philosophy || stock shop || shipping || order || basic care || water chemistry || home || diseases || spawning || feeding fry || raising young || jar maintenance || genetics || gallery || IBC || links
BETTAS by Jim Sonnier
Imposing Blue Grizzled doubletail male
Next to water quality, what you feed your Bettas is most important. The key word to keep in mind is variety. Another important point is that Bettas are meat eaters. They do not browse algae and other vegetable matter. Your fish will prosper if you feed them a wide variety of high protein foods.
Live Foods: Mosquito larvae would have to top the list. In their native range Bettas eat mosquito larvae every day. It is their primary food. If you are lucky enough (or should I say unlucky enough) to live in an area with a high mosquito population you can collect them yourself, feed them to your Bettas, and even store them for up to 2 weeks in a covered jar in the refrigerator.
Brine Shrimp are full of nutrition and Bettas love them. You will have to set up a Brine Shrimp hatchery, buy some Shrimp eggs and salt, and hatch them out yourself, but it will be time and effort well spent. Some people think that you need adult Brine Shrimp for adult Bettas but you can use baby Shrimp for adults too. It just takes more of them to make an adult meal.
Worms of various kinds are good Betta food. Microworms are a good size for baby Bettas. White Worms are big enough for adult Bettas. You will have to set up cultures and raise them. The cultures do not take up much space and the time required is minimal. Earth Worms are an excellent food source that is often overlooked by many. You can collect Earth Worms in your own back yard. You can also buy them at the local fish bait store and store them in the refrigerator. You will need to cut them up into bite sized chunks which can be tedious but, again, the rewards are great.
My recommendation: Mosquito larvae and Earth Worms.
Frozen Foods are not as good as live foods but they are better that dried commercial foods. The thing to watch out for with frozen foods is signs of thawing and refreezing. If the package appears to have been thawed and refrozen at some point, the food could be spoiled and not suitable for your Bettas. It could even be harmful to your fish if it was allowed to decay while thawed. You can buy frozen Adult Brine Shrimp and Baby Brine Shrimp both of which are excellent for your fish. Frozen Bloodworms and Mosquito Larvae are also readily available. Frozen Beef Heart is available but I am not sure how appropriate it is for you and your Bettas. The other frozen foods can be thawed in water and provide bite sized pieces, while the Beef Heart would probably involve a lot of trimming and cutting down to size.
My recommendation: Frozen Brine Shrimp.
Freeze Dried Foods are available in a wide variety of choices. Tubifex worms, Blood Worms, and Ocean Plankton seem to be the most readily available. The freeze drying process is quick and, therefore, traps most of the nutrients, making these types of food high in nutritional value. The storage life for freeze dried foods is quite long, even if the containers have been opened. Freeze dried foods are also cost effective and easy to feed. After all is considered, freeze dried foods are probably superior to frozen foods.
My recommendation: Tubifex Worms and Blood Worms.
Commercial Foods are, in my opinion, the least useful for raising Bettas. Many types and brands of flake food fill the retailers' shelves. You can get flake food made especially for almost any kind of tropical fish including Bettas. You can get flake food for any purpose such as color enhancing flakes, vitamin enriched flakes, and conditioning flakes. About the only flake food I use is Brine Shrimp Flakes, and then it is usually ground into a fine powder to feed to fry during emergencies when live brine shrimp production has failed. Pelletized foods are also numerous and inexpensive. Floating mini-pellets seem to be the most practical. Look for one that has high protein and low fat. Remember that commercial foods are made for convenience and most other types of foods are more nutritious.
philosophy || stock shop || shipping || order || basic care || water chemistry || home || diseases || spawning || feeding fry || raising young || jar maintenance || genetics || gallery || IBC || links
This page was last updated on 12/26/06
Copyright © 2002-2007 All Rights Reserved. Any unauthorized use of text, graphics or images is strictly prohibited. No data from this website may be reproduced without express written permission from Jim Sonnier.