Can A Betta Stay Healthy & Happy On Just Freeze Dried Bloodworms?

[xweeqtx]

I alternate foods between pellets, flake, freeze dried brine shrimp/bloodworm and on the occasion I'm in an LFS that sells live bloodworm, I'll give them that then as a treat. I've only really went out of my way to feed live foods regularly when I was conditioning a pair.

Basically, yeah, it is better to alternate but being someone who is out of the way of shops that do sell live food, I don't see any betta owner being obliged to feed live foods. Mine are happy and healthy with their "diet-plan". I'm sure there are quite a few owners out there that feed one thing such as flake, and that only.

At the end of the day, if the fish is happy and has no problems, then you have no problem.

 

[madgap]

I read the post properly and I understood it, too. I wasn't on my 'soapbox'. the written word does seem harsh, doesn't it. No ill feeling intended.

 

[dwarfgourami]

Hi Friends,
THANKS for your very informative replies. I wish to assure SouthernCross I don’t have a Betta as yet (so there is no need to give it away). I too felt that feeding a Betta just freeze dried bloodworms won’t be enough, hence I put up the issue on the forum. From the replies it seems a combination of Betta Pellets and Freeze Dried Bloodworms is the bare minimum. Here, I have another question (please bear with me), Would this combination of Betta pellets and Freeze Dried Bloodworms be enough or would they still need occasional live and other feed to be happy and healthy?
Bye & THANKS AGAIN

As far as I understand, frozen bloodworm has the same nutritional value as live bloodworm, so there is no reason to see any wriggling if you don't want to. Freeze dried is not quite so good and if fed too much I have heard it can cause bloat. But a diet of betta pellets, with weekly treats of frozen or freeze dried bloodworm and a weekly pea should be fine.

 

[MermaidMel]

what about freeze dried tubifex too

 

[nmonks]

This is a fascinating question.

To start with beginner, no fish appears to be 100% vegetarian, so at some level, any fish you buy will need meat. Even things like silver dollars and Panaque catfish that mostly eat plant foods will consume animal protein when the chance arises. There are vegetarian animals like apple snails and algae shrimps you could keep instead, but if you want fish, then unfortunately you will need to offer them meaty foods at least occasionally.

Now, bloodworms are not mosquito larvae but midge larvae. Whether either are "pests" depends on your point of view. Midges might be annoying, but they are also critically important links in the food web. Many fish species depend on midge larvae for food. When the midges pupate and fly away, they become important foods for birds, spiders and other predators. Because their life cycle includes water, land and air, midges help to carry energy from one environment (water) through the algae they eat, and distribute it in other environments (like the air) by being eaten. Swallows for example feed primarily on midges, so if you kill enough midges, a baby swallow will starve! It's really as simple as that.

(The bloodworms you buy are farmed though, so aren't affecting any baby swallows!)

As others have said, avoid monotony. Freeze-dried foods are extremely likely to cause constipation when used more than a couple of times per week. Wet frozen foods and live foods are both much, much healthier. They also contain less protein and more fibre, so used correctly cause fewer problems with water quality. A typical frozen bloodworm package will be about 5% protein, compared to over 40% protein in the case of flake food. Since protein produces ammonia, the less protein in the system, the less ammonia your filter has to deal with.

Personally, I recommend against freeze-dried foods as being unsafe and overpriced. They have no advantages over any of the other food types available and lots of disadvantages. Been keeping fish for 25+ years and still have no idea why people buy them!

Cheers, Neale

PS. As for ethics, before buying your betta, think about how it was farmed. For a start, cheap, high-protein foods were used. These would be based on things like fish meal and chicken meal. Secondly, what do you think happened to the females in the brood of babies from which your male betta was selected? The market for female bettas is miniscule. Do you think those females were found nice homes somewhere? Nope. They were killed, and if the fish was farmed in Southeast Asia, probably quite brutally. Thirdly, years of inbreeding to produce those long fins has resulted in a fish that can barely swim. Virtually all male bettas spend a life involving zero social contact with their own species, no chance at all to swim about and explore, and no stimulation in the form of other fish or environmental variation. Of all the fish to keep, bettas are amongst the LEAST ethical there are. If McDonalds sold tropical fish, they'd sell bettas.

 

[JoshH]

Don't worry nmonks this is only 1 1/2 years old

 

[bronzecat]

Firstly, this was a 2 yr old thread!

However i would like to respond to nmonks.

PS. As for ethics, before buying your betta, think about how it was farmed. For a start, cheap, high-protein foods were used. These would be based on things like fish meal and chicken meal. Secondly, what do you think happened to the females in the brood of babies from which your male betta was selected? The market for female bettas is miniscule. Do you think those females were found nice homes somewhere? Nope. They were killed, and if the fish was farmed in Southeast Asia, probably quite brutally. Thirdly, years of inbreeding to produce those long fins has resulted in a fish that can barely swim. Virtually all male bettas spend a life involving zero social contact with their own species, no chance at all to swim about and explore, and no stimulation in the form of other fish or environmental variation. Of all the fish to keep, bettas are amongst the LEAST ethical there are. If McDonalds sold tropical fish, they'd sell bettas.

Before everyone thinks that this is how all betta splendens are treated, I can categorically state that they are not. I agree that the mass producers will feed high protein unnatural food to get the fish as big as possible in the shortest time, and that females are sometimes culled. I can safely speak for the 2 more well known breeders on this site, Modaz and us, that this is NOT how we treat them.

As for the market for females being miniscule, think again. As a breeder and seller of bettas we have had no problems selling our females, in fact we get more enquiries for females than males.

"Fish that can barely swim" - This is why we are very selective in the pairs we spawn. To state what you did is a sweeping statement of all bettas and as such is totally wrong.

In their natural habitat, male bettas lead a solitary lifestyle. Bear in mind that they live in 10's of thousands of gallons of water for the majority of the time. What would you suggest? Keep males with other males and females? We also are very much opposed to the keeping of bettas in "betta vases" and the like. We have even refused to sell to some people who, in our opinion, would not keep them in a manner we would be happy with.

If your looking at ethics, then all fish keeping should be deemed unethical. After all, they are all kept in artificial environments, which, try as you might, will never replicate their natural habitat.

One thing I have noticed recently when browsing ebay, is the amount of new sellers who have imported bettas purely to sell for profit. If you check the sellers previous sales, half the time they haven't sold fish before. They just get them in, stick them in little jars, photo them, and get them up for sale as quick as possible so as not to increase their overheads. Its this type of trade which should be curbed, as along with the major lfs chains, 1000's of bettas are being imported every month from Thailand/Asia.

Just thought some things needed clearing up there

 

[wilsonnw8]

I completely agree with Bronze people on this forum clearly love bettas and do everything they can to educate and improve quality of life for these fish. We are all aware that occationally bettas can be too "finny" thats why the vast majority of people in this forum select their spawning pairs carefully to ensure that they produce healthy fry without too much fin.
Making sweeping generalizations is not the way to go about giving "advice" and some of what you have written is just scare mongering. I cant think why you even visited our betta forum if you feel it is so unethical.

 

[nmonks]

My intention wasn't to belittle betta keepers or their fish. If that's how my post was read, I apologise. Anyone who knows me will know that isn't how I operate.

For some reason (inexplicable perhaps!) the post came up in the RSS feed for the site, and when I read over it, it seemed an interesting thread.

Nor did I say hobby breeders treat their surplus females in the way fish farms do; I specifically described what happens on farms. The market for female betters -- from the perspective of commercial fish farms -- is indeed very small. Someone buying a betta from most pet stores will be getting commercially farmed fish, and my aim was to contrast the ethics of buying such a fish with the desire to be kind to animals through vegetarianism. In other words, if you don't want to hurt bloodworms or daphnia, you certainly shouldn't be buying a commercially farmed betta.

The idea that males are "solitary" in the wild needs to be in context. They are actually territorial rather than solitary; while they don't like other bettas in their territory, they certainly will be interacting with other bettas all the time: threatening rival males, establishing boundaries, attracting females, spawning, and so on. Within biology "solitary" means a specific thing, that the animal doesn't spend its time in a social group all the time. But that is very different to what non-biologists often mean by the term, which is that the animal prefers or expects to be kept without any other members of its species.

Obviously you are correct that some tropical fish have to be kept that way, and I'd agree with you that ethical arguments can be raised about that. I've never written anywhere that people shouldn't keep bettas. Quite the contrary; when people ask me about stocking relatively small tanks, I regularly suggest bettas as an option. Go see the betta questions over at Wet Web Media and you'll see a I spend a lot of time helping people out with these fish. Fancy bettas aren't my favourite fish by any means, but neither am I an ignoramus about bettas and the problems people have when trying keep them.

So again, sorry if my post was misunderstood and assumed to be critical of this part of the hobby. It wasn't mean to be.

Cheers, Neale