What do you feed your betta?

As suggested above, I do shave small amounts off the cube of frozen food for my bettas. Echoofformless, I will look into your suggestion about Omega One and Ocean Nutrition. I was not aware of those foods. I am new to this whole fish thing and I am feeding my bettas Hikari Bio-Gold. But I will take your advice. Thanks.
 
I break off little bitty pieces of OmegaOne shrimp pellets and veggie wafers for my betta. I just hand feed it to him to make sure he eats em before they sink. I also have some HBH Bettabites (?). Plus he gets frozen bloodworms or a cooked pea once in awhile. Oh and ditto on just cutting off a piece from the cube of bloodworms. I tried feeding him Tetramin flakes once but he didn't seem to know what they were and didn't eat them.
 
Hikari Bio Gold's ingredients:

Shrimp meal, white fish meal, brewer's dried yeast, wheat flour, soybean meal, wheat-germ meal, carotene, protese, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vitamin A, l-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (stabilized vitamin C), vitamin D3, folic acid, menadione sodium bisulfite (source of vitamin K) inositol, paraminobenzoic acid, zinc oxide, manganese sulfate, salt, ferrous chloride, copper sulfate, cobalt sulfate, aluminum hydroxide, magnesium sulfate.

usual price about $4 for .7 oz. Pretty steep for what's in the stuff.

Ocean Nutrition (Attison's Betta Pro) Pure Brine Shrimp Embryos, Wheat Flour, Vitamins (Stabilized Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Folic Acid, Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex, Vitamin A Acetate, Pyridoxine HCL, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Biotin), and Preservatives (Calcium Propionate, Ethoxyquin).

About $5-6 for 2.65 oz. Ingredients aren't much more or less than Hikari. But the price point is incredibly lower.

However better than both of them as far as ingredients go is Omega One:

Whole Salmon, Halibut, Shrimp, Wheat Flour, Wheat Gluten, Fresh Kelp, Astaxanthin, Lecithin, L-Ascorbyl-2-Phosphate (Source of Vitamin C), Natural and Artificial Colors, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin, Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, Folic Acid, Biotin, Inositol, Tocopherol (Preservative), Ethoxyquin (Preservative).

About $3 for .61 oz.
Slightly less money than Hikari but with far more expensive ingredients and also more balanced and varied. Some variety of whole ingredients and also some kelp to get your fish some veggies. Kind of proves how overpriced Hikari really is when compared with other products.

I am also a fan of HBH Betta Bites. I feed them and the Omega One as my staple betta foods.

Fish meal, wheat flour, soy flour, fish oil, brewers dried yeast, squid meal, soy lecithin, krill meal, l-ascorbic acid phosphate (source of vitamin C), choline chloride, vitamin E supplement, niacin supplement, astaxanthin, d-calcium pantothenate, riboflavin supplement, thiamine mononitrate, biotin, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, vitamin A supplement, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin B12 supplement, manganese sulfate, zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, copper sulfate, sodium selenite, potassium iodate, ethoxyquin (preservative), propionic acid (preservative), red 40.

About $3-4 for 3.6 oz.
Again we see more varied and better ingredients than Hikari, which is literally six times more expensive in comparable portion sizes. I especially like the squid and krill being in the HBH.


So with all things considered this is why I am sort of a harping/whining opponent of most Hikari products. I feel that if they are going to charge such a premium price, they had better be offering an exemplary product. And a comparison of ingredients proves it far from the case. Not that it isn't high quality - it is. Many fish keepers swear by it and for good reason. But I feel there are better choices both quality wise and price wise. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth as if it's just lots of marketing hype aimed at making people pay money for a name rather than the product itself.
 
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mine eats betta bites pellet food, freeze dried bloodworms, and even sinking algae wafers i put for the snails.
 
You can give him some of the defrosted blood worms and the rest will hold in the refrigerator for a day or two. You still won't finish the cube, but it is a nice treat for them. It is practically all my fussy betta (daughter named him Sparky) will eat now. He also likes glassworms (again, frozen). Warning though - he used to eat the pellets and flakes and now he won't go near them.
 
I hear about bettas having the chance to taste frozen/live foods, such as bloodworms, then never wanting to eat any of the pellet or freeze dried foods again. my finkids eat whatever i put in the tank, whenever i put it in. the only exception to this is my senior citizen, Fyshee. sometimes he'll spit out the odd pellet, but i think that may be because he is getting a bit older and could be having a bit of a difficult time eating the pellets. so of course i spoil him with freeze dried if he doesn't want his pellets... lol.

I didn't realize the frozen bloodworms leftovers could go in the fridge, i was under the impression that they had to be kept frozen until you thawed them at feeding time. good to know!
 
BettaFishMommy said:
The myth that bettas are lazy is totally unfounded. people only think they are lazy because they usually don't have room to swim in the little "torture bowls", therefore they don't swim.
Click to expand...

That's been my experience, both now and in the past. I don't think Rocky has stopped exploring since I put him in the tank. And he is quite aggressive: he even flares at my finger when I wiggle it near the glass!

I agree with that "torture bowl" description. It's one reason I decided to buy my betta from the store I got him at: their bettas are kept in larger bowls and get daily water changes. The difference in the "attitude" and activity of the fish was noticeable.

I'd lost track of this thread and didn't realize it had carried on. My thanks to everyone for the great suggestions! :headbang2:
 
I personally feed two of the Hikari pellets in the morning, and then a small pinch of Omega One Betta Buffet flakes at night. Every once in a while I'll give them frozen bloodworms. I do the pellet/flake combo because they have slightly different ingredients. That's basically how I give them as diversified diet. The flakes have more fish ingredients than the pellets.
 
Bettas aren't lazy. But they are not what I would consider to be active fish.

Sure they may swim all over the tank, but they mostly do it with a leisurely pace. You don't generally see bettas flying and darting all around like you'd see danios, rasboras or tetras.

That means their metabolic rates at equal temperatures will be slower and therefore they need to eat less.
 
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