How to Feed Frozen Fish Foods

LD wrote:

OK, if you buy a female w/ no intent to breed her, what happens to the eggs? Does she spawn them w/ out a male and they just don’t get fertilized, or does she re-absorb them?

Also, frozen food has us a bit stumped. It comes in little cubes, do you
feed it frozen? Do you let one cube thaw and feed from that. Do you
refrigerate it?

I know, silly questions, but I have to know and can’t seem to find the
info anywhere else, I want to be a good betta mommy!

A: As for females’ eggs. Without a male present females will just reabsorb the eggs, usually without incident.

I’m glad you’re asking about frozen foods. These are great questions that stump a lot of hobbyists. Frozen foods come in either blocks or a flat pack. Flat packs are more of a frozen wafer then a block and offer smaller portions. Either is fine. People feed blocks to their fish in a variety of ways depending on the size and the number of fish they have to feed.

For smaller fish like bettas, breaking up the block is usually the first step. If you are feeding a lot of fish you may use a whole block and can start by defrosting it. To defrost a frozen block of food I add it to a small plastic baggy, close it up and just run it under warm tap water until it melts. Then I drop portions into several aquariums using either aquarium forceps, a toothpick or an eyedropper. Once frozen food had defrosted it becomes susceptible to bacteria and shouldn’t be refrozen. If you have any extra you can toss it in the fridge and use it the next day or two but then should throw it away if you don’t use it up.

A second option, which I am using now that I have reduced the amount of aquariums at home, is to again add a block of frozen food to a sandwich bag, wrap it up in a towel and whale on it with a hammer until it is finely crushed. Ok, ok, I’m not exactly whaling on it, but it sounds more fun to say it that way. It actually breaks up with surprisingly little force. Then you can take out the the quantity you need and return the rest of the crushed frozen food to the freezer. The crushed bits that you intend to use can either be defrosted as mentioned above or added directly to the tank frozen. Because the pieces are so small the tank water will defrost them very quickly and they will begin to sink within a minute or so.

Those are the methods I use but I’m sure others will have suggestions as well. There isn’t any one way that is best.

Good luck experimenting with frozen fish foods. I’m sure your betta will LOVE it.

A note to the readers: Let us know how YOU feed frozen foods to your betta. We’d love to hear it.