How do I get my girl to stop eating the sinking wafers I put in for my Cory cats and loaches? Even if I feed her first (floating pallets), she’ll still go after the other fishes food and then have a huge bloated belly after. Should I just stop the betta pallets and let her feast with the others?
https://i.redd.it/oedx8a7hkzag1.jpeg
Posted by Suspicious-Squish
2 Comments
You can try that, but that also risks feeding her a poor diet. What i did with mine is put the betta in a breeder box for every community feeding. It is a hassle, but it’s to ensure they dont overeat and to still be able to feed them an appropriate high quality food. It’s however a different story if you’re feeding everyone else frozen or live foods. Then you can just feed them all together and that’s it.
I feel you, OP: I’m having this same struggle with my boy Chili Pepper. Im a new keeper as well but from what I understand, the wafers dont have the right nutrition for bettas, so feeding them those isnt a good idea and we should try to prevent them from eating the other fishes food – but HOW?!
THIS is the fact they should be telling people to make them think twice about keeping betta in community tanks 🤣 My guy has been so good with his tankmates but he is BAD for stealing food! He even started taking chunks of the blanched veggies I tried to feed yesterday 😒🙄
I tried to feed my betta and corys at the same time so he would be distracted while they ate, but as soon as he finished his meal he found theirs and I had to rush to siphon out the rest before he ate himself to death. Today I’m going to try a) feeding the corys much less (admittedly I think I overestimated how much they’d need which also contributed to the problem) and b) feeding Chili Pepper piece by piece and engaging in some enrichment during such as making him chase the food before giving it to him or using a mirror for flaring practice so the corys have more time. Not sure if it’ll work, but here’s hoping….
I’m going to follow this post and see if more experienced keepers have other ideas aside from cupping them which I would rather not do if I can find an alternative as I don’t want to stress him unnecessarily either! Wishing us both luck, lol.