pH shock in fish?

I'm sorry that your Betta went through some kind of shock.

What pH was it before and after adding water conditioner? If it was a conventional water conditioner, there is a lot of salt (which is pH neutral) and other "stuff" which probably raises the pH.

If you are using chemicals that raise or lowers the ph, unless you are planning on breeding your Betta, save your time, money and anxiety. The breeding of most rain forest fishes is more a matter of the TDS (total dissolved solids) and maybe hardness. If that is not (at least yet) a priority don't fiddle with the water chemistry any more than you have to.

Far more important is water quality and that is best protected by doing 50% partial weekly (ok, nearly weekly) water changes (after gravel vacuuming fecal dirt out of the gravel) with treated water of the same temperature and by siphoning/ gravel vacuuming up any food over fed (they didn't clean it up in 2-3 minutes). All of us will over feed once in a while; it is ok to be human. If is what we do after messing up.is pick up after ourselves. :)

Likewise if there is a water issue stressing the fish, doing another partial water change may be the best thing we can do for them. In the wild "mother nature" does gradual 90% partial water changes on fishes like Betta splendens daily through some rain and water table exchanges.

Fish, even Bettas with their easily burned fins, are surprisingly tough or they never would have survived shipment from the wilds or warm climate fish farms. It might be helpful to know that if there is some question of water differences when we get a new fish and use a jar to acclimate it to their new home (before throwing out the by then really polluted bag water) is that fish can deal more effectively with slight differences if the new water...

is a degree or so warmer rather than cooler (even the old finger thermometer is surprisingly useful there. ;)

if the new water is a little higher in pH (as almost all tap water is) up to a degree (7.8 or 8. from 7.0 water)

If there is a little higher mineral content/ hardness in the new water.

A way to ease the changes is to put the new fish in a covered. soap-less jar just covered with bag water. Add that much again from the tank and leave the fish alone for 20 minutes or so. Pour out a little of that water & add as much again from the tank. If the new fish has a reputation for being delicate do that again. Finally gently dump all the water in the jar into a waste bucket & slide/ drop the newbie fish into the aquarium.

I learned this from marine aquarists who would use very slow drip siphons (ether an airline with a little valve on it or just a knotted airline). Sometimes they were so concerned about the new fish they might take even 8 HOURS to acclimate the new animal!

Another reason we really don't want to use water pH changers (aside from the fact that they usually only make temporary changes) is that if an aquarium's pH drops too low, say below a pH of 5, the fish may panic and swim around in harmful directions. That is called "crazyman's disease" or acidosis. By EPA request (decree?) tap water in most municipalities is buffered about a pH of 8 so that lead water mains don't leach into our drinking water. In time that should drop in the aquarium as the nitrogen cycle breaks down fish wastes. If however the water is buffered up by dissolving rocks & shells or some pH up stuff, somewhere above a pH of 9 alkalosis can mess the fish up much like acidosis and also with possibly fatal results.

I once saw that crazyman's disease happen in a 10-gallon grow out tank with a bunch of young gardneri killifish who were very well fed. They were digesting food so rapidly and expelling ammonia so fast that my 50% weekly water changes were insufficient. I discovered it late at night and had to settle with putting in a 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to buffer the pH up a little and hoping (fervently) that would hold them until I came home from work the next day. They held and got either a 50% or a rare 100% water change the next afternoon.

For a little more on that maybe see

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Breeding some rain forest fishes may require that we dilute our tap water with demineralized water. I am so jealous of aquarists with Great Lakes' water (hardness about 160 PPM, TDS 180 to 200 TDS) or those with water from rivers (St Louis' Mississippi water is even lower in minerals than the Great Lakes). Instead we have water from a Midwestern aquifer which comes in at a TDS of 775 PPM (parts per million). If I had any sense I would use tap water and keep cichlids from Central America or the African Great Lakes and livebearers. I like all those fish but we also keep and encourage breeding among softer water fish like Bettas, lots of killifishes, the occasional tetra, Cory and peacock gudgeon. People that stubborn or goofy trying that with hard water must either collect clean rainwater (wait 30 minutes of persistent rain so the air and roof are cleaner or eventually most use RO (reverse osmosis) water to walk down the mineral content to a level those fishes can breed at.

If you are curious as to the amount of mineral in your tap water, your municipal water supplier is required to mail out an annual report to citizens (or at least householders). A lot of those get fed into the document shredder with the other junk mail. But if you call up your water department they probably can provide you with another copy when you drop by. Even better would be if they have a web site listing the things they should be letting you know about your water.

By the way, kudos for getting your Betta a 10-gallon aquarium, which with modest airflow and a small submersible heater, will provide (him?) with a comfortable environment. Well done also in enduring that 6-8 week period that it takes for a nitrogen cycle to hit an optimum equilibrium!

Hope your Betta gets over his shock and is a delight to keep for the next year or 2 or 3!

The only thing to do is wait and see. I didn't know water conditioner changed pH so drastically, but if you tested it and the pH's were indeed different, then I guess that's the case.

Make sure you aren't using any pH up or down chemicals as they're more stressful than helpful for the fish, and other than that, just try to keep him in a calm area. Perhaps cover up the tank to help reduce stress.

Good luck!