Getting a Betta to eat a varied diet.

I've had my Betta a few weeks. He is in a planted five gallon, seems to be doing well, curious and active. Only problem is that he will only eat those Betta minI pellets. I'm trying to get him to eat more of a variety, but will ignore flakes foods (tried 3 different kinds), freeze dried blood worms, frozen (thawed) brine shrimp, and freeze dried black worms. He will only take food from the surface of the water.

He has tried the flakes, but spits them out, doesn't even try the other stuff, though he'll go and investigate.

Anyone else had a picky Betta that they managed to convince to expand their regular menu?

 

Try frozen, thawed , bloodworms. Not the freeze dried kind. Most bettas seem to really like them. Alison

 

I was afraid of that . . . many years ago, I developed a serious allergy to frozen bloodworms. (I know, it's weird - who would have thought?).

I might be okay now, as my adult onset allergies come and go, but a bit scared to test it out. ;p

 

You could try garlic juice. It's supposed to make the food smell really really good to the fish, and it has some health benefits. I use seachem garlic guard but my fish are little pigs and they already eat anything so I haven't noticed a difference in appetite.

 

Mine eat the other things just fine but early on did not so I did the same method I had done with with my goldfish and loach tank, some of whom were rescues that were in bad shape and not wanting to eat when I took them in. To make sure they were getting a variety of everything, I dumped multiple different foods I wanted them to be eating all in a plastic Ziplock Baggie together including both the ones they liked and the ones they weren't too keen on yet. (I did a small trial batch like this initially not a big one of all foods until later on) The ones they weren't too keen on got crushed up into a powder and put in the bag to mix around with the pellets they did eat so they would start to acclimate to the general smell and taste of the ones I wanted them eating. When they went through the small amount, I repeated this mix simply with breaking up the less desirable food into smaller chunks to serve mixed in among the pellets they preferred, and the next time I did this I left the less desirable ones in bigger chunks.

By the end, all fish were willingly eating all foods so I just dumped them in one big bag together because I found with a 7 year old "helper" trying to assist me, going back and forth between all the separate containers of food after the last of the smaller bag mix was used up meant more accidents like spills of food and over feeding that didn't happen when working from only one container. We don't mix things like bloodworms or flakes because they would just crumble to nothing but with the types of fish our main mix bag is for (the goldfish and dojo loach food mix) are also going to need much less of that than bettas do so it's not a problem to keep those separate from then on.