Betta Fish can live upwards to five years or longer in some instances.
But you need to know how to keep them living a long and happy life.
The Keys to Keeping Your Betta Fish Healthy
Quality Foods
Feed them a Good variety of quality foods as I describe in my Video What do Betta Fish Eat:
Some of the foods I feed my Betta Fish Are:
- Bug Bites
- Sinking Pellets
- Flakes
- Freeze-dried
- Bloodworms – Live or Frozen – You can get these at your local fish store
Good Environment
A good environment includes water quality and ample space.
It is true that Betta fish can survive long periods of time in little water but that is not an ideal environment for living a long and healthy life.
The quality of the water must be good as well.
The minimum 4 tests should be done for freshwater fish tanks.
- Ammonia
- pH
- Nitrite
- Nitrate
I recommend you test your water with API Freshwater Master Test Kit to measure the quality of your water.
I teach you in this video how to test the water using the Test Kit.
Space
Even though Betta Fish have the ability to survive in very small amounts of water, they thrive in an environment having space to swim around.
My Betta Fish enjoy swimming from one end of the aquarium to the other.
Betta Fish need space to move around.
I recommend at least a 5 gallon tank.
Filter
This is a debatable topic as it pertains to Keeping Betta Fish.
Some people keep Betta Fish with and without a filter.
They all have varying degrees of success and there are many ways to keep Betta Fish.
If you are a beginner then I would recommend using a filter.
If you are an advanced hobbyist and have plenty of live plants then you could most definitely not need a filter.
I know plenty of people that do use and don’t use a filter.
The best way that works for me is to use a filter.
In my opinion the filter is a crucial part of purifying the water as well as oxygen exchange and water movement.
The Filter that I recommend I’ve been using for decades and it does a great job in all 3 phases of filtration:
Mechanical – Big pieces of debris
Biological – Converting Ammonia to non toxic forms
Chemical – sprays and other contaminants
Plants and Cover
Betta Fish also require some cover.
Bettas enjoy planted tanks. I think they prefer real plants but it could just be my imagination.
They don’t like a lot of flow in the water and prefer a slow calm environment.
If you provide your Betta Fish these key factors then your Betta Fish can live a long healthy life of 5 years or more.
