NLS pellets are so tiny...larger betta pellets?

[Blue Fish]

I have been feeding the New Life Spectrum Betta food for several months, and my guys eat it well, everyone is happy. But, the betta pellets are SO TINY. Two of my fish are freakishly huge bettas (they're not kings...one is a crowntail and the other is a some sort of halfmoon) but they're the size of king bettas or bigger. One of them is okay with the tiny pellets, he just eats lots of them, but the other seems to have trouble eating them. He has a thick upper lip, and they get stuck on his lip when he goes for them and he can't get them off. Right now he just waits for them to sink and catches them or eats them off the bottom, which is fine, but I wondered about larger pellets.

I went to my LFS, and there are some larger New Life Spectrum pellets, the ingredients seem to be largely the same, but they're not specifically for bettas. Would it hurt my larger boys to feed them these larger pellets that may not be exactly the same?

Are there certain ingredients to definitely avoid?

These larger pellets are all NLS, so they're high quality, and "meat" is their first ingredient, they're just not geared towards bettas.

Anyone else ever have this quandry?

[ChoclateBetta]

Omega one is bigger.

[Viva]

The bigger NLS pellets will be just as nutritious for your bettas, and if they are happier eating larger pellets I'd switch! The ingredients are essentially the same because I looked around at all sorts of types of NLS pellets and they all had the same primary ingredients. Switching shouldn't affect them at all.

[Blue Fish]

Great, thanks for the information! I'll pick him up some of the bigger NLS pellets. :)

[Tikibirds]

I just feed them a little more since they are so tiny. I also have the Hiraki pellets but those seem a bit too big. Every now and then, I toss in some betta flakes just for variety.

[babystarz]

Smaller pellets are actually easier to digest, so keep that in mind and don't necessarily go too huge! Even if the fish are big, bettas can become constipated pretty easily.

I would say make sure to research any ingredient you don't recognize, especially if it's listed in the last 5, because those tend to be preservatives and other weird additives. And a good rule of thumb is, the top quality foods have fish or meat in the first 3 ingredients, with no wheat or gluten derivatives in the first 3 ingredients (although further down the list is fine). The order matters because ingredients are listed by percentage of the total pellet in descending order (and this is the same rule used for people food too).