Betta sick?

Question
Hello, I have a male Betta in a 1.5 gallon cube aquarium.
He usually hides behind the quiet flow filter that's in there but he eats well. I feed twice a day and change his water monthly. Recently I did a water change, then decided to add another quiet flow filter to help clean the tank up because it started to look dirty. He was fine for a while, and looked happier then usual. But a couple nights ago, I saw little white dots on him (i figured it was ich) and what looked like I thin green snot looking string coming from his bottom. Last night I looked and he didn't have the white spots but still had the green string but he wasn't eating. Now he doesn't have any white spots or green string but he is at the bottom of the tank.he won't move or eat but he is breathing. He is very pale.
Do you know what could be wrong?
Thanks

Answer
Hi Mallory,
The white spots you saw on him could've been gas bubbles that have not yet dissipated. These tiny bubbles come from your tap water. And they'll often drift around an aquarium and appear like tiny white particles. They can even attach to the fish often resembling ick parasites. The bubbles eventually dissipate but extra aeration will help it along.

Now I'm not quite sure what the green string could've been... perhaps something in his diet. It does not represent any common disease that I know of.

Your Betta may be responding badly to two different thing. The extra filter you added or the big water change. The extra filter could be producing too much current and making the betta uncomfortable. They will often go into behaving quite sick if they don't like the current in the tank. It's also possible the big water change was too drastic of a water chemistry change for him. It's really not good to wait for an entire month before changing the water. By then the pH can drop and nitrates can build up to quite high levels. So when you do a water change with fresh new water the chemistry can be thrown out of whack. Unfortunately there isn't a good remedy for this current situation besides hoping that he pulls through. Its much better to prevent this occurrence by doing much more frequent water changes on ideally a once or twice weekly basis rather than one big drastic change after the old water has been allowed to sit for so long. One good indicator that you need to do more frequent water changes is the fact that his water was very dirty after you cleaned it. It's better to maintain it more frequently for his health.

Also it's important to note if you did anything different during the water change? Did you make sure the temperature of the new was equal to the temperature of his old water. Did you make sure and use water conditioner? Could anything you used have had any chemical contaminants?

Did his temperature get dropped suddenly?

These are all important things to keep in mind when your Betta is in distress.

Let me know how he is doing. I hope he pulls through.
Best of luck and I hope this helps,
Susan~