Why Your Young Betta’s Colour Will Change
If your betta looks different from the photograph in the listing, that is usually not a mistake. Young male bettas change as they mature, and the change can be significant. Here is what to expect, and what is not worth worrying about.
Colour Deepens First
Young males are often drab or washed out, and the colour intensifies as they develop. A fish that looked pale in its photograph may arrive looking considerably brighter. This is normal development, not a different fish.
Colour change and fin development are part of the same process, so a young fish may change both at once. If the tail type matters to you, see our article on betta tail and fin types — it explains why a “halfmoon” can be short-finned or long-finned, and why that affects what your fish looks like as it grows.
Why It Happens
Betta splendens are found in a huge range of colour and fin forms in the wild, and the extremes — the long flowing fins and intense colour of a show fish — are selected for, not natural. A young fish carries the genes for that development without yet having expressed it.
Put simply: the fish you received is the fish in the photograph, photographed before it finished growing into itself.
The “Matte” Stage
Young bettas often pass through a stage where the scales look flat and dull. It looks like the fish has lost its shine, and it looks worse than it really is. Colour returns as the fish continues developing.
It is the single most common reason a young betta looks duller in the tank than in the listing photograph.
What Is Normal, and What Is Not
Normal, and nothing to worry about:
- Colour deepening over the first weeks
- Fins lengthening and filling out
- A fish that was drab becoming vivid
Worth asking about, because these are health rather than development:
- Colour dulling after it has already deepened
- Fins clamping against the body
- Loss of appetite, or hiding
- Patchy fading rather than an even deepening
That last group overlaps with illness rather than growth, and dulling colour in a fish that has already coloured up is a genuine early warning sign. Our guide to how to tell if your betta is unwell covers what to look for, and the first thing to do is isolate the fish in a bare tank.
The Fish We Sell Are Around Six Months Old
We cannot tell you the exact age of any individual fish — it is not something a supplier can usually be certain of — but the bettas we sell are generally around six months old by the time they reach you.
At six months a male is well past the most dramatic part of his colour change, but he is not finished. Fins keep filling out, colour can still deepen, and growth in a male can continue well into his second year.
So expect some change, and expect it to be less dramatic than the change a three-month-old fish goes through. If your fish arrives and then visibly deepens in colour over a few weeks, that is exactly what six months looks like.
If You Are Buying
- Buy from someone who films the actual fish. We film every betta we sell individually, so you can see that specific fish swimming before it arrives — not a representative one.
- Ask how old the fish are. A good seller will give you an approximate age. If they cannot, that is worth knowing before you buy.
- Remember that photographs are taken on the day, and a fish keeps developing after that.
The Short Version
A young betta that colours up, grows its fins, and looks different from its listing photograph is showing you normal development. What it does not do is dull off again, clamp its fins, or stop eating — and if any of those show up, that is a health question, not a growth one.
