Raising Betta Frys

If you got them through the first week the hardest part is done. I feed micros to fish up to around an inch. You should start changing water, normally I like to do at least 50% daily when raising fry.

When I raised fry of any kind I changed 20% of the tank water twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night making sure the temp was within 1 degree of the tank water. I also ran the sponge filter faster than one bubble per second. This is not an exact science, but that's what I did.

I feed micro worms to all my fish young and old.

Are you feeding live microforms or do you use frozen or something? Just wondering as I would like to not have to keep using Hikari first bites (it's messy and the cost adds up when you have a lot of fry)

Cover your tank up completely black. Make top part removeable to feed fish. No water changes. Remove your java moss so it will not die. No need for air bubble. Leave the water low. Check on it the next days. You will see no or less dead frys. Betta frys water temp and air temp can not change at all or they will start to die. Betta frys are so small even a dip of water can hurt them. Water changes can be added when frys are bigger.

If the fry are one week old, start feeding them bbs. It's more nutritious than microworms and won't lead to missing ventral fins. I had no issues with swim bladder disease when hatching decapped brine shrimp eggs. It's a bit more work, but totally worth it. Around the 1 month stage I like to start adding grindal worms to their diet.

At the one week stage I would add water to fill the tank (drip method with water same temp as that in the tank). I also started changing the water everyday (20% first day, 30% second day, 40% third day, etc). At two weeks old I was doing 90% water changes every day.

No need to have your lights on 24/7. This was for the benefit of the father, so that he could see and catch falling eggs/fry even at night time. At this stage of fry development, you should turn the lights off at night. Also, your plants need a night cycle as well as a day cycle or they'll start to die off and pollute your tank.

By all means, remove dead fry and anything that will cause ammonia.

Different breeders all have different methods. Generally, after a few spawns you tend to figure out what works for you. It's been almost a year since my last spawn, but the method I listed above allowed me to raise the betta in my avi to that size within 3 months. He was probably a little bit bigger than the average betta you see at petco/petsmart.