How do you make a betta fish live longer?

Answer 1

The best way to keep any fish healthy and give it a long life is to provide them with water parameters and conditions that suite their particular species requirements perfectly and also to provide a variety of nutritious foods (including live foods) that are suitable for the species. Absence of stress is another thing to keep in mind as stress is a well known killer of most life forms. Conditions required for a Beta splendens are a lit, covered, well planted, heated, filtered, tank containing a minimum quantity of 8 gallons of water. (NOT a 2 gal NOMINAL sized tank or a bowl). Optimum water parameters for Betta splendens are Temp 78F, pH 6.8 GH >150ppm. Water changes of 50% weekly are good. There are good commercial Betta specific foods available and these can be used as a basic diet that should be enhanced(varied) by the addition of various live foods such as Daphnia, Brine shrimp, Mosquito larvae, White worms and any other live food that is small enough for the Betta to swallow and is available at the better pet shops. Being a short lived species, given all these reasonable conditions a Betta can be expected to live around 4 years.