycle out bad water with new water.

If by the 3rd day the bloat hasn’t gone away… then I try the pea trick. I just buy a can of cooked peas and run one under warm water. Remove the skin and feed the inside to the fish. Getting them to eat it is tricky sometimes. At times I will feed them a tiny bit of regular food to get them excited but them follow it with a chunk of pea and they eat it right down.

I’ve had a lot of success with this process. Let me know how it goes for you and your fish.

3. LASTLY… if these two issues didn’t work I would highly advise you dose the tank for a parasite problem (fish get them all the time). The best product on the market is this API General Cure

I know this is already said bought the beta fish has this happen all the time and it is most common because people over feed the fish and they don’t know actually how small their stomach is. I heard the other day that it takes a beta fish 14 complete days to starve to death and that the size of their stomach is the size of their eyeball which is almost the size of a single pallet that you keep feeding them. Will basically people are just killing their fish by overfeeding them is a sad fact but that’s actually what’s happening and people need to realize how little these fish actually need to eat.

I would have to agree with people are overfeeding these fish and that’s the moral of the story. What you have to do now is completely stopped feeding your fish for a couple of days and it should go away. Somebody said that you should do a dramatic increase of water changes but I will have to disagree with that and just let the water stay the same until the fish is healthy. Is in case your water is really dirty then in fact you should do a regular maintenance water change.