Betta Breeding Resources

[thatsfishy]

Since this is a frequent topic, I've compiled a list of links to assist anyone who is thinking about breeding bettas:

1. How to Succeed at Breeding Bettas
2. Breeding Bettas
3. Breeding Betta Splendens
4. Breeding Bettas (BettaTalk)
5. Betta Breeding (Classic Bettas)
6. Betta Breeding Methods (Bettysplendens)
7. Siam's Best Bettas Breeding
8. About.com Betta
9. Breeding HM & SD (CNYBC)
10. IBC TA library articles on breeding (IBC membership required, but well worth it)

Note: Breeding bettas is hard work and requires careful planning. So please do your homework beforehand! There also is no one method to betta breeding, use the resources above and develope your own method over time.

Happy breeding!

[anasfire23]

Some of those site's are really good and I took a few different methods and combined them. Here's what I did.

I set my spawning tank up with alot of plants for the females to hide in aswell as a small shipwreck for hiding too. Fed them all, 2 females and 1 male, frozen blood worms for a week then placed my male into the spawning tank, placed the 2 female in seperate tanks next to him for 24 hrs then that night placed the 2 females in with him (I didn't bother with a hurricane cup or anything like that) I placed another one of my males in his tank next to the side where the styrofoam cup was for the bubble nest to create a little competition/jealousy and found that my male went immediatly to building a nest (occasionally stopping to flare and show off to the other male hahaha). After 3 days, and many bubble nest destroying and rebuilding later, I gave up, removed my females and was about to remove the male to do a water change when i noticed little white dots around the bubble nest. I figured these must be eggs coz i'd never seen anything like that before so instead I just carefully removed the plants and shipwreck so as not to disturb the nest and now 2 days later I have about 100-150 hatched fry. I think the idea of having 2 females in the tank makes them realize there is competition to breed and makes them want to spawn sooner. I don't know exactly what it was that made them spawn, but all the things I did obviously didn't hurt coz after 25 failed attempts I finally have fry! Good Luck to all those that want to breed but be warned, I know it seems like an awesome idea to breed these wonderful fish but eventually you'll end up having to seperate the males, and if you end up with 100 fry and roughly half of them are male you are going to need 50 seperate little containers to house them in, not to mention the room to put all those containers, until you can get rid of them. Which brings me to the next dillema, finding homes for 100 fish. Most pet stores already have suppliers and there are only so many you can give away.

Wish I'd thought of that a little more carefully before i'd spawned mine.

Once again good luck to everyone and check out those links, some great advice and ideas there, good one TF!

Edit 8/12/06: Turned out in that situatuion I actually had a male mistakenly identified as a female so there were actually 2 males in the tank with one femle and they still spawned! Talk about lucky! (I did find it strange that the male and what I thought was a female were fighting but just put it down to the spawning process)

[(RC)]

Cull 90% of them and keep only they very best. I have 3 spawns of double blacks going and I will be raising no more then 18 or less from each spawn.


RC

[Damon]

Where did you get your line from RC? I know Jim has been working on them for about a year now. Are they from his line? I'm looking to get a pair of them.

[(RC)]

The grandparents came from Jim. Two of my spawns had plakats for fathers.


RC

[anasfire23]

I know what you mean by culling 90% of them, but what exactly am I sposed to do with the fish that I cull out? Am I to assume that these fish are killed? or given away or what? I suppose for me it all depends on whether or not they are going to be veil tails (hoping their mother is) or short fins like their father. Not many people here are interested in the short finned betta's. They are 10 days old at the moment so I suppose I don't really have to worry about culling them for another few months at least.

[(RC)]

When I say cull it means most of them are killed. I've culled about 200 fish this week and all but 4 were killed. I cull as early as possible becuase I don't want to waste time or money on fish I don't plan on using. I culled every known female from a iridescent/metallic line today that wasn't green.


RC

[anasfire23]

How exactly do you kill them?

[thatsfishy]

When they are less then 1cm, a cup with ice water with some alcohol will kill them instantly.

[(RC)]

a bucket of ice.


RC

[anasfire23]

ok, so it's a pretty humane way, they just go to sleep. That's not too bad, when they are that size can u tell what colour they're gonna be etc? I'm assuming so. Mine are about 2mm long at the moment, if that. So I've got a while before I have to worry about it.

[(RC)]

When I first start culling for body shape you can't really tell color yet.


RC

[Ownager2004]

you could use them as feeder fish if you have a fish that will eat them.

[Jered]

I wonder if the adult bettas will eat them. I don't see why not. Could be used for conditioning? Maybe not...Then the male would get into the habit of eating fry. Maybe only for the females??? I have a community tank and when my guppies have babies I feed the fry to my females as conditioning food. If this is a bad idea let me know.

[(RC)]

I have used very young fry as food for adults, but I don't do it much because I don't want my adults to get in the habit of eating Betta fry


RC

[Screwball]

can i use a one gallon tank with a divider and drain half of the water to breed them

[setxr]

Originally Posted by Screwball

can i use a one gallon tank with a divider and drain half of the water to breed them

bettas have real high tolerance lvl

back to topic these sites really perfect no better way in intro and tut on to
breeding

good luck everyone on the work
and this board ROCKS!!!

[L.c.]

so how do you know which ones to cull
Do you just do it and hope for the best
could everyone who breeds tell me what they know about it
I want to know how you all do it and what different ways it can be done
ooooh and what medicine is it that you put the famale in after spawning

[anasfire23]

I've not heard of medicine to put the female in once she's spawned. I just put mine into treated water with a little sea salt to help heal any wounds she may have received during the spawning process. I'm giving her a week to recover before I start to condition her again to spawn with a male a friend has (he hasn't been able to get any of his females to spawn with his new HM male) so I'm lending her to him.

This same friend culls unwanted spawns by placing alot of ice into a bucket of water with some isopropal alcohol (the rubbing alcohol type) and then all those that dont have the right colouring, body or fin shape go into the bucket and are left for half an hour then he disposes of them by burying them in a hole in the yard.

Although I don't like how late he leaves his to cull, he waits until they're large enough to tell colours. I always beg him to let me take them off his hands but he knows I don't have the means to look after that many fish and won't let me.

Good luck if you're planning to spawn

[anasfire23]

After my last spawn, where the female ate 90% of the eggs because I couldn't see them under the foam cup, I decided to see if a male would still build a nest under the cup if the top part of it was cut away, therefore making a kind of viewing window so you can tell when there are eggs under there easier and my male did. Obviosuly I had to have the female close to motivate him to build one but what I didn't count on was her deciding she wanted to spawn and jumping over into his tank so now I have another load of eggs and am still raising 9 of the nearly 1 month old previous spawn.

Attached is a picture of my cup with a view.

The way I did it was by just cutting the cup in half normally then using a craft knife to carefull cut the top section off.