Feeding Bettas
Normally betta fish live to be 2-5 years old, but some betta fishes live to be nearly 8 years old. Male bettas living in laboratories with large individual tanks and daily
exercise have lived 10 years or longer.
Carnivorous, betta feeds on zooplankton and mosquito and other insect larvae. Domesticated bettas will feed on bloodworms, daphnia, and brine shrimp. Betta pellets are typically
a combination of mashed shrimp meal, bloodworms, and various vitamins to enhance color and longevity. For variety and fiber, bettas may also be fed finely chopped vegetables high in protein such as soybeans, green beans, broccoli, corn, or carrots.
Bettas fare better with a large variety of foods and will often show brighter, richer, and deeper colors if they are fed a wide range of foods. They will also heal much more quickly from fin 
damage if their diets are high in protein and fiber.
Here are some golden rules for feeding your betta:
First, select the proper foods. Bettas are selective eaters. A betta specific pellet is OK, but live or frozen foods are preferable. The recommended diet includes
frozen brine shrimp and frozen bloodworms.
The next rule is to not overfeed your bettas. Carefully dose the meals; because even if the fish eats all you give him, he will produce much more waste when overfed, and the pollution level of the jar he is in will go beyond safe range This problem is smaller if you keep your betta in a larger aquarium. Remember not to leave uneaten food in the aquarium!
Once your betta and the rest of the fish are finished eating, you must remove all uneaten left over food. If you do not remove it, it will soon rot and cause havoc in the tank.
Bettas prefer to eat from the upper parts of the water column. They don’t really enjoy eating from the bottom of the tank. So before dropping the food in your betta’s tank, make
sure you have his attention. Let him see the food, get it close to his face from the outside of the aquarium, let him check out what it is, and then there you go! Drop food in front of his nose. The best way is to drop a tiny bit of food - about 6 frozen brine shrimp, watch the betta eat it all and then look at his belly, if it looks the same as it did before you fed, it’s ok to give him more, but always watch and make sure to make the second portion smaller than the first.
Your betta should go for the food right away, 
but if not, watch where the food sinks, and what the betta does. If after 15 minutes he has not eaten the food, remove the food. Never let the water go cloudy. If it is already cloudy then change it, as cloudy water will threaten your betta’s health. Normally, small bowls or containers should have water changes at least twice a week. Larger tanks can be changed once a week. And notice if the ammonia and nitrite levels are at high levels, because both are very bad for your betta. Also be wary
of harmful bacteria - they can ruin your fish’s life, but don’t kill off all bacteria in the aquarium since bacteria is essential for a well functioning aquarium.
During the pre-spawning period you can feed a wide variety of foods, including blackworms, grindal worms, fruit flies, brine shrimp, mosquito larvae and frozen bloodworms
(all are live except the frozen bloodworms). During this period the adult fish may be fed 4 times per day or more depending on how close the fish are to being placed into the spawning tank.
You can start feeding your betta fry 5 days after the hatching. Feed the fry several times per day, using a variety of foods (infusoria, boiled egg yolk, baby brine shrimp) made up of small particles.
surface of the aquarium water you`ll add some floating plants like: Riccia fluitans or Ceratopteris species. These plants serve as a hiding place for the female and they are also a good support for the bubble nest, which is constructed by the male using a mouth secretion. The female should be introduced in the evening, and the male next morning. After a few minutes of accommodations the male will alternate the female chase with the bubble nest construction. The bubble nest made by the male can sometimes be very big, about half of the aquarium, or it can be small, it can even be absent. The eggs are very oleos so they don`t fall down from the bubble nest; they are under the strict supervision of the male. Immediately after they spawn, the female must be taken out of the reproduction aquarium because the male will hurt her in order to send her away from the nest. In order to take out the female, from an aquarium where hundreds or even thousands of fry swim, you`ll need nylon netting. You need a netting like that not to catch the eggs (when you remove the female) or the fry (when you remove the male). The fry hatches after about 24-30 hours and for the next 3-4 days it remains in the nest. After the offspring swims free, you`ll remove the male and start feeding the baby fish. We can administrate them infusors or yolk of an egg. If we feed them with yolk, this has to be administrated 3-4- times a day and in small quantities.
At this point we`ll add a filter with few bubbles because the fry is very sensitive to water movement. In the first days, there are a lot of fish and we`ll have to feed them well, the quantity of food should be correlated with the number of fish. If we don`t feed them well, tome of them will grow and eat the little ones, the number of fish can increase dramatically after a week or two. If we feed them well, they`ll grow nicely and after 3-4 days we can administrate Artemia (baby brine shrimp). For 1-2 days we`ll keep feeding them with infusors or yolk of egg in order to help the fry which remain small.
the anal fin. The first ray of the pectorals fin is very prolonged, sometimes it`s even forked. The middle, superior or inferior rays of the caudal fin can also be very prolonged. The lateral line is incomplete or it is absent completely. They are very resistant fish but only the youngsters are friendly. In general, the can hardly endure the presence of other species in the same aquarium. They eat both alive food, which they prefer, and dehydrated flakes. They prefer sunny aquariums or an aquarium with lot of light. It`s better to avoid introducing them in new aquariums or in much planted aquariums.
The males can reach 8 cm, females are a little smaller but with a big abdominal are (especially after sexual grow). The colors of the body can change because the fish are restless, especially males when they feel the presence of another male from the same specie. When they are excited, the color of the body looks like this: a blue-shining green background with transversal red lines. When they spawn, the males have the head and abdominal area colored in velvety black, the fins are from blue to red with another nuance blue lines. The male is more colored than the female and its lips are more marked.
