Will fish from a fish butcher be ok for food?
My neighbours feed their Siamese fighting fish normal fishfood flakes from the supermaket, with no apparent ill effects.
I’m not sure about feeding them fish from a butcher. I fed my fighting fish frozen brine shrimp. IIRC, we purchased the shrimp from pet shops, and the stuff was pretty cheap. We kept the frozen chunk of shrimp in the freezer, and broke off tiny pieces of it and dropped them in his tank at feeding time. My fish lived for nearly three years, longer than average, so I guess he was happy.
You could always grow Sea Monkeys™ - then you’d have a never-ending food supply.
Bettas (which is, BTW, pronounced bet-UH, not like beta… this is a pet peeve) eat (surprise!) betta food. Go to any petstore and you can choose from several foods made specifically for bettas. They also like bloodworms and brine shrimp as treats, which you should be able to get at your local fish store as well.
And while we’re on the subject, bettas are NOT perfectly happy being kept in little cups and bowls. They can SURVIVE living in tight quarters with frequent water changes (just like you would survive if I forced you to live in a closet) due to their ability to breath air from the surface they their labrynth organ, but will not thrive. They do best in 5+ gallons, with a filter and heater set to 78*F (they are tropical fish).
Oh, and those nifty little setups that have the fish in a vase with a peace lily plant instructing you not to feed the fish because it will live off algae on the plant roots… BS. Bettas are carnivores, they will pick at the roots as a last measure but will eventually starve to death.
(sorry this is so long, but SO many people have been grossly misinformed about proper pet care and it makes me sad)
(code fixed - Jill. ps - Never heard that bet-UH before.)
[Edited by JillGat on 06-16-2001 at 11:05 PM]
That should have read: “due to their ability to breathe air from the surface with their labyrinth organ”
::andy thinks maybe she needs to start previewing or stop posting at 4am::
Oh yeah, and only feed the amount they can eat in about 5 minutes, once or twice a day.
I swear I’m done now 
A friend of mine has a betta (funny, I wouldn’t have thought anyone would pronounce it “beta.” ) in with 4 goldfish, and they’ve happily lived together for six or seven months so far. She feeds them betta food and goldfish flakes, and they all eat both with no ill effects.
I thought about getting a betta to go with my new tank of goldfish, but to my surprise, it’s been three weeks and all of the fish are healthy, so I don’t want to add another fish to crowd them. I thought fish always died when starting a new tank…just lucky that I got healthy ones, I guess!
I have two different types of foods for my betta. I have the standard betta food. Tetra BettaMin: Goldfish Medly is it’s official name that I feed him. Then there’s also Tetra BloodWorms. He seems to like both of them.
Well, now I’m curious. Is there some reason you don’t wanna use regular fish food?
My personal experience with feeding real animal protein to fish is that it’s amazing how fast it’ll spoil and pollute the whole tank. If you overfeed with fish flakes, you just get green water. But if you overfeed with little bitty chunks of animal protein–man, what a slimy reeking mess the leftover food doth make. Want to spend some time trolling around your aquarium with a net, fishing for leftover food? Not to mention what all the teeny crumbs of uneaten animal protein do, once they’re gathered into the filter… Ewww.
this really isn’t a good idea. Bettas are tropical fish, goldfish are coldwater fish. Bettas are carnivores, goldfish are mostly herbivores. If they both eat the food meant for the other, they’re not getting a proper diet. Also, goldfish can carry diseases that are harmless to them but can hurt the betta. Not to mention goldfish are EXTREMELY messy fish, and produce way too much waste for a betta to handle. If the tank isn’t large enough I suspect all the fish will become ill soon.
How big is your tank, and how many fish do you have? Like I said, goldfish are VERY messy, and 15-30gallons per fish is usually recommended (even for babies). Fish die when starting a new tank because there is not sufficient bacteria to convert the ammonia they produce into something less harmful, and they slowly poison themselves to death. I suggest you invest in ammonia and nitrite test kits so you can keep an eye on those and know when they get too high so you can do water changes. the nitrogen cycle
If you start up any more tanks in the future, it’s best to cycle the tank WITHOUT fish, so keep this link handy: fishless cycling.
fishgirl shutting up now…
You shouldn’t have to feed pet fish any home-made foods; today’s flakes and frozen fish foods are good enough to keep and breed just about any kind of fish. Add some cultured live foods and there’s nothing you can’t keep. If you try feeding your fish from a 2lb chunk of halibut, you’ll run into problems and quit fast. One kind of meat ONLY will lack certain nutrients; it will also decay in the water much faster than other kinds of fish food. Also, if you’re feeding anything smaller than 4-5" fish, they won’t eat much. This means you’ll keep that fillet of sole in the freezer for the next three months… and you’ll resent trying to cut or break off a peice the size of a marble every day, ending up with slimy fingers and a weird-shaped chunk of frost-bitten whatever-you-bought-last spring taking up space in the freezer. Although it depends on the source, you also run the risk of introducing disease into your tank/s via whatever was on the fish you bought. Not much of a risk, but still there. I have fed whitefish roe to some sculpins I was keeping, but only because I collected them (legally) from the same river and only for a treat.
Stick with good flakes and bloodworms/brine shrimp for bettas, they’ll do fine.