• Usually when bettas are fed live foods they become very spoiled and will despise other foods. Such is not your case. Betta Bites hardly qualify as best, tastiest, most gourmet betta foods LOL. I will leave you with one last suggestion (perhaps the best one on this page today): Get frozen brine shrimp and try that. I think you will find he will go for it. They last forever in the freezer and bettas seem to really like them, even the picky ones!  Goodluck!

    Q: I want to vary my betta's diet, and I got freeze dried bloodworms for him but he won't eat them (he's used to HBH Betta Bites). He won't swallow them. What can I do to get him to try them?

    Question submitted by Cathy, Urbana - Illinois
    A: Ahhh the picky little devils!!!!! Picky, and quite stubborn, too ;).

    Here are a few tricks to try to make a betta eat a new food:

    		Eat the food right in front of him and make a lot of noises such as "YUM" or "Ohhh it's SOOOOO good" or.... Wait. This is my dog trick. I tried it on bettas and after eating two pints of live blackworms, had to stop because I noticed the bettas little faces were all gathered behind the glass wall and all were laughing at me. :( I was quite offended. LOL
    OK, seriously now, some people go for the muscle approach. Basically you don't feed the betta anything BUT the new food until they finally break down and submit. Right! At least that's the idea. Knowing that bettas can go for weeks without eating, this tactic seems risky to me and I do not favor it.
    Now for the smart approach (mine hehehehehehe). You first start by feeding the new food to your growout tank bettas. In community tank, the competition for food is fierce and bettas will gobble up foods promptly because they know that if they don't get to it first, their siblings will. So it is easier to get community tank bettas to eat new foods, than it is to get a jarred betta to. Once your community bettas eat the new food readily, then what you do is move the jarred betta to a display inside the community tank. You can pick a "specimen container" (which does not allow water to flow through) if you are worried about your priced betta sharing the same water and possibly any infection with your community bettas. Then you feed the community tank, right near the display, so Mr. Betta can SEE all the others pigging out. After he has seen them eat 3 days in a row (and he didn't get food), then feed them and after 1 minute, add one or two morsels to his display area, near the place where the other bettas are eating (of course on the other side of the partition). This is psychological warfare and can work in some cases. Of course if you only have one betta then you are SOL.
    Approach #3: You realize that you are not in control of your betta, but rather your betta is in control of YOU, and accept the fact, submit to his will and go on with your life. ;P

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