fishluver101

what human foods can both neon tetras and betas eat? i want to go the "all natural" route. any comon plants etc. no more fish flakes for my fishy's! also, i cant find any peas as a laxitive. any oher things that work besides peas and daphnia? thx!

Devon

I really don't recommend feeding your fish a "human food" diet. Fish aren't really designed to eat the types of food that people do.

I'm a little confused, you can't find any peas? All you need are regular old frozen peas for a betta, they are sold in any grocery store...

Here's another post I made about my own personal betta diet regimen. My neons get more carniverous fare. The only "people" foods my fish get are nori (seaweed wrap) and peas. Please keep in mind that foods high in fiber or carbs are not good for carniverous fish such as neons and bettas, and can cause health issues.

How much food do I give to my betta?

Pandora

Really the only human foods you could feed fish are fish, seafood, and some veggies, and I really don't recommend trying to feed them fresh fish or seafood (either cooked or raw) because it makes an incredible mess. I once tried a bit of salmon with a tank of juvenile bettas, and they loved it but I was doing 2x daily 70% water changes for a week to get all the oil out.
If you're looking for more natural foods for your fish, you can try to find fish foods with minimal preservatives, etc. and add some live and frozen worms, insects, and larvae, but definitely you are better off feeding them some sort of food specifically made for fish, and the specific kind of fish as well, possibly with some added vegetables depending on the needs of the different species.

Allie

Mine LOVE thawed shrimp cut in betta sized pieces.

Pandora

Less messy than salmon? lol
Maybe I should have tried a less oily fish... I was thinking of all the good omega-3's for the lil guys, but it was a disaster.
What kind of shrimp do you use?

Shawnie

Ive never bought the frozen for them...I always get the shell on raw shrimp and cut up..is the frozen ok? although I probably will eat most before I get it all cut up if I use the frozen

Martinismommy

I thought there was some discussion about feeding the Bettas shrimp from the grocery store...Is it OK for them or can it introduce some type of parasites?

Geeeeze now I have to add yet another iten to the menu for the spoiled brats! lol

Lucy

One for me one for betta, 2 for me 1 for betta.

Seriously though, someone (maybe Pam) fed their betta raw shrimp, I believe and the betta got parasites. Whether it was from the shrimp or not, who knows.

Chief_waterchanger

We feed our bettas, as well as a lot of our other fish, raw shrimp. It is sold as 'salad shrimp' in the Wal-mart fish department. (Grocery's fish department, not pet!)

We also feed a homemade food that includes spinach, plant matter (such as duckweed), canned crab meat, salad shrimp (or other raw de-shelled shrimp), non-oily fish (we used tilapia, but I hear flounder is good also), unflavored gelatin as a binding agent. That is blended together with a bit of water to make it go smoothly in the blender. Then you freeze that mixture in ice-cube trays.

Some fish will eat peeled grapes also. (We grow our own grapes, so we are sure there are no pesticides.) (Make sure to de-seed the grapes. Wouldn't want them trying to digest or pass a grape seed out of their tiny vents. )

pamd

Yes, that was me. My betta, Candi, decided she didn't like her high-quality Hikari and Atison's betta pellets, even after fasting for a day a couple of days a week. She only wanted freeze-dried bloodworms, the occasional pea offering, and the fun of stealing her Cory's pellets. In a desperate attempt to give her a more balanced diet, I offered her frozen, thawed shrimp from the grocery store, and she chowed it down.

I don't know if she even had parasites. She looked on death's door for a couple of days, though. She was sitting on the bottom of the tank, listing toward one side, her respiration was labored and she started to lose color. I really thought I was going to lose her. In further desperate attempt, I bought a betta flake food by Tetra. I don't want to bash Tetra, but this stuff is really junk food! But I thought it might give a little balance to the diet that she chose for herself. She loved it. Finally, after many attempts to get her to eat the more nutritious pellets, she has accepted them the past couple of days!

This was a couple of weeks ago, and she's back to her bouncy Candi-self.

There were a couple of theories going over on FishLore's Betta forum from two very well-respected members. Karen's advice to keep talking to her was right, and I stayed up all night talking to her, coaxing her to live and telling her how much I love her. Karen felt and still feels that Candi was lonely and depressed, as I had been out of town for nearly a month. Perhaps Dave's theory that she had internal parasites was true, too. I treated her with Parasite Clear, three doses. She perked up near the end of the all-nighter, which also coincided within a few minutes of first dose of Parasite Clear. So I guess the jury will be out forever as to whether she actually had parasites, since the Parasite Clear couldn't have worked that fast. Maybe she liked the bubbles from it.

If she did have parasites, the only possible source of contamination, AFAIK, would have been the raw shrimp. She's an "only child" in the tank except for her pygmy Cory, and they've both been there for more than five months. No other tanks, no other fish introductions during the entire time, no cross-contamination from used nets, etc.

Sooooo, I don't know whether feeding frozen thawed shrimp is safe or not.

Canned crab! Now that gives me an idea for Candi-food! Canned shrimp. I think I could trust that to be parasite-free and she will probably love it!

ariolex

I gave my fishies raw shrimp a few times and no problems so far. The main issue, in my case, was the mess afterwards. Fish seem to have problems eating the harder shrimp skin. Nevertheless, the actual shrimp seems to be less messy than Wardley's shrimp pellets, lol....seriously