Personally, I'm not very fond of the fighting type betta fish. For me, it's just plain cruel to buy living things and make them fight to the death, while we gain profits from it. But that's the trend in my country (Indonesia) and other South East Asia countries like Thailand, Philippine, and also China. Well, what's an opinion of one man? So I googled around to find training methods for fighting type betta fish (which is also useful for non-fighting ones, just for excercise), compiled it together, and, here you go.
1. Conditioning
Ensure that the tank or jar has sufficient room for your betta to easily turn around. Plants or objects that might interfere with this should be placed at the back or to one side of the tank in order to leave sufficient room for circling. Bettas that are in compound tanks have softer skin and their scales are not smooth enough to tolerate hard hitting from the sharp teeth of the opponent. They need to be kept individually in a jar or bottle for conditioning for about a week. Add 5 ml of Atison's Betta SPA per gallon of water in the container. This extract of wild almond leaf will make the skin and scales harder. During one week in the container, just feed them once every two days with Atison's Betta PRO. This food is preferable since the Betta will get a lower fat diet than with other foods for fish. Keep the fishes in their individual containers without seeing each other. After a week, the fishes will lose their fat, their scales will become stronger and harder and they will look shinier than before the conditioning. If there is no time to do the training or if there is a lack of opponents, the fish can be kept in the conditioning container for another 2-3 weeks without any problem. No water change is required during this conditioning, for up to a month.
2. In the morning move him to new soft water (condition new water with dry banana leaf). 15 minutes after you have moved him to his new container, put a small female into his container for a minute. The male will flare and chase female around. You should remove the female immediately if your betta fighter starts to bite her. This is to make your fighter active and fierce. Do this step again in the evening. Make sure he doesn't bite anything during training to protect his teeth for fighting!
The whole process of training will last about 6 to 7 days, depending on the fitness of the fighter. The training period should not take longer than 10 days. The longer the training period, the more boring and stressful it becomes for the fish. If there is no suitable opponent, just put the fish back to the conditioning process again. Then do the exercising process, step by step.
3. Prepare a circle tank or at least 15" high bucket with a small aquarium water pump. Put 12" water high and put a small bottle with a female into the center of the male's tank. Put your fighter into circle tank. He will swim around the female bottle to try to fight the female. Turn on the water pump to flow the water around tank. Your fighter will try to go against the water flow. Let him exercise like this for 15 minutes after feeding in the morning and evening. This will give your fighter a strong body and help him to develop good breathing techniques.
The fighter will chase the females around the container. It looks beautiful when he is chasing the females. Leave the fighter in the container for about 5 minutes or until the fighter starts to bite a female. Take him out and leave all the females in the container. Repeat this process again next morning for another 4 days.
4. Let your fighter have rest in his container. Repeat day 8 step once a day. Feed him only a little food in the evening.
5. To make a fighter more furious and aggressive is one of the most important part of this betta fish training method. If a fighter is not aggressive and furious, it will not bite hard and bites less often. Every betta has their own territory and will protect it for life. Therefore if one invades one's territory a fighting begin. I use a small healthy female put into a fighter's container. The fighter will chase the female and finally it bites the female furiously.
Normally training a betta takes two weeks - one week for conditioning, and one week to exercises. Be sure to feed your fish with proper food, and don't forget about relaxing. That way you can grow a real fighter with this simple betta fish training method!
Thanks to bettafishguide.blogspot.com for this one.
Now I've seen a lot of betta fish that people call turquoise-something-fish. I see those fish indeed have the color of turquoise. But then I found this really cool fish that has the color of a real turquoise stone. And it also has hey-this-is-my-area attitude towards other fish. Not dashing around, just staying calm with its fins wide opened and its eyes right on the target. And so we have a name for him: The Cool Brother.
