[Leeldoo]

We purchased a male veiltail betta Sunday afternoon at a bigger petstore. We also purchased a 1 gallon gravel filtered tank. WE rinsed everything with water included the tank, castle and nylon plant, pretreated the tap water with water conditioner they reccomended and waited about 4 hours before putting "fishee" in his new tank (transferred with a net). After about 2 hours, we fed him some Whartley Betta pellets (spelling may be wrong... this was recommended by the store employee), and he did eat 2
He was fairly after till 9pm, when we turned out his light and wished him good night. This morning we noted he was going in and out of the castle and somewhat active. Temperature has been between 75-77 degrees all day ( there was a big storm that came through tonight though)Around lunch time, the fish is merely lounging at the top of the tank, not doing anything. Occassionally he will take a surface breath and even less frequently move about the tank. He did not eat the pellets offered to him, nor did he try a piece of shelled thawed pea. His front fins look withered

We did a partial water change this evening-- ~ 4cup pretreated spring bottled water (we thought maybe hard water was a problem). The fish looked like he might have perked up, but now is just jerkily swimming then falling to the bottom of the tank. He doesn't appear to be breathing through his gills. He's definitely not looking good.

This is our first fish-- what have we done wrong to make him so unhappy/sick in 1 day?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Leeldoo]

Sadly Mr Fishee has expired. He would swim to the top, then sink nose into the gravel and lay there on his side. We are all very sad and frustrated, pets are living things and he died under our care. We researched before getting the fish and tank, and sadly we received lots of conflicting information on everything from tank size, feeding regime and tank set up.
We are going to return Fishee and some of his tankwater to the pet store so they can evaluate and help us determine what might have been wrong.
Can anyone recommend a best reference for care of Bettas.
We didn't even have him 24 hours.