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So you find yourself wondering how long does the average better live for
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Well in this video I'm not only going to answer that question but I'm going to tell you how you can
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increase the life expectancy of your better fish. Hello friends, welcome back to the channel
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If you're new here my name is Richard and I'm a fish and shrimp breeder based in the UK
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So what is the average lifespan for a better? Well typically your your average
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better will live between three and four years. Now obviously that does very massively fish to fish
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But the thing you have to remember is day one doesn't start the day you bring your fish home
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Typically, male bettas are around 12 months old before they're sold in the store
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They're not typically sold until around 12 months old because by that point they've developed their finage
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they've developed their colour and they're most attractive to us, the buyers
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Very few of us would go and buy a one month old better because it would be a small grey fish
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that didn't impress us in the slightest. So now that we know the average better will live for three or four years, give or take
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what can we do as fishkeepers to ensure our bettas have the longest, healthiest life possible
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But there's a number of things we can do. First off let start by keeping them in a suitable aquarium Yes bettas are often sold in cups You going to the store and there be in a cup or a tiny bag But in fact for a better to live its best life
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for it to be healthy and happy and colourful, it really needs a decent water volume
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I would say a minimum really is five gallons, but seven or ten per better
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would be much more beneficial to the fish. The more water we keep our bettors in
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not only does that give them more swimming, but the larger of the volume of water, the easier it is to keep that water stable, to keep the water parameters, to keep the nitrate levels, to keep the temperature stable
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It's far easier to keep 5,000 gallons stable than it is 5 gallons
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So one way to ensure your better has a long healthy life is to keep it in a decent size aquarium
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Now tip number two for ensuring your better lives as long as possible will be to feed it a good quality balanced diet
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A lot of us are guilty of just offering our fish one type of food once a day
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Pinch a flake, pinch a flake, pinch a flake. That's all we give our fish day after day after day
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But in fact in the wild, and our betas are far removed from the world, but in the world they
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would eat a massive variety of food They would eat worms and waterborne crustaceous and insects that fell into the water They would eat baby fish they come across and all sorts of other invertebrates Whilst as I say
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our bettors are not living in the wild and are fairly far removed from their wild cousins
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the more food we can give them, the more variety of foods we give them, the better
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Typically, I'll give my own bettors a mix of pellets, of flake, of live or frozen bloodworm or daphnear
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mosquito larvae. I like to every day try and give them something a little bit different
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meaning they get a whole wide variety of vitamins and minerals and nutrients
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which ensures they're happy, healthy, colourful, bright-eyed, it helps them fight off pests and diseases
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The healthier you can make your fish by giving it a more balanced diet, the better it will be
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and the longer it will live. Now a second thing we can do to ensure our better live as long as possible is actually don't keep
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in sight of other betters. Now we all know that better fish will fight one another
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If you put two males in a tank, they will battle it out, often to the death
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But in fact, researchers showed that betters can become almost equally as stressed
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if they're kept in aquariums next to one another. If they can constantly see another male better from their tank they seem to live their life in the perpetual defensive mode Even though they can get to that better they be constantly flaring and
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showing themselves and preparing themselves for battle. And research has shown that those
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stress levels can actually reduce the life of the better. Now my final tip for ensuring
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your better has a long, healthy life is to make sure you keep the aquarium water clean
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and fresh. Now one way we do this is with filters and the filters will remove the ammonia
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and the nitrites from the quorum water but they won't lower the nitrate levels. Nitrates do form
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naturally as part of the whole nitrogen cycle when our fish go to the bathroom and the best way
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we can keep our nitrate levels down is to carry out regular water changes. Change anywhere from 10 to 50
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percent of the water once a week or once a fortnight adding back fresh declawinated tap water to keep
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the nitrate levels low to keep your better fish happy and healthy and to increase its
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life expectancy. In fact, this is such an important subject that I recently created a whole
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video explaining why nitrates can be bad for our fish and our shrimp and how we can keep
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the nitrate levels down. And you can watch that video by clicking here. Thanks for watching