Betta

Care at a glance

Overview

Males are aggressive and cannot share a tank with another male, and their trailing fins make them targets for fin-nippers, so choose tankmates carefully or keep one alone. They sit in the middle and upper water in a planted, low-flow tank of around 25 liters or more, heated to 22 to 30 C with pH 6 to 7.5. They are carnivores; feed a quality betta pellet and rotate in frozen or live bloodworms and brine shrimp.

In the wild

Bettas come from shallow, slow, warm water in Thailand and nearby Southeast Asia, including rice paddies, ditches, and floodplain pools thick with plants. These spots are warm and often low in oxygen, so a betta tank should be heated, gently filtered, and well planted with some surface cover. Don't blast them with current; they're built for still water.

Good to know

This fish is in the family Osphronemidae, the gouramis. Males reach about 7.5 cm including their long fins; females are shorter-finned. Bettas are labyrinth fish, with an organ that lets them breathe air straight from the surface. The wild form is far plainer than the long-finned, brightly colored fish in shops, which are the product of generations of selective breeding.

Did you know

When a male spawns he blows a raft of bubbles at the surface, called a bubble nest, and tends the eggs in it himself. A healthy male will often build one even with no female around, just from feeling settled in his tank.

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• 

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• 

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