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i keep my betta on a diet of frozen bloodworms and brine shrimp and he loves it!

now, i've heard different things from different sources: that the order of preference of what to feed your betta is live, frozen, freeze-dried, then flakes. i've also heard that they should be kept on staple foods (freeze-dried/flakes/pellets) and only given frozen foods once in a while as a treat.

which is correct?

when i started out with bettas al they got was blood worms frozen, freeze dried, boring

so i switched them to a bellet with blood worm as a snack, and other little snacks like frozen foods, live i think they like it better like that but im not sure of the nutritional content of blood worms and brine shrimp

Pretty much all I feed is frozen. Next to live, frozen is the best. I only freeze dried/pellet foods when I am in a rush and have no time to get out the frozen stuff.

Like all other fish, it is best to vary their diet some. I feed my bettas all sorts of stuff, frozen blood worms, freeze dried brine shrimp, BBS, fish flakes, tubifex worms, small insects, hikari gold (betta food), and whatever else i come up with...

give them a variety they'll love you for it

heidi





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"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

oh yah, i forgot to mention i occasionally give him the live flightless fruit-fly.

so it's basically a variation of different frozen foods and those live bugs. i also skip a day of feeding once a week, which i heard was recommended to clear digestive system, or give it a rest or whatnot. i have freeze-dried stuff as well, but haven't yet given it to him. i don't know if he'll even take the stuff.

also, is it true that their stomach is as big as their eye-ball? i've heard that this is how you determine how much to feed.

dalmyfish

I have had mine less than one week. The first two days I did not feed him at all, since then he has eaten, frozen blood worms, pellets, flake food, Algea pellets, & peas.

He will never get any live food as I never buy it.

I could easy say within a few more days he will be eating out of my fingers.

Keith

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keithgh, u came to mine last night when i was feeding the fish in the 29, and one of my betta girls jumped out of the water and grabbed the pinch of blood worms very creapy, the most she had ever done was eat out of my had or like to be scratched scaired me of course

It's always better to vary the food & once or twice a week him some Bloodworms.


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I don't feed by the whole eyeball thing, IMO thats very little. I feed untill they have a slight bump in their tummy- not a buldge, just a little rounded.

My bettas got a variety of stuff, freeze dried blood worms, betta pellets, and frozen tubifex, bloodworms, daphnia. At first, the bettas I had kept solitary were extremely picky about food, but I noticed if you give them competition, IE: my female in the community tank, they will eat anything.

freeezed dried i heard isn't a good "everyday food" or "staple food". b/c it is hard to digest,or something.

flakes - i haven't had any sucess with.

pellets- i have found to be a good staple food. my favorite is colorbits, because my guys and girls love it, and it fattens up my gurls.

froozen- i only feed them this as a treat, but i wouldn't think that there would be a problem with that as a everyday food.

the way i see it is that bettas in the wild eat live foods, so they should be fine to eat in captivity. now, you can also speculate as to whether or not in captivity, due to any difference in behaviour, live foods (or frozen, which are the next closest thing i guess) are not benefitial. maybe bettas are more active in the wild and live/frozen foods are too fatty for them in captivity?

does anyone know if that's true?

FD food is fine IF YOU REHYDRATE IT FIRST so it doesn't swell up in their stomach.
Otherwise it sucks all the water from the rest of the body and generally makes life a bit uncomfy. Its one of the ways you end up with floaty-dropsylike-constipation.

I feed all manner of things.

I don't much like FD because i'm allergic to bloodworms and IMO thats about the only FD food suitable for bettas. The other foods are ok, but most are either too hard for a betta to eat or pretty much nothing nutrition-wise.

I like frozen, but it has to be high quality frozen and i like to see the food with full bellies

I like live, but only non-aquatics, SW (to cut down on disease) or cleaned out and gutloaded blackworms

I LOVE processed because it is SO EASY!

HBH is good, but i like the size of the guppy bites, so i get that or the small krill pellets.

Hikari is awesome and asy for other people to feed because you just say "they get 6" and everyone can count to six!

NutrifinMaxPlus have a wonderful earthworm flake that makes my boys and girls very toey its the only flake that they will eat readily.

Hikari also have a sinking algae wafer that is great for community bettas and fry tanks as it is quite meaty and they love jostling over who gets what

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

i think they'll eat whatever served, unless they can count on better food later. maybe seeing another betta eating some kind of food will make them eat it themselves (there was a thread in these fora about a scientific work showing exactly that).

i think bettas are exceptionally fond of floating food. they follow it around, and then jump to catch it. quite like what they're supposed to do with insects.

the point of them eating live food so they should eat live food only is not accurate. we're supposed to eat live food "in the wild". we once ate only what's we "should" (as species). now we eat much better because we process our food.