Nickau says 2 pellets in the morning, then 2 at night. Which sounds accurate to me.
But yea here I made you a shopping list lol
Filter: when you buy the filter make sure its for a five gallon, not 10 because it will provide to much flow for the betta. The filter will most likely come with charcoal but done use that, buy a
bio sponge as well and a big bag of
filter floss. This is where the beneficial bacteria will grow in your filter. Place the bio sponge in the filter first behind the filter floss, you can change the filter floss whenever you want (preferably every month or so I do).
A WC bucket (optional),
a good bucket to siphon your water into when your doing fifty percent water changes every week, now when the tank is cycling (until ammonia is at a steady 0ppm) change the water fifty percent a day.
A good heater: 75F is the average temp.
Five Gallon to Ten Gallon Tank: for the fish to thrive in
Substrate: don't get the pink and purple colored substrate lol please, provide a natural kind of looking environment, this can be done with an inert sand substrate (gravel carries to much gunk), and live plants (easy species are: java moss, java fern, pennywort, ludwigia, anubias sp. etc).
A TEST KIT: API master test kit is a good test kit for starters, readings after cycling for the *norm* should be as follows:
Ammonia: 0ppm ammonia is highly toxic to fish and can cause high stress levels even death
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: anywhere from 5 to 10 ppm
and maybe some shrimp when the tank is done cycling, up to you.