betta dying?

Question
I've had Buddy for about a year now (he came from Wal-Mart) and until now, he has never had any problems.  For about two weeks, he has been having problems trying to swim to the top and when he gets there he just sinks down to the bottom.  We did a water change about a week into this and now, after 4 days of having new water, he is not any better.  Yesterday, It started to look like his front fins (the ones he uses to keep afloat) seem to not be working, they are almost white & very thinned out.  After watching him a while, I changed his environment, because he had a rough rock with lots of plants attached.  We put the smooth rock in with his first ever plants.  Today, he looks awful.  He used to be bright red with blue specks.  Now his blue is completly gone and about half his body had turned yellow instead of red.  He seems to be breathing really slow and really heavy and it also looks like something dark red/blue comes out of his gills when he breathes out.  What can I do?  Please help!  This is my 4 year old daughter first fish, she'll be devistated if he dies.

Answer
hi stephanie

i think your fish is sick. You should never empty your aquarium or change it's enviroment. This could put stress to the fish and also remove good bacteria, that help fish. you should also remove about 20-30% of the water.
When you did a water change did you add water conditner to remove chlorine? Also what you could do is you could treat it with stress coat condiner. It will help the fish heal and from stress.