With all the options of live food cultures for your baby bettas to feed on, there can be some confusion about which foods to feed during the growing fry. Some of the most popular options include vinegar eels, microworms, brine shrimp (bbs), grindal worms, and white worms. The purpose of this article is to explain these foods and outline, in clear time lines, the order of the best eating schedule.

Vinegar eels are very similar to microworms. They are grown in a mixture of apple cider vinegar, apple juice, and apple chips. They move continuously like microworms. The benefit of these is that they ‘remain in the water column’. Basically, unlike microworms, they don’t sink to the bottom in 10 minutes. They stay outdoors for the betta fry to continuously hunt. Microworms are only a few millimeters long and I personally believe they are one of the best first foods for young bettas. They are easy to grow, and a culture can literally last forever if cared for properly.

Another early food for betta fry is newborn brine shrimp (generally referred to as BBS). You may have eaten brine shrimp in the past without even realizing it. They are just like the sea monkeys that many children raise in jars for fun. BBS are most nutritious right after they hatch, before the yolk sac is depleted. They incubate in 80F salt water and hatch within 18 to 24 hours. I usually have my ‘hatchery’ right in the fry tank so it easily stays at 80F. Baby Siamese fighting fish can be fed a mixture of microworms and BBS for the first 4 to 6 weeks of their lives, until they are ready for grindal worms.

Grindal worms can be considered a larger version of microworms. They are the next food for baby bettas after brine shrimp and microworms. They can grow up to 1 cm long and are grown in the ground. I feed my grindal worms flaked baby food every day to keep crops booming. By doing this, my betta fry can be fed grindal worms every day!

White worms are larger versions of grindal worms. They can grow up to several centimeters in length and have similar cultivation requirements as grindal worms, except that they are a bit more picky about their soil temperatures. When grindals are no longer good for juvenile bettas, I usually try to switch to white worms if I have some available.

Daphnia are water fleas. There are several species available, the main difference between them being size. They live in water and healthy cultures can be maintained with yeast, spirulina or ‘green water’. Juvenile and adult bettas can be fed by transferring them directly to fish tanks.