In the wild a wild Betta enjoys a diet of insects most of which comes in the form of mosquito larva. Your Betta is an insectivore. They cannot and generally will not sustain themselves on plants, despite what some myths would have you believe. There are many commercially available foods for fish, and most will do fine for Betta fish as long as you remember that they are a smaller fish and provide food they can fit into their mouths. We recommend sticking with pellets between .5 and 1 mm.

Here at USBetta our sales and breeder fish receive the same foods. We like to vary the diet of our fish to ensure they are getting everything they need and do not become bored. Our fish get a mixture of live, frozen, and pelleted food that is changed frequently. We recommend and feed two pelleted foods, New Life Spectrum & Fluval. WE also feed frozen foods, the brands vary but we feed blood worms, brine shrimp, daphnia, and beef heart. We also feed live food including blackworms, mosquito larva (these are only fed to our breeders), daphnia, maggots, and fairy shrimp.

We find that Betta love live food and strongly recommend all Betta lovers to treat their Betta to live foods whenever you can. But do not capture bugs outside for your fish as you do not know what they have been exposed to. You can get free live food by setting out a small pail of water somewhere quiet outside. But you must be sure to capture your larva every two weeks to avoid contributing to a mosquito problem. It takes approximately 2 weeks for mosquitos to become adults. For best harvesting I recommend you have a second pail and use a standard small fish net. Run the water from one pail to the other through the net and you will not capture the eggs and too small larva giving them more time to grow for the next harvest. You can also buy black worms online as well as several other live foods.