It is estimated that the reported sales of betta fish from pet stores and local fish stores have increased by a factor of three over the last three years with betta fish now being the second most commonly kept species of fish in the world.
With the popularity of betta fish and their constantly increasing sales, there are more people adding a pet betta to their family than ever.
Many of these people are beginners and this often results in a large number of people reaching out each month with various questions about their pet betta fish.
After we published our article going over how long a betta fish can go without food, we realized just how many problems people have with actually finding a suitable food for their betta fish.
Although people seem to be having a number of problems when it comes to getting their pet betta fish to actually eat, there seems to be a large number of people reaching out and asking about having problems with betta pellets being too big.
Due to this, we have decided to publish this article going over some of the related questions to betta pellet size that we have noticed people from the community asking in recent months.
We hope that this will be able to help you better understand what’s happening with your pellets as well as how you can get your betta fish to eat.
What Are Some Betta Pellets So Big?
Cheaper betta fish pellets tend to rapidly absorb water when added to your betta’s tank so if the fish does not eat the pellets quickly, they can expand to a size that is too large for the fish.
Unfortunately, this is surprisingly common with the cheaper betta pellets on the market so we would recommend that you spend that extra dollar or two so you can get the better pellets that maintain their size.
As we covered in our article on betta fish eating algae waters and betta fish eating tropical flakes, so many people see that betta fish are omnivores and make mistakes with the diet of their fish.
They may purchase generic omnivore fish pellets off the market that are designed for other fish species and are far too large for a betta fish to eat.
Many of these generic fish pellets do not have the correct macronutrient breakdown for betta fish too so keep that in mind!
Just because betta fish are technically omnivores who can process animal and plant based foods does not mean that the ratio of these foods doesn’t matter.
Betta fish can digest plant based foods but they tend to do better on a diet similar to an insectivore where the bulk of their calories comes from insect based foods.
How Big Should Betta Pellets Be?
The general advice is that the pellet size for a betta fish should be around the size of the eye of your betta fish.
This is a good rule of thumb to go by as it ensures that your betta fish should easily be able to eat a pellet that is around this size with minimal issues.
As we touched on earlier in the article though, you will commonly find that a betta fish pellet will expand when added to the water of your tank.
Depending on the specific pellet, this may only increase the pellet size by a small amount but in some cases, this can cause the pellet size to more than double in size.
If you get a high-quality betta pellet the size increase should only be minimal and not matter much.
The cheaper pellets really can swell up and increase in size though, especially if they are left to absorb water for a long period of time.
Should I Soak Betta Pellets?
We don’t recommend that you soak betta pellets if possible as most products on the market will expand in size.
That said, if you already know that your betta’s pellets are too big for your betta to eat, you can soak your betta’s pellets to make it easier for you to break the pellets down into smaller sizes.
In some cases, a betta may still pick at its pellets to break them down when soaked in water but this is not very common.
Most people who do soak big betta fish pellets will have to manually break them up once soaked in their hands but this tends to only take a couple of minutes at most.
The better betta fish pellets on the market are sealed meaning that they shouldn’t absorb water and expand in size due to being encased in a baked coating.
These are more expensive and when it comes to the actual nutritional profile, they are usually exactly the same to the regular pellets but just won’t increase in size.
This usually means that they are not worth the money for most people who feed their betta fish the right amount of pellets so their betta eats all the pellets offered within two minutes before they can swell up in size.
How Do You Crush Betta Pellets?
One thing that can work well if you have accidentally purchased generic fish food pellets for your betta fish is to crush the pellets up to make them small enough for your betta fish to eat them.
There really is a huge number of ways that you are able to do this with most of them working well.
In our opinion though, the best method to crush betta food pellets is to use the spoon method.
You simply get two spoons, put the pellets on the bottom spoon, then put the second spoon on top of the pellets and push the spoons together.
This will usually be enough to quickly and easily crush the pellets into smaller sizes so your betta fish is able to eat them with ease.
