Why a Betta is an Excellent First Fish for Children

When my son Robby wanted to raise fish, I was clueless about aquariums and tropical fish. I figured we could throw some goldfish in a bowl, toss in some food once in a while and the fish would take care of everything else.

Well, it turned out not to be that simple. The clerk at the pet store explained to us that we needed things like heaters, and lamps, a filtering system, gravel, plants, nets, and a dozen other things that brought to the price tag to well over $150. Call me cheap, but that's a lot of money to spend on a hobby a child may lose interest in. I had hoped for a less expensive solution, but there just didn't seem to be one. In the end, we spent the $150 and bought some guppies, which lived for about 3 weeks.

Since that time, our family has learned a lot about taking care of tropical fish. To properly care for a large community of fish, you must make the investment in a quality aquarium system. However, if all your child wants is a single fish in a small bedside bowl, we discovered that nothing beats a Betta for beauty, value, and ease of care. Bettas, also known as Siamese Fighting fish, are brightly colored freshwater fish with long, flowing fins. Bettas are easy to care for because they do not require special aquarium equipment such as lights, heaters, or filters that most other tropical fish seem to need. We keep our Betta in a 2 gallon goldfish bowl we found at a local thrift store for $3.

Basic Betta care & costs

Bettas are inexpensive to purchase~they currently retail for $2.99 at a local pet store~ and inexpensive to feed. We feed ours HBH Betta bites which retails at about $1.90 for a 1.4 oz container. Because these fish only require a couple of granules of food a day, the container lasts us almost a year.