Fin grooming, a comment I posted in this forum

Im just reposting a comment I posted here on an old post because I have seen a resurgence of this type of "care" just on my own personal time and I recently had a friend who got a betta who did this after watching a video of someone else doing it and she ended up killing her fish. She thought it was a normal, necessary, and routine thing you had to do for the health of your fish. She had "groomed" the fins twice before and the third time she cut too far down. So all that being said:

The only time I have ever cut any of my betta's fins is if they have had a severe case of fin rot or if their fins were too large and we're affecting their quality of life. I have only had to do it twice, once for each reason on different fish. Both were rose tails which are more prone to those issues, its also why I stopped buying rose tails. I am by no means an expert in betta keeping, there are still things that Im learning. But what youre seeing is called grooming the fins. Its pretty looked down upon if its not for a medical reason and even then most people who are just hobbiests only use fin grooming when it is absolutely necessary, after all other options have been exhausted and the last option to save your fish is to cut the fins. But the people who do this are involved in fish shows (which are not bad, some people who participate in those just suck) and shady breeders who want to be able to sell a "perfect" fish at a high price. Fin grooming is honestly pretty cruel, again unless it is to explicitly save the fish or give it a better quality of life. It does hurt them. I've seen a lot of people who do this use ice to "sedate" their fish, but ice doesn't sedate them, it just sends them into shock, they're still conscience and they still feel pain with the ice method. Clove oil is a better option, I dont want to give the dosing for that because dosing for anesthesia and dosing for euthanasia are super similar in dosage, theres also an emulsification process you have to do with clove oil before you use it because oil and water don't mix. But! Clove oil sedates and numbs the fish. When you cut the fins you also have to be super diligent about watching for infection because that can happen and if you're not super careful when you cut the fins you can cause your fish to bleed out. I feel like all this is necessary to say because I have had friends and acquaintances get into betta keeping and try to do their due diligence about research/learning about how to give their new little buddy the best life possible. Without fail, everytime, something about fin grooming has come up, even when I was getting into it, fin grooming came up. And, 99% of the time, its always in the context of showman ship, not a medical reasoning. I have seen 1 too many fish die be mutilated by new keepers who saw fin grooming and thought it was a necessary procedure for the health of their fish. Bottom line, its not. It shouldn't be done unless there are no other options.