So you want to Breed Bettas?

[Kevin565]

Are you thinking about Breeding Bettas? There's a lot more research needed than you may know. Here we go:

Myths:

1. Breeding Bettas is easy they're just fish
A: Actually breeding Bettas can be quite challenging.

2. I can just throw a male and female and female together
A: NO. It is not nearly that simple

3. You can breed them at any time
A: NO. They both need to be properly conditioned.

Tips:

1. Condition your female properly. Give her better quality food as well as consider giving her life food.
2. Make sure your male has made a adequate bubble nest. If there is no bubble nest he is not ready to breed.
3. Have a nursery TANK Prepared. You can not raise fry in a vase or small container. The minimum i would suggest is a 10 gallon.
4. Have your filter ready. I DO NOT mean your regular filter. Fry will be caught in this and die. You will need a sponge filter. These can be purchased for less than 10 dollars or homeade.
5. You will need your Live Food ready for the fry. You CAN'T feed them fish flakes this young. They will not eat them and they will die.
6. Be aware that when fry reach a certain age the males will have to be separated. Each batch is usually well over 50 fry.
7. Figure out what your going to do with your fry BEFORE you breed. Don't expect your LFS to accept the baby fry. Many will not buy your fry until they are a few weeks old.

Types of Betta:
Double Tail:

Veil Tail:

Spade Tail:

Delta Tail:

Super Delta Tail:

Half Moon Tail:

Rose Tail:

Plakat:

Crowntail:

Half Sun Tail:

Comb Tail:

Note: Breeding for tail variety is NOT easy. You can not just breed a half moon to a half moon and expect the babies to look right. Each variety has to be breed specifically to another to create the right finnage.

This is only a introduction to the betta breeding world. There is much more information that will be needed to be researched before you decide to breed. If you have any questions feel free to PM me or post your question below.

 

[Nicola]

spawning tank, Size can vary, but personally I don't like to spawn in anything under 10 gallons some prefer to spawn in a much larger tank that will double as a grow out and avoid the need to transfer the fry at a later date. Bare bottomed glass tanks, acrylic tanks or even the plastic storage containers all work. regardless of which tank size or type you choose, place approx 3 inches of aged dechlorinated water in the bottom, add some Java Moss or other low light requiring live plant, a heater (some people like to set it to 30C(86f) -they a degree or two higher than what they are normally kept at helps to trigger spawning) and either half a styrofoam cup, a piece of bubblewrap, an Indian Almond Leaf or floating plastic (whichever you prefer) to provide a nesting site for your male. It's also a good idea to make sure you keep the nest site away from the heater to prevent falling fry from landing on it. Keeping the tank covered with either lids or glad/plastic wrap is a good way to ensure the air above the water remains warm, moist and approximately the same temperature as the water in the tank. This helps with maintaining the bubble nest (*hint if using plastic wrap try using a Styrofoam cup for the nest site as it will help protect the nest from condensation) and also with the development of the labyrinth in the fry.

you can now add your male, remembering to float him in a cup or something before releasing him so he can acclimatize to the new temperature leave the male in the new tank for at least a couple of days to allow him to establish a territory and build a bubblenest.

Floating your female in the spawning tank is your next step. For this you can use a chimney (most popular being a coke bottle with the bottom cut off), a jar, a breeding net, or as I prefer a large disposable clear plastic cup. Betta splendens are very aggressive towards their own species, and will fight unless both male and female are ready to spawn. There are a few things you can look out for that can help you to determine when that may be and it is safe to release the female. In the female, signs that she may be ready to spawn are vertical stripes (not normally seen on light bodied fish unfortunately), a subservient 'head down, tail up' posture. The male will usually alternate between tending his nest and trying to lure the female under it. He will swim towards her, flaring and posturing with a shimmying type motion and try to entice her to follow him back to the nest. I would release the female at this point, and if you have used a cup it is likely the female will simply jump in the tank on her own.

During spawning the female will follow the male under the nest, where they will wrap and the female will release eggs which the male (sometimes assisted by the female) will pick up and place in the nest. They will repeat this process several times before spawning is completed. Once completed, the female will retreat to the java moss and the male will chase and attack her on sight. It is usually a good idea to remove the female at this point.
The male will now spend his time cleaning, rotating the eggs and tending to the nest. After about 36 hours the eggs should begin to hatch. At first the fry will be hanging in the nest tail down. They will also fall and shoot back up to the surface. Some won't come back up on their own, and the male will go and fetch them and spit them back up into the nest to keep them at the surface of the water. At this time, the fry are absorbing nourishment from the egg sack, and do not need feeding. That will continue for a couple days and on day three they will be free swimming.

You can feed them freshly hatched Baby brine shrimp ( also known as seamonkeys to some) or microworms.

After the first week start to add approx 1 inch of aged dechlorinated water every 1-2 days until the tank is full. This takes the place of any water changes during this time and is less stressful on the fry while still maintaining water quality.

information was found on Ausaqua , nippyfish and other betta related sites

 

[Kevin565]

Thank you so much

 

[Nicola]

No problem, here is a link on how to condition them properly

http://nippyfish.net/2011/03/09/conditioning-bettas-for-breeding/

Alot of people have found, that their betta's tend to want to breed more around when a storm is coming

 

[WoodlandWoman]

It's not as popular in this country as it is in some others, but daphnia are also a great food to have on hand. I first learned about them from some breeders on a European betta breeders site. They're used extensively in Thailand for their bettas, too. My bettas have all loved daphnia. It's a fairly stable freshwater culture. You can just dip out what you need, when you need it. Brine shrimp are a little more cyclical in nature.

They come in a couple different sizes and the smaller size have smaller babies for the fry to eat. I would go with the smaller moina, for feeding fry. My adults will eat the adult magna. You can put them in the fry tank and they won't die off right away, like brine shrimp, so you don't have as much risk of polluting the water. The culture only needs green water to eat, although you can also feed a dry mix, too. Green water is water with floating algae in it. Dry options are a sprinkle of powdered algae sold to feed brine shrimp, a few drops of a solution of yeast and water or a mix of ingredients. I've seen people mix up powdered freeze dried peas, paprika, maybe a little yeast and I don't remember what all else. There are web sites for all this, if you google daphnia.

I've gotten my cultures from Aquabid in the past. They have lots of other live food cultures for sale, too. Things like micro worms, vinegar worms, etc. If you have a fish club in your area, they can often hook you up with some live food cultures, too.

Although in earlier times powdered food for fry was pretty poor, they do have some now that's a lot better. Some breeders do also feed powdered, although it's not common. I'm trying to remember the name of the good one. Golden Pearls, maybe?

 

[Kevin565]

Thank you for your contribution

 

[babyblue2]

Some very excellent posts. Kevin, do you have the same name on any of those other fish sites? The pics look familiar enough that I think I know of you in other places.

 

[Kevin565]

None of these are my fish. Just a variety from the internet. And sorry I'm not on any fish sites. Just a lurker to a few of them

 

[babyblue2]

You don't have to be sorry, you sound educated enough that I thought you were. I bred bettas and my parents did as well. I miss it. A tiny batch was 25-50 fry. We usually had between 50-100+fry and as luck had it with particular pairs sometimes they threw nearly entire batches of male fry. That was fun. Also correct on the fin types. We had a lovely solid green male feather tail - like a rose tail only more extreme numbers of rays and thus ruffling. He always passed his fins onto his babies. So we never bred him to anything with greater number of rays then a delta because the fry other wise could have had such heavy fins that they wouldn't have been able to swim.

 

[Kevin565]

He sounds Beautiful

. My LFS has recently gotten a much better collection of bettas so it's so tempting to pick up a few.