What’s The Healthiest, Best Betta Food? | Pellets & Flakes

Different Types Of Betta Fish Food

In general, there are four main types of Betta fish food -- pellets, flakes, frozen and live. The kind you feed your fish depends quite a bit on whether you have tank mates, the kind of food you can actively store and keep fresh, and how much you’re willing to spend.

1. betta fish pellets

For most people, pellets are going to be the preferred type of food to give to your Betta.

They stay whole and don’t tend to mess with the filter too much, making them great for “delayed feeding.” As the pellets sink to the bottom, they’ll sit on top of your substrate and stay contained until your Betta (or another fish) decides to eat them.

Betta pellets aren’t hard to find, either. You can usually find them at most big-box stores, department stores that have pet departments, and your local pet shops.

Their shelf life tends to be shorter-lived than flakes, but if you keep the container sealed, they last long enough for a single Betta to consume the entire bottle without spoiling.

2. Betta fish flakes

Flakes are the most common type of food available for Bettas. However, being so familiar and so widely available comes with a downsize -- many are mass manufactured and include harmful fillers and byproducts that take away from your Betta’s much-needed dietary requirements.

They’re cheaper than other types, especially frozen and live foods, which makes them even more popular, but the lack of nutritional value contained in most flakes means you’ll need to supplement your Betta’s diet in other ways.

When you’re feeding flakes, you’ll also need to pay closer attention to your filter. Flakes will usually sit on top of the water and any that do not get consumed end up in your filter, which can let them rot and spread bacteria throughout your delicate ecosystem.

If you do use flakes, make sure you’re only feeding what your Betta will actively eat, or have other fish in the tank to clean up the scraps that your Betta missed.

3. Frozen Betta Food

People tend to have a love/hate relationship with frozen Betta foods. On the one hand, they’re great because they’re nutrient-dense, lacking the moisture of other foods, but some argue that freezing kills some of the nutrients found inside.

Frozen Betta food is going to be a personal preference, but we’ve found that gram for gram, frozen Betta foods have a higher nutrient count than both pellets and flakes, making them a great choice even if some of the nutrients are lost during the flash-freezing process.

It’s worth noting that most frozen Betta foods can only be purchased locally, and are usually only found at stores or pet shops where you can buy live Betta foods. You’ll also need to keep them frozen when you’re not actively feeding because they tend to spoil quickly!

4. live betta fish food

Live Betta food is always going to be the most nutritious, but also the most expensive and most challenging to keep. Unless you’re breeding your food for your Bettas or have a pet shop close enough to keep you in a steady supply, most people find keeping live feed too much of a chore.

However, if you want to give your Betta the best diet they can have, giving them a fresh supply of insects, small worms, and shrimps are a great way to keep their colors bright and vivid, and your fish fat and healthy for the long haul.

Feeding live foods to your Betta does come with some disadvantages, though.

First, it’s the most expensive and time-consuming to provide. Second, you have to pay closer attention to what your fish doesn’t eat and make sure you quickly get it out of the tank. Third, and finally, maintaining a tank with live food can become a part-time job if you’re not careful.

Our Betta Food Comparison Criteria & FAQs

When it comes to selecting the best Betta food and comparing each of the different foods against one another, we’ve looked at quite a few different areas -- primarily, your Bettas required diet. Their diet is drastically different than many other species, which shouldn’t be overlooked.

Below are a handful of questions we’ve asked while sifting through the different foods that are readily available in 2019.

Is The Betta Food Protein-Based?

A good Betta food can be expensive, but that’s a good sign that it has the ingredients needed to keep your fish healthy and colorful. Since Betta fish require a protein-based diet, of shrimp or fish, having a sick Betta in your tank can cause sickness in the rest of your fish, too.

While many other fish can eat your Betta’s food, your Bettas should not be eating other fish food that is made up, primarily, of other ingredients. This is a common mistake that many Betta owners make, and one that should be avoided at all costs.

Is It Plant-Based?

Betta fish may eat plant-based diets if they have nothing else to feed on, but you’re going to see them start to decline over time. The more you feed them plant-based foods, the worse they’ll get.

Bettas need protein, there are no two ways around it. If the foods you’re thinking of giving them have plant-based ingredients as the first few listed, your fish will begin to lose color, become lethargic, and you may even see their fins start to disperse.

This is a sign you need to adjust their food quickly before they get sick and potentially perish.

Is It Full Of Fillers And By products?

A ton of manufacturers have figured out that an excellent way for them to save money is by including fillers and byproducts in their fish foods, thinking that smart consumers won’t look at the list of ingredients to figure out what’s inside.

Plants, such as soy, rice, and seaweed are far cheaper to produce than shrimp or fish, so manufacturers will use clever names to disguise their overwhelmingly-high amount of fillers and byproducts as everything but the plant-based materials included in the recipe.

The Betta foods we recommend contain minimal fillers and byproducts (if none, at all), and the best way to avoid these is by avoiding the cheap Betta foods and foods that may be listed as being designed specifically for Bettas, but contain scientific names as ingredients.

Will The Betta Food Expire?

An excellent way to know if the Betta food you’re thinking about giving to your Betta is good, or not, is whether the Betta food will expire. If it doesn’t have an expiration date, it means there are no real nutrients included in the formula.

Live nutrients have a proven expiration date. When bacteria begin to grow, it causes decay in the proteins and macronutrients, which can be noticed when your Betta eats the food and spits it out, or the food has a funky odor when you pop the top.

Most mass-manufactured foods do not have an expiration date listed on them, which means there are no actual live nutrients inside. Your Betta needs these live nutrients to survive and stay healthy.

Can The Betta Food Be Fed To Other Fish?

Remember, Betta fish require a special diet. In the wild they’re accustomed to feeding on insects, so the diet that you feed them in captivity should closely resemble what they would see in the wild.

They’re one of the few fish who require an insect-based diet and won’t stay healthy (or live long) if you’re trying to feed them the same food you feed to your Goldfish. With that being said, other fish may also find the Betta food tasty, too.

While ranking each of the best Betta foods on our list, we’ve weighed in whether, or not, and other fish are going to find the food tasty, too. Many times, you can get away with feeding your entire school the same food you give to the Bettas, saving you a fair amount of money in the long-term.

Betta Fish Food Alternatives

While we’ve featured what we believe are the best foods available for Bettas, there are always alternatives you can use, based on your personal preference.

To make sure you’re giving them excellent food that will sustain their diet, make sure you’re paying attention to the ingredient labels or feeding them live, whole foods.

If there are scientific names or words that are overly-complicated and hard to pronounce, the chances are high that the foods you’re thinking about giving them aren’t necessarily the best available -- or even suitable for them, for that matter.

What’s The Healthiest, Best Betta Food In 2019?

If you want the healthiest, fresh live food and frozen foods are, by far, the best Betta food you can give to your fish. However, if you want convenience mixed with price, Betta pellets are close behind, giving you the best of both worlds.

If you’re looking to supplement your Betta’s diet, or have other tank mates that can clean up the scraps, there’s nothing wrong with feeding them high-quality flake food.

From our research, we’ve found that the healthiest and best Betta food available in 2019 is the Aqueon Color Enhancing Betta Pellets and the Hikari Betta Bio-Gold Baby Pellets.