Training Betta

Hello! I’m new to this website, though not too terribly new to fish keeping! I have two tanks, freshwater, one’s a 29 gal and the other is 36gal.

In one tank, I have a double tailed male betta named Chips (short for Fish n’ Chips) and he’s a doll! We got him when he was pretty young, but he’s grown into his colors quite beautifully! He is a very docile male, and he’s roughly 7-8 months old, maybe a bit older. He’s hand trained and knows when to come out to eat, and he’ll come to the surface to receive his food! He lives with 4 albino corys, white cloud minnows, and he used to live with 5 mystery snails but I have removed them and placed them in my other tank due to the fact that we have had a bit of a snail-overbreeding issue...taking care of that with assassin snails!

Anyway, Chips lives in a very heavily planted tank with dragon stone, and mountain stone decor. He’s been feed by me for so long, he understands when it’s time to eat...

Today, I got a new betta (I’m simply obsessed with them) and his name is Monte (short for Montague). He’s either a Halfmoon or a rose tail, I need to take a much closer look at his fins, but either way - he was recently put into my 29 gal and he’s much more frisky and flaring than Chips is, but I expected that.

One thing I realized, is that Monte isn’t hand trained and I was wondering if I could get some tips on how to do so. With Chips, he kind of picked up on it within a week, but he was also in a much smaller space back then before the new tank was set up. Any tips?

Thank you!

 

CaptainAquatics can help you train him

 

CaptainAquatics can help you train him

Oh! Thank you!! I appreciate the fast response!!!

 

I suggest you start off with feeding from a pipette or tweezers to get him to know that that's where his food is coming from. Using frozen foods may help train them faster because they're more tasty and you can feed slightly more of it with less risk of constipation or bloating. Then once he's trained to the tweezers or pipette, try feeding from one finger with the food dangling and touching the water surface. Soon you can try hand feeding him.

 

I suggest you start off with feeding from a pipette or tweezers to get him to know that that's where his food is coming from. Using frozen foods may help train them faster because they're more tasty and you can feed slightly more of it with less risk of constipation or bloating. Then once he's trained to the tweezers or pipette, try feeding from one finger with the food dangling and touching the water surface. Soon you can try hand feeding him.

Yes! That sounds like a good plan!! And I suppose it’s because he’s brand new to the tank and he must be a bit shaken, and that’s why he refused to eat from the tweezers earlier - as I had tried to do just that, but from what I’m getting, consistency is the main goal?

 

Yes! That sounds like a good plan!! And I suppose it’s because he’s brand new to the tank and he must be a bit shaken, and that’s why he refused to eat from the tweezers earlier - as I had tried to do just that, but from what I’m getting, consistency is the main goal?

New fish may not eat for a few days, so just wait until he's hungry and ready to eat. Yes consistency is the goal to get him trained.

 

CaptainAquatics can help you train him

Hi! So you want to train a fish? You can check out my post https://www.fishlore.com/aquariumfishforum/threads/how-to-train-a-fish.397943/#post-4071364 for how to do it. This forum adresses how to train fish how to do a lot of things, so give it a read.