# "Training" Betta to eat pellets?



## Maxwedge (Jan 20, 2020)

So I'm still in the same boat with my Blue Alien's eating habits... He will only eat black worms. He likes the hunt, and isn't over-eating, but I'm not sure if they will give him a "well rounded" diet and complete nutrition. I do feed them and the culture lasts indefinitely. 

For pellets I have tried New Life Spectrum, Ocean Nutrition, and the old Hikari Bio-Gold. He looks at them but doesn't seem to know that they're food. I also got some Scuds in their own 2.5 gallon but they are super tiny and he treats them like the pellets... watches them go by but doesn't seem interested in eating them. I'm hoping he'll be more interested when they get a little bigger. I am not interested in raising Daphnia/Moina at this time.

So what I am thinking of doing now is isolating him in a breeding box/net inside the current tank, and Only offering the pellets. In the large surface-area tank it's easy for him to ignore the pellets and let them drift away. But in a smaller space without the plants, tubes and filters, I think he won't be able to ignore the pellets and will check them out. Especially if they are the only food he can find. 

So that is what I am going to try. If anyone has any opinions or experience "re-conditioning" their fish to eat a different food I would appreciate your input. Right now I feel like my kid won't eat his brussel sprouts, so I've been feeding him candy instead. "it's the only thing he'll eat".


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## Old Dog 59 (Nov 11, 2018)

Yep he has you trained. LOL The only way you can switch his diet at this point is to Stop the candy and feed him whole food products. If your switching to pellets than put a couple of pellets in the tank and leave them there. He doesn't recognize them as food so he needs to start. If he picks at them it's a start. However some betta never east pellets. He might go for flake food, and introducing him to it is the same way. and then there is always feeding live blood worms (or frozen is the same as live) They are whole food and are great for betta. 

I have one betta that use to eat flake food, he is now in a community tank and the other fish eat his flake food but the Cory will eat the frozen blood worms. So he now will eat nothing but the blood worms and the other fish only eat the flake ( go figure). The rest of my betta eat flake food with no problem, But when I first got them they had to recognize the flake as food and it took a couple of days before they did that . Once they did they have been eating it ever since.


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## Veloran (Jun 28, 2014)

I will say that the hardest part is in your head. A healthy fish won't let himself starve to death.

Then again, I trained mine to eat at a floating ring I made so I didn't get pellets getting lost under the floating plants. He then got sick, I got worried and now I'm fully trained to get him his pellets while he's hiding under the floating plants.


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## Old Dog 59 (Nov 11, 2018)

Veloran said:


> I will say that the hardest part is in your head. A healthy fish won't let himself starve to death.
> 
> Then again, I trained mine to eat at a floating ring I made so I didn't get pellets getting lost under the floating plants. He then got sick, I got worried and now I'm fully trained to get him his pellets while he's hiding under the floating plants.


Now that's how your betta trains you to feed him right. LOL I like this reaction. Now tell me fish don't think. Or have a personality.


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## Rana (Apr 27, 2013)

I trained several of my bettas to associate a red plastic stick (About the size of a toothpick- it's actually the handle of a tiny "spoon" that came with a freezedried treat) with food, so introducing them to new foods is pretty easy. All I did was give them frozen bloodworms off the stick until just the sight of the stick makes them swim over eager to eat, and once they're trained that far I use the stick to "point out" new foods I've put in the tank for them to eat like floating pellets and flakes. Also helps when the current moves their food someplace they weren't expecting and they can't "find" it. I used bloodworms, but obviously you'd want to use the food your betta is already used to.

I actually did it by accident the first time- I just needed a way to give my first baby a single bloodworm at a time and hated wasting wooden toothpicks- but once I realized how useful it was, I kept it up. Bettas do see in color, so picking a bright color for the stick/toothpick and then not changing is a good idea.

It may or may not work for you, I have no idea the trainability levels of wild bettas vs domestic, or if a live worm would even stay on a stick long enough for your betta to make the association of stick = food. Maybe a pair of tweezers instead of a stick? But it's another option to consider.


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## LittleBettaFish (Oct 2, 2010)

I disagree that a healthy fish won't starve itself to death. The _majority_ of fish will transition to pelleted or flake foods. But there are some species of fish (particularly marine), and some individuals (often wild-caught fish) that will starve themselves to death if not provided with live foods. 

Personally, I like to make the transition from live to frozen. Then from frozen to pellets or flakes. I find it makes the process easier with particularly stubborn fish. I use a pair of long 'aquascaping' tweezers to target feed my fish. This is useful when first introducing frozen foods, as you can move the food around to simulate live prey and this can stimulate a predatory response. I also teach my fish to associate a tap on the glass with food, so all I need do is tap on the glass and all my fish come to the front of the tank. 

If you can get your fish accepting a range of frozen foods, such as enriched brine shrimp, bloodworms, daphnia, and mosquito larvae, that should provide him with all the nutrients he requires. So you may not even need to transition to dried foods. 

Otherwise, have you thought of trying a gel food such as Repashy? I know your fish is a hybrid, but none of my smaller wild bettas have taken pellets readily. They tended to chew on them and spit them out. They preferred flake food, but this caused issues with bloating. So I switched to gel food. 

I'm not a fan of live blackworms as a sole food source. I think they're a great tool for conditioning fish for breeding, but fed on a regular basis, they can cause obesity. My earlier wild bettas were fed a diet consisting almost solely of live blackworms, and they were massively obese compared to my present fish. 

Good luck. It's going to take both persistence and time.


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## Maxwedge (Jan 20, 2020)

Thanks guys. If I can find live blood worms I will try them - I've only ever seen freeze dried and frozen. He rejected frozen brine shrimp. I have Repashy "Soilent Green" algae gel for my shrimp but didn't know they made a food for predators. I doubt it would work though since his issue is that he ONLY goes for wriggling food. If it's not swimming, wriggling or jerking he doesn't want to bite it.

Yes, he has trained _me._ He searches the bottom for worms all day, and excitedly swims back and forth when I get home from work so I'll get him more. When I put pellets on the surface he swims up and looks, but then swims back down and says "WORMS Dad, Worms!"

Here he is searching the bottom for live worms...


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## LittleBettaFish (Oct 2, 2010)

Can you try frozen bloodworms or frozen mosquito larvae? Most of my fish have definite preferences as to sort of food they like. For example, some of mine show no interest in frozen brine shrimp, but will eat frozen bloodworms. 

What happens if you use tweezers to twitch/wriggle the frozen food around near his head? 

Repashy have a special recipe for insectivorous fish. It's banned for import here in Australia now due to our quarantine regulations, but my wild bettas used to love it. 

To introduce my fish to Repashy, I did the same as I did with frozen food. Put a small amount in my tweezers, and move it around to catch the fish's interest, and then let them nibble at it. Most of them spit it out the first few times, but I just kept persisting. I think because there's less chewing involved than with a pellet, they're more likely to swallow it. 

He doesn't look in poor condition in your photos, so missing a few days of food won't hurt him. My wild bettas only get fed very sparingly. They usually go one to two days between meals, and most of them are now three or four years old. 

He definitely needs more variation in his diet than live blackworms. I wouldn't even alternate between them and another food source until he is eating either frozen foods, gel food, or flake/pellets reliably.


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