Raising fry require you to feed the fry food that matches the size of the frys mouths. If the food is to large for the fry mouths, they cant eat it. The food will rot in the water and create ammonia, which will adverselyly affect the water quality.
To avoid this situation, you must provide food that is small enough for the fry to eat to grow and keep the water in there tank clean. Newly hatched fry do not require food immedately after they hatch from the egg because they have a yolk sac that provides them with the nutrition they need for approximately two days. During these first two days, dont add food to the tank.
How to Feed Baby Betta Fish
Adding food to a tank where fry is not eating will create waste in their tank. After the two days, when the yolk sac is depleted, fry will require external food source. At this stage, fry have very small mouths, so the best food for fry to eat are infusoria.
Infusoria is a type of microscopic organism that remains suspended in the water where fry live. As fry grow, their mouths grow bigger, so you can feed them food like microworms or vinegar eel. These types of foods are helpful because they will remain alive in the water for several hour so fry dont have to feed them as often.
When fry are ten days old, you can introduce them to baby brine shrimp. Baby brine shrimp may move faster than fry can swim, but at ten days of age, fry should of enough swimming strength to catch these prey fish. Betta fry has very small stomachs and cannot eat one large meal each day.
Their feeding schedule should occur throughout the daylight hours. When fry are young, feed them six meal a day. However, when fry reach the juvenile stage, reduce their feeding to two meals a day.
Live food is better for frys diet than prepared food. When feeding fry live food, they learn to hunting for there food. As fry learn to hunt for live food, they will learn to accept other types of food as they mature into adult betta fish.
If you dont have live food culture to feed fry, offer them egg yolk paste. However, egg yolk paste breaks down very quickly in the tank so this food should only be used if live food is unavailable. Fry digest their food slowly when the water temperature in the tank are cool.
If food isnt being digested, it will rot in the water and adversely affect the quality of the water. To avoid this problem, you must feed fry using a gentle sponge filter. These filters will remove waste from the tank without creating strong water currents that will exhaust the fry or make it difficulty for them to eat.
Perform a ten percent water change each day to help keep the ammonia level in the water low. The most common mistake when raising fry is using the wrong size of food for the fry or feeding them too much food. Using food that is too large for fry will make them unable to eat and will pollute the water tank.
Feeding fry too much food will cause bacterial bloom in the tank. Ensure that the food size match the size of the fry mouths at all times. By the fourth week, fry have grown to reach the juvenile stage.
At this stage, their fins begins to lengthen and their colors become more visible. The feeding schedule of fry at this stage is the same as adult betta fish, but the portion of food must be small in size. Continue to ensure that the size of the food matches the size of the fry mouths so that they remain healthy and the water in their tank stay clean.
