There are two major betta fish care mistakes that cause many problems, they are food and water. Many new owners will overfeed their Betta, which in turn dirties the water more quickly and causes many other problems. Believe it or not your Betta can actually become constipated or eat themselves into a myriad of other digestion problems.
What constitutes overfeeding for one fish is different than what it is for another. The best way to tell is a) how long it takes the fish to eat and b) how swollen their belly is after eating.
Your betta should eat what's offered for about 1-2 minutes. After that, all remaining food should be siphoning out. Using a net is OK, too. Leaving that food in the tank is only going to make it necessary to clean the tank earlier.
Remember too that your Betta may take a few minutes to actually find the food in the first place. Wait until you actually see them taking a bite before you start timing otherwise they may not eat anything in the two minute time frame.
The classic sign of overfeeding is a swollen belly. This again will be different for each fish but there are many pictures that will give you a rough idea.
A great way to counteract overfeeding is to forego feeding the fish once a week. Do not worry this will not harm your Betta in the least. Unbelievably you can actually go on vacation and not feed your fish for up to a week with no ill effects. When you skip, a day this allows your Betta's stomach to empty and all systems return to normal. Look at it as fasting to cleanse the system.
What Do Bettas Eat?
In the "wild" bettas eat mostly insects. They are carnivorous, so feeding them the carbohydrate-laden flake food offered to most aquarium fish isn't going to be well received by the betta at dinner time, or by the betta over time. Poor nutrition leads to poor health. For bettas, we want to feed protein, protein, and more protein.
Freeze-dried brine shrimp, bloodworms and other worms are an excellent choice for fish food. When they are available mosquito larvae, daphnia and live brine shrimp are also great choices. If you cannot get live there is often the choice of frozen.
Flake food may be rejected. If you are having trouble getting your betta to eat, and you're feeding flake food or even pellets, switch to live live brine shrimp for a special treat. Then swap out the expensive live food with some frozen food.
There are many different flake and pellet foods made just for bettas. If your betta will eat them, that's great. Even if one of these foods is working for you and your Betta, do vary their diet at least once a week. Varying it two or three times a week is even better. Different foods have different nutritional strengths, so switching between them is a good idea. If you could pick only one addition beyond the standard Betta food, go with freeze dried brine shrimp.
Protein is a critical part of the Betta diet but vegetables do not hurt anything once in awhile. In fact, the inside of a pea is a perfect remedy for constipation in Bettas. The downside is your fish may have to go without food for several days before it will even consider eating a pea. That is fine because remember fish can go up to a week without food with no harmful side effects.
Pam Neely writes about how to care for
betta fish. See how to have a healthy betta fish - its not hard.
