To keep your Betta healthy and thriving, you must feed it a specific diet.
Nutritional Needs
When Bettas are in their natural habitat, which is stagnant water and pools, they mostly eat live insects that are in the water. Therefore, if you want to offer your Betta a healthy diet, consider a nutritional complement.
Give your Betta a varied diet of flake foods, pellet foods, frozen foods, live brine shrimp and freeze-dried products. If you can accomplish that, your Betta will reward you with years of health and beauty.
Vitamins
Vitamins are important to help prevent your Betta from becoming ill. Although live and frozen foods provide an excellent source of these vital nutrients, sometimes, live food for your Betta is not ideal. When purchasing food, ask how long the pet store or fish dealer stored the product. If it has been in the store for many months, it’s possible that the vitamin value diminished or it could have been exposed to unclean water, which makes it unsuitable for your Betta to eat. For this reason, we recommend you use frozen instead of fresh.
Minerals
Bettas need minerals in their diets as well as vitamins. Similar to most living creatures, minerals play a significant role in forming bones and regulating fluid. If you feed your Betta a variety of foods that contain algae and/or seaweed as well as flaked foods, your fish should receive the right amount of minerals it needs to satisfy its nutritional requirements.
Proteins
Proteins are vital for your Betta to build muscle and body tissue, and similar to humans, it is essential for his growth. Young Bettas need more protein than adults because they are actively producing muscle and body tissue and at a rapid rate. Live blackworms, brine shrimp, frozen Betta foods, flakes and other protein commercial foods will keep your Betta healthy. As you browse in your local pet shop, look for fish food that is labeled specifically for carnivorous fish.
Carbohydrates
Though carbohydrates are a required energy source for your Betta, do not feed your fish additional carbohydrates beyond what they eat in their normal feeding. Most of the foods you provide for your fish already include enough carbohydrates for your Betta to thrive.
Your Betta’s Feeding Schedule
Bettas thrive by eating small meals throughout the day. If this doesn’t work with your schedule, feeding once in the morning and again in the evening will suffice. If you can only feed him twice a day, then give your Betta enough to eat for approximately a 10-minute feeding duration. If you have live plants, you will notice, during the day, that your Betta will nibble on the tiny invertebrates and algae that grow there.
Throughout the day you may notice that your Betta will swim to the surface of the water and “beg” for food to eat. Do not give into this ploy. Overfeeding will harm your Betta and can make him ill.
If your Betta is sharing the tank with other fish, observe the tank closely during a feeding. Bettas are not aggressive food eaters, so the other fish may gobble up all of the food before he even gets a bite. Ensure that you add fish to the tank that will not compete with your Betta for food. If you notice a feeding frenzy occurring, you may have to remove the fish culprits and separate them from your Betta.
What is your betta’s feeding behavior? Does he/she eat a lot? A little?