This page is dedicated to trying to make your betta happier and enrich his or her life!
This will mostly be tips and information on their behaviour and entertaining them, so if you’re newer to betta fish keeping or you think that your betta fish is actually unwell or depressed, you’re better off starting from one of the links below first. I’d start with water care – poor water is the root of all problems!
How do I know if they’re happy?
This is a pretty good question… but there are signs that you can look for!
If your fish is doing all the things on the left and none of the things on the right, you can be pretty sure that they’re pretty happy with life. You can still make their lives more interesting though!
A Happy Fish Will…
- Build bubble nests!
- Be pleased or interested to see you
- Eat, enthusiastically!
- Interact with their environment
An Unhappy Fish Will…
- Ignore you at feeding time
- ‘Pace’ along the glass endlessly
- Be disinterested in eating
- Lie about for long periods of time
If your fish is doing some of the things on the left, some of these are more worrying signs than others. If they’re lying about or not eating, go straight to our illness section, because a betta fish who isn’t eating is a bit of a red flag. But if they’ve just got a bit less interested in you, or appear more bored in general, read on for some tips on how to improve their mood.
Environment
One of the biggest improvements you can make to your betta’s day to day life is by adding things to his or her tank that are different or new. Bettas are intelligent fish, and if everything they see every day remains the same for a long time, they do tend to get bored of it.
Live plants are an excellent way of doing this – because they grow and change every day, as well as all the benefits they have for keeping the water quality excellent. Their leaves are soft and forgiving on a betta’s fins, and they enjoy hiding in them, moving around them, and playing with them! You can see in this photo that Toro has built a bubble nest among the leaves of the plant in his tank, and he often likes to swim around the stems.
If live plants sound a bit daunting, that’s fine, there’s lots more things that you can add to the tank. If you search online for ‘betta hides’ or ‘betta caves’ you’ll find lots of products designed specifically for bettas to hide in and around. Anything new will be interesting to them – but check the reviews to make sure that people haven’t had any problems with their fish getting stuck in them or tearing their fins.
There are lots of natural products that you can use such as driftwood and other stones or types of wood that provide interesting places for a fish to hide and explore. In the foreground I have some bogwood, and in the background a fake product designed to look like wood which Fury can fit entirely inside if he wants some piece and quiet. Note that many products (fake or real) can affect the pH in your tank, so it’s something to check before and after you add it. Driftwood is known to lower pH for example, unless you boil it first.
Changing the things that the fish sees every now and then, or even temporarily adding new items will keep your betta from getting bored! Just make sure that they’re aquarium safe first.
WATER PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS:
Interaction
Remember that you are the biggest creature in your bettas life, and the one that brings food! If you interact with them, they will interact back, and this can bring extra fun to both of your day!
The easiest way to interact with your betta is to establish a routine around feeding time. If you give your betta certain signs before you feed them, they will quickly associate this behaviour with eating, and start to appear at the top of the tank ready to be fed. I switch off the filter before I feed my fish, so now whenever it turns off, they start getting excited for food!
Sometimes you can also use a pen or your finger to move across the glass and a curious betta will often chase or follow it, interested to know what it is.
Food
Varying the food that you give your betta is a good way to keep his life interesting – especially if you can get some live food that he needs to hunt or chase! Live food is less complicated to feed than you think – it’s possible to maintain it and produce it yourself, but it’s not very expensive so you can also just buy a very small amount and feed it gradually if you have a single fish (I have 6 fish and purchased a small pack of blood worms which lasted about 5 days).
My Better Betta 