Betta Fish: Flaring Exercise Benefits – Source Request

Picture of my gal Scully and her soul-defining meme for attention 🤣

TL;DR: Does anyone have any reliable source of information regarding whether or not purposing flaring a long-finned betta (regular, short periods of time) is actually beneficial for fin strength/health? Don’t yell at me before reading the whole thing… I don’t have a long finned betta, have never purposely stressed Scully, and don’t plan to do so 💕

I am relatively new to betta fish, but not fish keeping in general. I acquired my first betta, Scully (pictured), as a surprise when I bought a large, planted bowl off of Facebook around Thanksgiving last year.

I love her so dang much, and after being in some of these Betta groups on Reddit and Facebook, I’ve truly fallen in love with the species as a whole.

I knew there were issues with the commercialization of bettas long before I kept one simply based on seeing them in their sad little cups in big box stores (the main reason I never purposely purchased one even though they are sooooo beautiful).

But after acquiring Scully, I dove head first into learning everything I could.

While doing so, I came across several articles and social media and Reddit posts/YouTube videos regarding the benefits of purposely flaring bettas in an aquarium setting on a somewhat regular basis, with most sources saying that it is an essential part of their primal instinct and behavior, and works to strengthen their fins and gills.

Logically, I think that made sense. And I couldn’t help but think back on the infinite number of posts I’ve seen about self-nipping in long finned bettas and wonder if it had something to do at least partially with some kind of muscle necrosis from “under-stimulating“ environments – no judgement at all… I think the goal of most fish keepers, myself included, is to provide a peaceful environment.

But the only article I could find that touched the subject AND seemed to have a scientific basis was this one (sub won’t let me post a hyperlink)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1095643312005193

With social media (particularly after it became so monetized) there are COUNTLESS instances of bad/outdated/anecdotal/mythical information regurgitated for views, so I was hoping to find someone that might have stumbled across any credible information or studies that provide insight on the matter?