Persistent swim bladder/constipation problem

Question
Hello there!

For the past week or so, my betta has been floating at the top of his tank. I'm pretty sure it's constipation or a swim bladder problem, as all the symptoms I've read about seem the same.

He's had problems with floating to the top of his cage before, but when I fed him a pea, it always worked within a day or so.

However, this time I've fed him 3 peas over the past week and nothing has helped. I don't know what to do and I'm really worried about him. I cleaned his tank because the pea kind of dissolved into the tank as well, so I'm not sure if him being moved around during the cleaning stressed him out.

After reading many articles online I realised the problem was that I wasn't feeding him a varied enough diet. He's been eating these fish flakes I got with my tank and blood worms, which apparently aren't very good for bettas, so hopefully when and if he gets better, I will be sure to get him different food.

Please let me know what I should do!
Thank you for your time :)

Answer
Hi Jessica,
 Good quality fish flakes are actually fine for bettas -- that is what I feed my bettas and they spawn.  
 
 The biggest problem with bettas is that they don't live very long, often only a year or so. Once they start getting old, they basically fall apart rather quickly.  The best thing you can do is make sure he has clean water.  You should be changing 25% of his water once a week, every week. Poor water conditions can manifest themselves in all sorts of ways, including the things you describe.  It is also important to have a heater in his tank. Bettas need the water up near about 80oF and do very poorly if the water gets colder.  

-- Ron C.
  rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com
  Cichlid Research Home Page <http://cichlidresearch.com>