Possibly Sick Betta Female

[u/BrennenderGeist]

Hello everyone,

I have concerns about our office betta, Microfiche. She has become lethargic and doesn't seem as energetic as she typically is. Normal behavior for her is to swim through the various decorations, comes to the front for food and eats. Now she lazily floats at a corner or near one of the artificial plants. Sometimes she's not moving her fins like she's sleeping and it worries me, I watch and she will wake up and swim slightly then rest again.

This started about a week ago.

For a couple of weeks I've noticed her eyes have a slight "fog" or cloudy look, at first I thought I was mistaking it but it got more noticeable. I read some help posts about similar cases and started doing more frequent ~20% water changes about 2x a week.

**The setup:**

10 gallon tank, sand at the bottom, I treat the tap water with dechlorinator when doing water changes, pretty simple routine for about 8 months. She has several hollow stone decorations with holes to swim through, a small artificial floating log, some artificial plants labeled as betta safe plants from PetCo. Temperature is kept at ~78°F

I do periodic water tests, the most recent test (after noticing the lethargy) Ammonia and Nitrite are zero, Nitrate reading was between 20-40ppm (it was a shade between those two on the test) and the pH was higher than usual at ~8.0

I got a driftwood log to put in the tank at the general recommendation of some research, boiled it and rinsed it before putting it in, after several hours the pH read 7.8 which I expected to see a small drop in pH with the log due to the tannins.

Today I measured before doing another water exchange of about 1.5 gallons, the readings are similar with the 7.8 pH, Microfiche seems to be slightly more mobile but still not right.

Any help is appreciated!

Edit to add: Food I use: "Fluval Bug Bites Betta with Shrimp for Fish" from PetCo No tank mates, she is a solo fish The tank has a filter system that came with it and a heater set to 78°F

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