What Do Betta Fish Eat?

Feeding you bettas the best type of food is a challenge for many fish owners. There is a wide variety of food available in the fish stores online and local pet stores that you can feed your fish.

Here are some possible options to keep your betta healthy and improve it's lifespan.

1. Live food - Under live food bettas absolutely love bloodworms, daphnia and brine shrimp larvae. In the wild these live types of food are easily available and bettas when in wild can easily consume them. Blood worms are dark red colored and that is why are named like that. You don't have to visit a nearest lake or water puddles to catch these for your fish. You can buy them a local fish store in plastic bags and feed your fish. One challenge is that since your fish will love them to eat when they are alive (it's live food, right?), you'll need to keep necessary arrangement to keep them alive.
2. Fish Flakes - Fish flakes are made from dried fish and bettas love them. Fish flakes contain vitamin C. B complex and even vitamin E. Some manufacturers use artificial colors in the fish flake food. If you find that the fish flakes food contains "spirulina" which is a type of algae then it's good for your betta.
3. Beta fish Pellets - If you don't want to go for live food and even fish flakes for some reasons then a better option is betta fish pellets. One advantage of these is that these have been specifically prepared for bettas alone. While making these manufacturers take extra care to make them into the size, an adult betta can eat easily.
4. Freeze Dried Food - Instead of using live food some fish owners use freeze dried brine shrimp and blood worms. Since these are dried you don't have to take extra care to keep them alive and even feed your fish just like flakes. Since this food is dried you don't even have to keep them in a freezer. You can store it just like flakes and feed your pet whenever you have scheduled their meal.
5. Mosquito larvae - This is the best amongst all types of food you can feed your betta, because in the wild bettas feed on these and stay healthy for years. The only problem is finding these near your home. You just can't go out and bring these from any dirty water puddle back in your tank because apart from mosquitoes you'll also bring a lot of bacteria causing deadly diseases for your fish.

Apart from the type of food mentioned above here are some simple rules you must follow.

• Do not overfeed your bettas because fish do not eat everything you feed them. The uneaten food settles at the betta of the tank and gets rotten. The rotten food can drastically alter water chemistry and this can be harmful for your fish.
• Maintain a tight schedule of feeding your bettas. Just like we humans even fish have a digestive system of their own and feeding everyday is a bad idea. You can feed your betta daily only the amount that he will consume completely. 
• What you can do is feed him little and see how much he consumes. If you find that you are feeding too much and he's leaving it uneaten, then adjust the next day and modify your quantity the other day.
• No matter how much you plan there is always be uneaten food at the bottom of the tank. You can remove the fallen uneaten food particles while cleaning the tank using siphoning tube so that the water chemistry remains intact.

Image credits - By Fancibaer (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons