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beta fins dont look too good

23 11:12:33

Question
Hello.  My betta's fins have kindof shrivled up and are droopy.  He is the only fish in a small tank... Id say it holds about 2L.  His color is still very vibrant and other than the fin problem he seems to be pretty happy: he eats whenever I feed him, he swims around a lot and goes really crazy when I get close to the tank.  I clean his tank whenever it starts to get really mirky, about every week to week and a half.  I use a betta water conditioner, and his water temperature is room temp, no filter.  I feed him flakes with freeze dried bloodworms and in it- it came with the kit I got from the store and says its meant for bettas.  I feed him a small pinch twice a day  When I change his water I fill a pitcher with water and put a capful of conditioner in, then let the water sit for a day.  Then I scoop him out with a small cup and poor him into the pitcher.  Then I clean out his tank and poor the contents of the pitcher back in.  I make sure my little friend doesnt flow back into the tank until there is most of the treated water in it and I make sure to poor him in as slowly as possible because I dont want to stress him out anymore than I have to.
Do you know whats wrong with my fish and if theres anything I can do to help him get better?

Answer
Kendra,

 The biggest problem I see is that he is in too small of a tank. They can be in nothing less that 2.5 gallons. Another problem is the room temp. They are tropical fish and need the water to be between 80 and 82 degrees at all times. With him in such a small "tank" the water changes need to be daily or every 2 days at the least. It sounds like fin rot. They get that mainly from bad water conditions. You can get a medication called bettafix. That will help but you will continue to have problems if you don't house him correctly. If you use the medication, get him a bigger home with a heater, you will see a big change in him. When doing the water changes, you can remove only 25% of the water for maybe 3 changes then do a 100% change. But that is if he is in a bigger tank. If you do all that and he doesn't get better, or at any time he gets worse let me know.