Favorite live food cultures for bettas?

[fishtime!]

Hi everyone, I'm about to get a betta and I've been reading a lot on different live foods to culture, but wanted some opinions on what your favorite foods to culture are. I want something that is nutritious for my betta, easy to culture, and stimulating for her to chase/eat. I have a small tank (~4 gallons) with a filter and heater that I intend to use. I've used it to raise baby brine shrimp, but I was thinking some bigger prey might be more stimulating for my betta to chase after. I was thinking about daphnia, but it seems like there populations can be uncontrollable and with just 1 betta I don't want to be disposing of hundreds of daphnia every week. I would love some adult brine shrimp, but my baby brine shrimp die off before they reach any sort of significant size. It seems like bloodworms are easy to culture but to be honest I don't think I want a tank of worms in my office...... Anyways I just want to know what you all like, thanks!

 

[Back in the fold]

Live wingless fruit flies . Easy to culture and Bettas love them . Check out The Fruit Fly Shop out of San Diego California . Even if you don’t get your flies and supplies from them their website is a gold mine of fruit fly information . I feed my Betta’s exclusively on Drosophila melanogaster wingless fruit flies . The biggest advantage to live fruit flies is they walk on the waters surface and stay alive all day so your Betta can feast on them at his leisure .

 

[gwand]

Live wingless fruit flies . Easy to culture and Bettas love them . Check out The Fruit Fly Shop out of San Diego California . Even if you don’t get your flies and supplies from them their website is a gold mine of fruit fly information . I feed my Betta’s exclusively on Drosophila melanogaster wingless fruit flies . The biggest advantage to live fruit flies is they walk on the waters surface and stay alive all day so your Betta can feast on them at his leisure .

How do you keep the culture going?

 

[sharkweek178]

Maybe try grindal worms. They're not aquatic which means you don't need a tank to hold them. You can culture them in a small plastic food container.

 

[Back in the fold]

How do you keep the culture going?

The culture , depending on room temperature , has to be restarted every two weeks to a month . My fishroom gets HOT in the summer and I keep four or five cultures going at the same time but with staggered start times , that way when one peters out I still have others producing . It takes a week to ten days for a new culture to start producing flies and I use flies from an old culture to seed new cultures . In the winter a culture sometimes goes a whole month but produces new flies slowly . It’s one of those things you get a feel for the longer you keep them . The flies I have now are descendants of the original culture I bought in 2020 . I’ve never lost them and had to get new ones .

 

[sharkweek178]

The culture , depending on room temperature , has to be restarted every two weeks to a month . My fishroom gets HOT in the summer and I keep four or five cultures going at the same time but with staggered start times , that way when one peters out I still have others producing . It takes a week to ten days for a new culture to start producing flies and I use flies from an old culture to seed new cultures . In the winter a culture sometimes goes a whole month but produces new flies slowly . It’s one of those things you get a feel for the longer you keep them . The flies I have now are descendants of the original culture I bought in 2020 . I’ve never lost them and had to get new ones .

How long do your cultures generally last?
I'm getting a betta soon and would like to feed it wingless fruit flies. But aside from my honey gourami, none of my other fish spend a lot of time at the top of the tank. Point being that I don't need a whole lot so I don't want to have a whole bunch of unnecessary cultures going.

 

[Back in the fold]

How long do your cultures generally last?
I'm getting a betta soon and would like to feed it wingless fruit flies. But aside from my honey gourami, none of my other fish spend a lot of time at the top of the tank. Point being that I don't need a whole lot so I don't want to have a whole bunch of unnecessary cultures going.

A culture will produce for a good three weeks - give or take a week - once again , depending on room temperature . The peak time is about two weeks in when you get a good swarm of them . I saw a video somewhere showing an aquarium full of Rasbora Hets that were in an absolute feeding frenzy over wingless fruit flies . The movement at the surface unleashes their inner predator . My Aplocheilus lineatus Golden Wonder Killifish go ape for them , so much so that I’ve had one jump out on a few occasions while sprinkling them in . That will get your attention.

 

[sharkweek178]

A culture will produce for a good three weeks - give or take a week - once again , depending on room temperature . The peak time is about two weeks in when you get a good swarm of them . I saw a video somewhere showing an aquarium full of Rasbora Hets that were in an absolute feeding frenzy over wingless fruit flies . The movement at the surface unleashes their inner predator . My Aplocheilus lineatus Golden Wonder Killifish go ape for them , so much so that I’ve had one jump out on a few occasions while sprinkling them in . That will get your attention.

I always keep multiple cultures of live food. In case one crashes. I figured out with microworms that I really didn't need that much so I only have two going. They produce plenty for what I need and I don't have to go to the trouble of rotating cultures more than I have to. I'd probably do the same for the fruit flies until I get more fish that will eat them.

 

[Back in the fold]

I always keep multiple cultures of live food. In case one crashes. I figured out with microworms that I really didn't need that much so I only have two going. They produce plenty for what I need and I don't have to go to the trouble of rotating cultures more than I have to. I'd probably do the same for the fruit flies until I get more fish that will eat them.

That’s exactly how I do it . You know how long a culture will last and how much of it you need and you plan ahead to have just enough . Almost any fish will eat fruit flies but the hurdle is getting them to try them for the first time . Once they get their first taste it’s like crack to them .