Bettas

Bettas are the fish most often bought on impulse and most often kept badly, which is a shame, because a betta in a proper setup is one of the most rewarding fish in the hobby. Ours are hand-selected, and we would rather send you home with the right tank than just the fish.

What a betta actually needs

Five gallons is where we would start, with a footprint longer than it is tall — bettas swim horizontally and have to reach the surface to breathe, so length beats height. A heater is not optional: they are tropical fish, and a tank that drifts cool overnight and warms by afternoon is harder on them than one held steady a degree or two off ideal. A gentle filter, because they are poor swimmers and constant current exhausts them. And a lid, because they jump.

Fin type changes the care

Halfmoons and other heavy-finned varieties are carrying real weight — they tire faster, want the gentlest flow you can manage, and benefit from a broad leaf or hammock near the surface to rest on. They are also the ones that tear on sharp decor and the ones most prone to fin biting. Plakats are the opposite: short-finned, fast, genuinely active, and much more likely to jump. Crowntails have exposed ray tips where damage starts, so clean water matters more. King and giant bettas break the five-gallon rule outright and want ten or more.

Rot, biting, or a tear?

Three different problems that get treated as one. Fin rot recedes from the edge inward with a dark ragged margin and advances over days — a water quality problem first. Biting takes clean semicircular chunks out overnight with no dark edge, and it is behavioral: medication will not touch it. A tear is mechanical, from sharp decor or an intake, and stays pale without advancing. And regrowing fin comes in clear, which alarms people who think it is disappearing when it is actually healing.

We go deeper on betta keeping at Betta Believe, our betta-specific site.