What size bowl? If it was too much effort for him to surface for air in a bowl then it may be "sick". Loss of color is not a good thing. When keeping a betta in a bowl, not the best way to do it no matter what the fish shops say, you have to change water frequently. You must add a dechlorinator if it is treated city supplied water and not from a private well. Sounds like he is stressed from poor water conditions(not meaning your tap water is cloudy or contaminated, but fish, fish poop and uneatten food create ammonia which is deadly). The only way to treat this is frequent water changes. The best advise is do a little research on how to set up a freshwater tropical fish tank and get a 5-10 gal min. with proper filtration. Your fish will be much happier and live a lot longer healthy life instead of just surviveing in a bowl. Unfortunately they are marketed this way (Bowls and the puddle crap story)and unless proper care is given they end up getting very sick, lathargic and soon die.

Bettas also like to have a couple friends around. They all have their personalities, but often they aren't aggressive toward other fish (unless the other fish happens to be a betta or something that looks similar). I was even told that they could be put in with ultra-sensitive things like frogs!

Once you have determined beyond all reasonable doubt that your tank and betta are healthy, you may want to consider getting him a buddy.

Good luck

Never put two bettas together as a buddy one will kill the other. I have a betta in a ten gallon alone no one else and he is fine swims a lot eats and is active. a ten gallon with caves and other places of interest keeps them happy and active and is nice decoration for a room. diffently put him into something that can be cycled and he should live a long time. Some bettas have lived five years with good care.

I had one for 7 years. The longest i heard in a bowl was 2 years

Try tempting him with live food. Most good fish stores (not Petsmart or Petco) carry California blackworms. My wife's betta loves them.

I had a betta live 5 years in a LARGE bowl, not one marketed for bettas, more like a small goldfish bowl. Frequent water changes and I used bottled distilled water instead of tap water even tho we were on a well and not on city water.

But if you downsized him and then he did this - he's not happy. They do need space, and clean water, and light and warmth. He's probably warm enough in HI, mine was always on the cold side here in WA and I felt sorry for him but I was not going to heat the whole house to 75 just for the betta.

They're also fussy about food. Mine loved live mosquito larvae and they're real easy to find and catch and he will not let any escape to maturity, don't worry. He also ate special dried Betta Pellets but live food is best. However get him back into a larger bowl first. They do like to sit at the bottom of the bowl and come up occasionally for air, it's not necessarily a struggle for them, that's what they do in the wild - if they sat at the surface they'd be heron food in no time.

My fish has the same problem, but he isn't losing any color and hasnt had any tank changes. I've had him for about 6 months so I'm really concerned about his behavior. He always used to eat so greedily, but now it seems like he can't for some reason.

Similar problem. I've had my betta for under a week, living in a 1 gallon bowl. He looks extremely healthy; brightly colored, no fin damage, active, making lots of bubbles. I've taken to feeding him about twice a day; in the morning and at night, just one or two pellets.
He's eaten the food and then spit it out on a few occasions before, and I figured that he wasn't hungry, but now I'm wondering if it's something else?
I would like to get him live food, but I'm a college student and don't have a car, and I doubt if there's a great petstore in this small town.
How often should the water be changed? I was thinking once a week, but perhaps every few days would be better.

yes go with a filtered tank. They are supercheap, the whole set under $50 and that is for a 10 gallon even! check Wal Mart.
There is a huge difference between 'survive' and 'THRIVE'.

My daughters each have a little 5 gallon filtered set up in their rooms and each have a trapdoor snail and an aquatic frog (dwarf). everybody is happy.

geez I only feed mine once every other - or every third day!

I wanted to post this on the net in as many places as I can, and I'm starting here, as this is one of the first places that "betta won't eat" turns up on google.
My wife and I bought a betta about three weeks ago for our son, who just turned four. The fish was happy when we put him in his ten gallon filtered tank, with two guppies (both female) We were told that this was the max amount of fish to cycle a tank with. Within twenty four hours, the guppies died (aww... poor pippy longfinnies...) but the betta (Elvis) made it just fine. However, he wouldn't eat. We kept putting in food, and he wouldn't eat. After a week, I was beginning to wonder how long a betta could go without eating. After two weeks, I bought these betta pellets to put in the bottom of the tank which would fall apart, and the betta could nip at, at his leisure.
He still didn't eat. These pellets turn to dust, and the dust wasn't even remotely disturbed. At two and a half weeks, I did a 10% water change, just to try to get rid of all the uneaten food in his tank. Also, at this point, I was giving him only one pellet a day, just so he would have SOMETHING to eat. But after the pellets became water logged and sank, I counted them. He was literally eating NOTHING. Or maybe just a quarter of a "betta bit" a night?
At three weeks, I assumed that Elvis was going to die. He looked healthy, the acid, ammonium, nitrite, and nitrate, were all fine, he was totally active, but he absolutely WOULD NOT EAT! I looked up every fish disorder I could find, and it wasn't Tuberculosis, ich, fungus, parasites, dropsey, or anything else I could put a finger on. He looked like a perfectly healthy, remotely active (which I hear is somewhat common for a betta) somewhat depressed, betta. I even got him some blood worms to try. He watched me put them in, followed them to the bottom as they sank, and stared at them for a minute or two, before swimming away.
Finally, (yesterday) I got him some friends. I wanted a good clean up crew for my betta, since I KNEW there was tons of uneaten food in his tank, and I was fighting the ammonia BIG TIME! I got him four loaches (these are supposed to be nearly neutral on the ammonia impact, since they eat uneaten food) as well as 15 ghost shrimp (I REALLY don't want to deal with algae at all) two "glofish" otherwise known as extremely altered zebra fish, (my son really likes the color pink right now, so we let him pick two fish, and he got the pink "glofish") and one german blue ram (I like cichlids, and this is the only one I've heard about getting along with bettas, about 50 percent of the time) So all of a sudden, Elvis got 4 loaches, 15 shrimp, 2 zebras, and a ram!!! If he wasn't eating because of loneliness, that was about to change! And guess what... IT DID! He still wouldn't eat, after my son fed all the fish. He did his typical *stare at the food until it gets water logged, then watch it sink to the bottom, then swim away* But then the ram, zebras, and loaches gobbled up all the food. It took about 12 hours before I discovered a ghost shrimp's eyes, and face, sticking out of Elvis' mouth!
The creature hadn't eaten for three weeks, then he goes after the largest living thing in the tank! He couldn't get any air by swimming (his mouth was full of shrimp) so he stayed by the very top, gasping for breath every 20 seconds, trying to swallow the shrimp. It took him over 30 minutes to get that shrimp down, and then my male betta looked pregnant! And I'm pretty sure that now he thinks he's wild.
Elvis wouldn't flare before... at all. Even when I put a mirror in front of him, he would just swim away like he was scared, then stay in a little cave that I made for him of slate. But that shrimp totally changes his attitude. He's chasing the german blue ram (a cichlid!) around the tank, and flaring at it like crazy! I'm actually a little worried for the ram, which I never thought would happen, since Elvis has been the (as my wife and son put it) "the most boring fish EVER" So a tad bit of advice for all you betta keepers out there who are doing everything right (one betta to start a ten gallon tank with filter, heater, three plants, and places to hide) your incredibly boring betta might just be... well... bored! Get him a buddy or two.
My betta wouldn't even eat blood worms (which I hear are their favorite food) but after the extra fish, and eating that shrimp, I also found some mosquito larvae in a five gallon bucket in the yard. I scooped them out, filtered them several times, (got all the extra plant and dust matter out of the glass) when I plopped the netful of them in the tank, every fish in the aquarium went nuts! Even the (pregnant looking) Elvis! So, if you don't want to get him any tank mates, try some live food first. And remember, my scrawny little betta went 3 weeks in a filtered, heated tank which was going through it's initial cycle, without eating one little thing. And then, with friends, and live food, he went NUTS!

Ok...I have read all of these posts and I might try getting some live food for my betta, if I can find it in my small rural area. BUT, my betta is even goofier than all of these.
First of all, I would like to confess that I know nothing about fish. I found "Sapphire" (she is blue and I found her on my Sept. birthday...I don't know what her real name was) left behind at my rental in a sculchy bowl and about two inches of water. The Pet Smart receipt and her unused food were right next to the bowl or I wouldn't have had a clue that she was a female betta. I felt sorry for her and took her home. She is the bane of my cats' existence and I truly think she teases them on purpose.
Anyway, she was really happy at first, once I got her cleaned up. She was a picky eater, but all I had to do was select her bits more carefully. Some of them were dreadfully huge and she just couldn't seem to get them down. I bought her flakes. She hates them. Won't even look at them. Everything went fine for about six months. She would swim in little donuts when she saw me coming, bubble nest blah blah blah.
She seems healthy. She is not bloated or icky and her eyes are vibrant, as is her color. No popeye or fungus. Well, lately she is not eating. She wants to. She follows my hand as I drop her normal food and then she goes for it just like before. But it's like she's gone blind. She "attacks" the floating pellet and comes up short every single time. It never even goes in her mouth. She just bites at the air. I have to change her bowl every couple of days because her food just sponges and floats to the bottom. She has eaten nothing.
My renter turned into a psychotic alcoholic and left that house the biggest disaster that anyone has ever seen. It took him six months to utterly destroy it. Law enforcement couldn't even believe it, having never seen such filth. They shot their dogs and left them, I removed several hundred pounds of cat feces (I don't know where the cat(s) went), the pet rat was dead, and the hermit crab was very very dead. Sapphire is the only thing that survived this holocaust, mainly because of the betta's unique breathing ability. I feel like she is a little trooper and deserves as good of a life as I can give her. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Please email me at theblackyak@aol.com.

You might want to upgrade your betta to at least 2-1/2 gallons plus he needs a heater. Bettas thrive in 78 to 81 degrees.

For the eating issue, try different foods after a couple of days of not feeding him. Some bettas are just downright fussy and picky. You just have to find the right food; food that he likes.

Good luck.

My betta fish went through something like this after he had been sick, however, I found out that he seemed to simply not be able to see his food.

What I found out is that if I lightly squashed betta pellets between two spoon, they would flatten a bit and float. I do 3 or 4 at a time depending on size and put them all in a one time directly in front of him once I gained his attention by tapping 3 times on the glass. THey float in a group and he seems to see them because there are several of them in a group, they're bigger in size, they float and they seem easier for him to chew. THis worked for my Bubbles! Good luck!

How much epsom salt should be put in their aquarium? Is sea salt as good as epsom salt?