tiny dark brown spots on my Bettas tail

Question
I bought a beautiful young red/orange halfmoon betta from Petco. He is lively, friendly and lives in a 10 gallon cycled and filtered tank with 3 leopard cory catfish and lots of live plants. I do partial water changes about every 4 days.   I think Red is young because he was only about an inch when I got him and he is growing fast.  I feed him Frozen bloodworms  supplemented with Hikari gold betta pellets, and a blanched pea once a week.  He is a great eater and will eat from my finger. he swims all over the tank and sleeps at night on top of a live plant. I have a few questions.  1. he has tiny brown spots on his tail only and one tiny pinprick hole. Is that normal?  I looked up a picture of velvet but it does not look like that at all.  The spots are very tiny, brown and on his tail only. 2.  Sometimes he snacks on the sinking wafer I feed the corys.  He seems to always notice it before they do.  he will flare up at them once in a while and chase them away.  otherwise he seems to ignore them or swim with the corys.  Will the sinking wafer hurt him to eat it?  Can he hurt the corys?  the corys seem happy but the two bigger ones stick together and a smaller one is by himself more.  Thanks for any answers you can give me!

Answer
Hi Michele

As for his tail, it sounds like he might have got a little too close to one of the Corys and they got him with one of their spines (located in their fins) Catfish react to threats by lashing from side to side and by erecting the fins, which can produce a puncture wound and even a laceration in humans, not to mention a Bettas fragile fins. You can treat the tank with Pimafix which is safe for all of your fish. Pimafix is effective against a wide range of internal and external bacterial infections including fin rot which can occur if your Betta has torn fins. If it is not better after one treatment of Pimafix, which is 7 days, you may need to move him to a separate tank and treat him with an antibiotic, like Maracyn. But the Pimafix should take care of it. I'm not certain that the brown spots have anything to do with a disease or the hole in his tail. This could simply be a change in coloration which occurs in Bettas frequently.

Corys and Bettas should be fine together. I have Bettas and Corys together with no problem. If he flares or chases them, don't worry. They can take care of themselves and he will learn to leave them alone if he hasn't learned that lesson already.

The wafers you feed your catfish will not harm your Betta. A little green in his diet is actually good for him. However you want to make sure your Corys get their share. I have many fish from Mollies to Oscars that like to nibble on the wafers as well. What I do is simply distract these fish, then drop the wafer at the back of the tank by the filter opening. It usually falls behind a rock and the other fish don't see it. Just be certain it reaches the bottom of the tank and not stuck in a plant etc.

Hope this information is helpful to you, good luck!

Richard