It has been a long time since I had one of those fish. All I can remember is they eat brine shrimp. You can get fresh or freeze dryed. As for plants...all I can tell you is the plastic ones didn't cause my fish any problems.lol I couldn't grow plants at the time I had the fish so I never checked into real plants. The other big fact I remember is you don't put two of those fish together~ hence their other name "siamese fighting fish". I'm just a wealth of knowledge on this subject...NOT.lol Good luck with the fish.

Foxy.

Hi
There is a lot of info on the internet on Betas
We only have one and when we first got it we had it in a 1 gallon fish bowl. The bowl needed to be changed every second day or it was filthy and it did not seem like it was 'happy'in there so after about a week or so I added it to our 20 gal tank. After a few days of hiding out, it is now thriving and actually playing with the other fish.
Betas aren't necessarily solitary creatures, you just can't have 2 males together but you can have male and female and they are compatibable with other similar size fish. The main worry is actually the betas flowing fins being attacked by others not vice versa. The same problem occurs with angel fish - those fins are tempting.
With our beta we have 1 angel fish, 4 black widow tetras and 4 mollies. They all get along great.

Most, but not all info I have read discourages the small decorative containers for the fish. They can survive in them but they are not ideal. The beta would actually prefer higher temps than you can achieve without a tank heater as well as more space.
Kind of like a lot of so called low light plants - they will survive in low light but they will thrive in more.

I am not an expert - just wanted to offer a little info.

Here is a link that might be useful: Beta fish care