If you go on a good day you’ll have dozens of bettas to pick from. Here’s how to identify the healthiest ones:

1. Their scales will be uniform – no bumps or swelling underneath, and no ulcers or boils.
2. Body color will be rich and deep.
3. Fins should be in tact with no tears or ragged edges or signs of fin rot. Fins should be long and flowing.




4. Fish should be responsive to you. It should perk up as you get close to its cup, and it should flare its fins and move around when you pick up the cup to inspect it.
5. The stomach should be well-rounded but not bloated.
6. Fish should not be listing or leaning to one side or the other. It should not have any trouble getting off the bottom of the cup, and it shouldn’t move around like its struggling (except for struggling because the container its in is so unbelievably small…)
7. Its eyes should be clear and not looking like they are popping out of their sockets.
8. The fish’s excrement should be dark, not colorless.
9. The fish’s body and fins should not have any signs of fungus or ich or anything else – take a good close-up look for anything that looks like salt or dust or cotton anywhere on the this. This will be harder if your fish is light colored.

I had some time to spare downtown yesterday, and went into a Petsmart, then a Petco to see what their betta fish selection was. Wow – what a difference. Hands down, Petco wins.


The experience at Petsmart: the bettas were in those sad little travel cups. The water in the cups was blue – I believe this is a water conditioner, though it might also be a sedative. When my discus fish were overnighted to me, they were in a similar blue solution and I had to follow a set of instructions to “wake them up” properly.

Anyway, the fish were in whatever that blue solution is, but they looked pretty terrible. Many had fins that were already disappearing or rotting, and they were completely lethargic – when I had my head 4 inches from the cups, they barely moved. Maybe the blue stuff is a sedative.

I did notice the $3.99 32 oz bottles of “betta water” they were selling. As mentioned in this article about betta water conditioners, betta water may be one of the biggest scams going.

Petsmart did have a few female bettas, which they hadn’t had the last time. It was pretty hard to find them, though. The whole betta selection was on one shelf, with betta cups going back all the way to the back of the shelf, if you could see that far. It was kinda depressing and alarming, actually. I wonder if Petsmart has adopted the “lets make the pets look really miserable so people feel sorry for them and take them home” philosophy.

The rest of the store did look OK. The fish in the real display tanks were healthy.  And they had live plants which makes my little heart go pitter-patter. I bought my Marineland 5 gallon hex tank there – much more about that later.

Petco was completely different. They had an entire aisle-end dedicated to showing off their bettas. The little cups (alas, still little cups) were crystal-clear clean, with no blue substance. And they had half moons! $13 each.

This was definitely the place to get a betta. The fish looked so much healthier, their colors were so much more vibrant, and they had some really cool, unusual fish (for a pet store; the sky’s the limit if you buy from a breeder) like plakats, and crowntails, and a very cool navy blue butterfly (which means his body was blue, but the exterior half of his fins were transparent).

After I get my two tanks set up for the great betta tank experiment, I’m going back to Petco to get my next fish. I still wish Pete’s Pets, our old local, non-chain pet store was still in business. They would have stomped even Petco.