I am going out of town from the 16th - 21st. I know tropical fish can be left in their very large aquariums for up to a week without being fed and still be okay. However, Im not sure that is the case with a betta. He is in a 2G tank with some rocks and a plant, but he eats all of his food as soon as I put it in. Will he be okay while im gone? Should I take him to my mom's for the whole time?
She does plan on stopping by once during the week to check on the house and the other fish... Let me know what you think!!
Thanks!

If the roots of the plant are in the water you should be ok, because the betta can nibble off of that. Bettas still are ok up to a week without being fed.

Tell your mum how much to feed him when she drops in, he'll be fine with just the one feed over the 5 days. If you're not sure your mum will do it right, he should be ok with no feeds for the duration. Do a water change before you go to minimise any possible problems and things should be ok.

Not saying he won't sulk because you ignored him so long tho

When I go away mine dont get feed for a week. Unlike goldfish who almost get out of the water when they see you...bettas just sort of look at you and say "Who are you....no, not the least hungry...good detox" then swim off.

i have never seen a betta eat a plant. apart from attack a root because it looked like a bloodworm...

i've left mine for about 6 days without food and they were fiiine. even my plants survived! i thought i'd come home to shrivelled boney fish and mouldy brown plants, but everyone was unscathed.

oh and make sure you do a good waterchange the day you go away, and another the day you get home.

This post has been edited by catxx: Jan 8 2007, 03:50 PM

I just assumed my fish actually ate the plants? Sorry if that were bad advice. I used to have a lot of trouble getting my oldest betta to eat pellots and flakes but it always seemed to nibble on the plants, good thing it didn't die because I just assumed it was eating the plant

bettas are carnivores, mine have never showed any interested in anything other than peas.
skinny roots can look a little like bloodworms to them so thats probably what he thought it was and had a go!

Thanks alot guys, that really makes me feel a lot better! I've been worried about this! Glad to hear he will be okay. Thanks again!!

Breeze, if your mother has never fed fish before, i would suggest getting one of those daily pill compartment things and filling that with the food for the days she will be there.

The reason, is i went away during the summer and my mother was going to feed my fish I went through everythign with her, she said she understood, three 2.5 gal tanks and one 5 gal tank. When I came home, all of the tanks had food covered in the filter and all over the bottom of the tanks. It was so frustrating, havign to come home on a sunday night after vacation, with work the next mmorning, and havign to boil gravel most of the night and scrub everything out twice.


Good luck

yuck!! She should be fine though as she has a garden pond and they had fish when I was younger. But, If Im worried when she comes over on Thursday Ill get a pill pocket. She will also be feeding the puffers and my tropical tank. Those puffers are little devils, I can see her over feeding them cuz they are so cute and such beggers lol. Again though, it will only be 1 day so Ive got confidence in her!

Thanks!

Any little container is fine.. plastic cup, whatever, lol.

I found an automatic fish feeder at wal-mart. It's battery operated, and has a timer function so you can tell it how often to feed the fish. I think you can also control the amount of food, as well.

Considering the tiny amount a single Betta eats, I think an automatic feeder is overkill. Seriously he'll be fine for 5 days with no food.

Hi-

We went away for like a week and a half a couple of years ago and left our first betta with a battery-operated 12 hour auto feeder and he was just fine and happy when we came back. I used flakey food and set the machine so it didn't put much food in at a time. This was in a filtered tank.

Last fall, our 10 gallon tank was full of mollies-adult and fry, which we left another autofeeder on for like 5 days and they were fine, too. But this other betta we had was in a 2 gallon bowl (with heater, I think) but no filter. We used an autofeeder (different one) for him, but I think the food was both ground up too fine and the opening too wide into the bowl, because we came back to find this betta disceased! with the bowl covered in white stringy stuff that looked like cobwebs--which I think was ammonia--like he died from ammonia poisoning.

I would use an auto feeder again, but, a-test it out for a few days to see how much food it's dropping, or b-lean towards underfeeding regarding the hole for feeding and how you can adjust it.

I considered not feeding these fish when we were going away--but I couldn't bear the thought. Good luck and have a good time!
-Wendy

Definitly take him to your mums.

Just give her some intructions and all will be fine.

Its better to be safe than sorry!

Thanks guys for all your help. He's just in a small tank so I doubt I will do the auto feeder, I mean he only gets 5 pellets and you have to drop them really softly so tehy don't sink right away. My mom is coming over tonight so, I will give her all the instructions ect.
Thanks again!