Any advice or tips for care of the Siamese Fighting Fish, also known as a betta fish?

Honestly, they live the longest of any fish I’ve ever had, so I wouldn’t be too worried about killing it.

Treat it like other fish. If you want to be nice to him, give him a decent amount of space with a filter. (A lot of people keep them in teacup sized containers.)

It’s pretty much like taking care of any other fish, but don’t let him be in the tank if you have other fish. If I remember correctly, they could kill the other fish. My betta had a small tank of his own, like the size of this. But in general they’re tough little guys, so don’t worry about him too much. Oh, my betta really liked eating frozen blood worms, if your local pet store has those.

Hope you and your kid enjoy your new fish! :)

Don’t put them in an aquarium with other fish. They are territorial and have a tendancy to kill whatever other fish are in their space. Other than that they are a pretty hardy breed. You can get beta food for them or use regular fish food.

Actually, you can put them with other fish. There are some tropicals they mix with, but if you’re planning to try it, do a lot of research. Not for their protection, but the other fish. Bettas can be nasty little bastards.

Make sure you feed them and keep their tank clean. They should be in a relatively warm area. On a winter day when we didn’t have any heating, my betta kind of drooped and hung out at the bottom of the bowl. He was fine after I moved it closer to the space heater we had going. Like other fish, keep an eye on it, and if something is out of the ordinary, try to figure out what.

Genghis, my siamese fighting fish, has an ocean. It is a HUGE bowl with his own mountain (named Mt Genghis of course) and a heater (for winter). He loves those little worms but we don’t get them all the time for him. We do have a heater for him though because in winter, and I live in a sub-tropical climate, he became fairly lethargic because his water was a bit cold. So he now has his own temperature controlled ocean.

Enjoy your fish!

Bettas like a consistent warm temperature (80 degrees F. is best for these fish, so an aquarium heater is advisable, unless they are in a consistently warm room). They suffer if kept too cool——in water below 75 F. they are inactive, sluggish, and prone to disease. They do best by themselves, especially if they’re males, as males will fight each other. Also, if you put them in with other fish, there’s the possibility of other fish nipping at their long, cumbersome fins and causing injury. Because they come from swampy areas in Southeast Asian, bettas are able to thrive in small quarters with little to no aeration, but they do much better in a roomier tank (eg., at least 3 to 5 gallons, not those little dinky bowls you often find them in in pet shops! Lol.). Aeration and filtration is best, but the aeration should be gentle, as these fish naturally live in calm water in the wild. They love eating little red dried bloodworms, which you can get at petshops. Don’t overfeed. Once a day is good enough. Keep the water quality in good condition with small, regular water changes once a week. This is probably one of the most important factors in keeping fish healthy. Just change 10 percent of the water in the betta’s tank (siphon the bottom) and replace with de-chlorinated water of the same temperature. Doing these things will ensure that your pet betta live a full life (Bettas live on average 2–3 years. They don’t live too long, but they are relatively hardy fish.)

Mine lived 6yrs—-and he was adopted, so I don’t know how old he was when we obtained him—. He had a nice, large, heated tank and was quite a happy fella.

We fed him Betta pellets with an occasional treat of blood worms :)

@SpatzieLover Wow, your betta reached a great age!

Another tip, for fish in general. Like @MRSHINYSHOES said, you need to use dechlorinated water. There are products you can buy that will neutralize the chlorine. However, if you leave water out at room temperature for three to four days, the chlorine will evaporate on its own. You can see the bubbles.

This is what I did when I was in college, and didn’t have much money to buy supplies. If you use this method, you should probably look up what’s in your town’s water. Chlorine will evaporate, but not all chemicals will.

Ahhh, YES! @hobbitsubculture & @MRSHINYSHOES are both correct…I forgot to mention that I always used the same bottled spring water during water changes/cleaning.

Most of what I would have said has been said by @MRSHINYSHOES and @hobbitsubculture . I would also like to stress the whole point of how keeping them in a little bowl or something is really not ok. They do a lot better in a tank. In my experience with them, they do just fine in tanks with other fish as long as those other fish dont have long flowy fins like bettas do.

@uberbatman Agreed about the tank. Mine was in a bowl originally, and he did fairly well, but what huge difference it was when I switched him to a 2 gallon tank.

@hobbitsubculture yea I work at a pet store. The bags the bettas come in is pathetic. Its barely enough water for the fish to even fit in. Then we’re supposed to keep them in these stupid little cups. And they just sit there all sluggish on the bottom. I feel bad for them. And yet every time I take one of those sluggish fish and throw it into one of the 10g tanks it perks right up and starts swimming around in a healthy manner.

Bettas are almost impossible to kill. Just keep their water clean and feed them on a regular basis, and those bastards will live forever.

I know a lot of people keep them in small vases or cups. I’ve read somewhere (but not sure if it’s true) that their natural habitats are small groups of water the size of large puddles. But I’ve always felt bad about keeping them in a small vase with nothing to do (no matter how crazy that sounds), so I’ve done other things with them – one I put in a tank with the rest of my fish (he only harassed the big pretty ones, he ignored the plain-looking, smaller ones, though one of the fish did have babies at one point and he ate the babies), another I put in this cool little divided-in-half tank thing, where he became roommates with my coworker’s betta. It was interesting seeing them flare up at each other all the time, but they couldn’t get to each other.

Also, don’t try to introduce a female. I didn’t research it, and thought maybe he would appreciate having a woman in his life. They instantly tried to kill eachother. I thought only the males would fight.

@stemnyjones yea they can only go with females right before mating and then need to be removed right after.

@uberbatman You are correct——a male and a female can only be added together for mating purposes, and even then the female has to be ready to mate (females that are ready to mate are full in the belly region with eggs and have dark broad “vertical” stripes, and are receptive to the male.) Never add a female that is not ready to mate with a male. (Female bettas that are not ready to mate are slim and have light narrow “horizontal” stripes on their body.) The male will viciously attack the female and may even kill it. Even when they are mating, a male will “beat up” a female before the actual mating occurs. This is all part of the mating ritual. I bred bettas when I was a youngster, and I must say they are one of the most fascinating and easy fish to breed.

@MRSHINYSHOES how was it playin around with color combination with bettas? I did it with guppies before and got some interesting combos but bettas seem too have a beauty in their color most other fish dont.

@uberbatman I love the very dark blue coloration in bettas, and the near black too. The light yellow bettas are nice too. When I was young, I didn’t really care about color breeding. Lol. I was just thrilled getting my bettas to breed. The males are great fathers to their young.

@MRSHINYSHOES I didnt know that, I thought they had to be separated from their fry or they;d eat them like guppies will.

Beta’s are powerful enough to jump out of their container, so be sure to block off the top enough to prevent that. My first Beta made a run for it. I found it the next morning under the table, all dried up :(

That is so true @RocketGuy. My fish hasn’t jumped out of his ocean but you can hear the plop at times when he must have done a big jump. That’s a very sad outcome for your escapee.

@uberbatman The males are actually very protective of their young ones. They will rear them until they reach the free swimming stage, that’s when their protective instinct starts to wear off. But by that time, the babies are able to “escape” and avoid Daddy eating them. Lol. Yeah, it’s strange, but even though male bettas are great fighters, they are also gentle and caring fathers.

i bought a thermometer yesterday and i see the water is a little chilly. i put him in the dining room and turned up the heat. i am thinking he needs a larger tank that i can put a heater in.

Update from the Update Lady: Ok. so i got a 5 gallon tank with light and filter. I saw that it was way bigger than I expected. My solution was go to store and buy a one gallon tank with filter which would be bed-side. I started both tanks up, with the intention of putting the fish into the one-gallon tank. My daughter started crying she wanted him in the 5 gallon tank. So I put him in the 5 gallon tank and added a submersible heater. He appears to be very happy, swimming around with all this space. I want to add some other (betta compatible) fish to the 5 gallon tank. I also want to get something for the one gallon tank. Maybe a betta, but now I see there’s really a big difference when he has heat, so I may have to add heat to the one gallon tank, too.

happy to hear he’s doing better for you now :)