Bettas by Jennifer Lapello
Feeding your Bettas
Feeding Pet Bettas
If you are keeping pet Bettas, your fish can be fed once daily or once every other day. They will do just fine on a mainly pelleted
diet with an occasional treat of frozen bloodworms, glassworms, or brine shrimp. I prefer frozen foods to freeze-dried foods,
because freeze-dried foods have the tendency to absorb water in the fish's belly, sometimes causing constipation or swelling.
For a staple pellet diet, I recommend the Atison's Betta food. There are 2 formulas out there: Atison's Betta Food and Atison's
Betta Pro. The regular food (blue container) is probably fine for a pet Betta. I use the Pro formula, but I also breed
and show my fish. Both of them can be purchased at the IBC sales site.
Feeding Adult Bettas
Most breeders will feed their adult Bettas once or twice daily. Fish that are being conditioned to breed should be fed well twice daily, and juveniles and fry should be fed 2-3 times a day for the best growth.
I feed my adults (even the breeders) a staple diet of Atison's Betta Pro. They do get a live or frozen treat every once in a while, but that's usually only because I prepared too much food for the juveniles. The Betta Pro is just as beneficial as live foods, in my own personal opinion.
I used to feed another brand of pelleted food and supplemented it daily with frozen foods. However, this brand was not nearly as good as the Atison's, so supplementation was necessary.
Adult Bettas can be fed pellets, high-quality flake food, frozen Blood Worms, frozen Glassworms, frozen Brine Shrimp, Daphnia, White Worms, Grindal Worms, as well as a myriad of other various live and frozen foods. Many breeders will condition their fish for spawning by either supplementing with live and frozen foods, or feeding them live and frozen foods exclusively.
One live food that many breeders use for growth and conditioning is Blackworms. These are probably the most controversial food source among Betta breeders. They have a reputation for being unclean and giving Bettas internal parasites. However, that being said, many of the top breeders do use Blackworms they acquire from reputable sources and acheive desirable results with them, and their fish are healthy. I have opted to stay away from them, for now anyway.
Feeding Fry and Juvenile Bettas
When fry are first free-swimming (about 2-3 days after hatching), it is imperative that they are fed as soon as the father is removed from the tank. Sometimes when I only have a few free-swimmers and dad is still assisting with the rest, I will go ahead and put some food in for the more developed ones while he is still tending to them.
As a general rule, fry and juveniles should be fed 2-3 times per day until they reach adult size.
There are many different foods that people feed their new fry. Many breeders will start off feeding them with newly-hatched BBS (baby brine shrimp). I have tried this, and none of my fry have ever been able to take newly hatched brine shrimp when they first start free-swimming.
Some other popular first foods are boiled and crumbled egg yolk, infusoria, Vinegar Eels, and Microworms.
The egg yolk is usually placed into treated water in a spray bottle and fed sparingly with small squirts. I have to admit I tried it, and it fouled the water extremely quickly. So, I now have about 99% of a frozen egg yolk that's been sitting in my freezer forever. It is a very good food though, if you can find a way to feed it properly. It is full of protein, and if it doesn't foul your water quickly, it's a great fry food.
Infusoria are microscopic organisms that thrive in green water. They can't be seen by the human eye, but baby Bettas can see them. In fact, in most spawns you will have a certain goup of fry that never seem to leave the sponge filter, because they are constantly plucking infusorians out of it.
Vinegar Eels are not eels at all, but they do live in vinegar...apple cider vinegar to be exact. The vinegar is combined with distilled water and a small wedge of an apple, and they are very easy to keep. Harvesting them is a little more difficult than raising them. There are different methods of culturing them, but probably the most common (and the one I use) is running some of the culture through a coffee filter in a funnel, then carefully rinsing the filter, so as not to lose any of the Vinegar Eels in the process, and then transferring them to a cup of clean water and feeding with an eyedropper. They are absolutely tiny, probably about 1/4" long, so they are perfect for newly-hatched fry. They swim all around the water and can survive for days (therefore not polluting the water).
Microworms are probably the easiest live food that is available for fry. You just need a small tupperware container, a starter culture, the moistened medium you choose to keep them in (baby cereal, instant potatoes, the list goes on and on...), and some baking yeast. They are slightly larger than vinegar eels. There are different methods of harvesting them, but I'm so used to them now that I just scrape them off the sides of the container with my finger and then dip my finger into clean water to be fed with an eyedropper. Microworms are a very good first food for young fry, but unlike vinegar eels, they slowly sink to the bottom of the tank where they just kind of wriggle around until they are eaten or die. Their lifespan once submerged in water is more like several hours as opposed to the vinegar eels that can last days. Many, many breeders are now refusing to use microworms, because they swear that they are the cause of fry with missing ventrals. For those who don't know, fry are prone to not developing one or boh ventral fins if the bottoms of their tanks are not kept clean at a young age. I have come up to a solution for this, since it is virtually impossible to clean the tanks at this young age. As soon as the fry are free-swimming well, I plop in a handful of Ramshorn snails. Since I started doing this, I have not had a single fry with a missing ventral fin. Some snails will eat fry, but Ramshorns are safe.
As the fry get bigger, they can start eating bigger foods. It is best to wean them off the BBS as soon as possible to avoid them gorging themselves and getting SBD (swim bladder disorder).
Some of the next foods are Moina, Daphnia, Grindal Worms, crushed pellets and chopped frozen foods.
Moina and Daphnia are easy to keep if you have the right setup. Moina are much smaller than Daphnia, so they are able to be offered sooner. You can keep either one in a 5 gallon bucket filled with aged water. The hard part is producing more green water to add to the buckets to feed them with. I am fortunate in that I found a spot in my basement to leave a shop light over aged water 24/7, which in turn, turns the water very green. They can also be fed yeast water, but you have to be careful not to overdo it, or you can crash a culture virtually overnight. Moina and Daphnia are often referred to as "water fleas". Rest assured, they are nothing like fleas. They do not jump, and they are not gross in any way.
Grindal Worms are great for larger fry (about 3/4" and up), as well as adult Bettas. They can be kept in relatively small containers filled with moist soil, peat moss, or coconut fiber that has been baked for an hour to kill any bacteria or organisms living in the medium. They can be fed a wide variety of foods. My personal choice is a "worm food" I made that consists of baby cereal, spirulina flakes, and flake fish food. They are pretty easy to keep. My only complaint is that they are extremely prone to infestations by fruit flies and mites. I lost an entire large culture one summer to fruit flies. Luckily, I had more. You have to keep those lids on tight and if they don't fit well, weigh them down with something. They can be harvested either by using your fingers or a toothpick or by getting a small piece of cut glass and putting moist food on one side and pressing it into the medium. The worms congregate on the glass to eat the food, and then you can pick up the glass and rinse the worms right off.
White Worms are great, but they require cooler temps (around 50 degrees Farenheit). They are cultured and harvested pretty much in the same manner as Grindal Worms, but they are best kept at temperatures around 50 degrees. If you have the right setup to keep them, I highly recommend them. I keep mine in the bottom drawer of my fridge, and they do just fine. They can be fed to large juvenile Bettas and adults.
My current method for feeding fry and juveniles is as follows:
Free-swimming to about 6 days old - mixture of green water (infusoria), Vinegar Eels, & Microworms
6 days old to about 3 weeks - BBS (baby brine shrimp)
3-6 weeks - BBS (slowly weaned off them at this stage), live Moina, frozen Daphnia, Grindal Worms, live Daphnia for the largest, crushed pellets
6 weeks and to adult size - frozen Daphnia, crushed pellets, Grindal Worms, live Daphnia, chopped frozen foods, and full-sized pellets as soon as they can handle them
I'm not saying that this is the best method or a method that will work for everyone. It has just been working well for me, and it provides the fry with a wide variety for the best development possible.
The biggest problem I see new breeders facing is the same problem I had when I started out, which is the belief that you can grow Bettas to adult size on Microworms alone. It doesn't happen. Microworms are great for keeping fry alive until they can fit bigger food in their mouths, but they are not nutritionally complete.
I will be adding articles on culturing these live foods as time permits.