o0Faraz0o

so yea umm i got my self a female betta fish few days ago i would like to breed them since my parents have been pushing me to they love baby fish lol. shes a crown tail white body and red fins and the male betta is a veil tail black body and blue fins. my first question is what color babies will they make. next question is i got my 10 gallon set up for there breeding i have plants and turned of the filters. atm i have been putting there tanks next to each other for about 6 hours and then i put them in different places there tanks r at 26C. when do i know its time the both flair towards each other but then they lose interest so i have no idea first timer. Any tips and tricks/advice can be given plz oh and yes i am ready to take care of lots and lots of fry with the help of my parents and yes there on the right died of live frozen and pellets.

Chief_waterchanger

First of all, you say you are prepared to take care of the fry, how so? Do you have the number of tanks necessary, (2.5g minimal tanks for as many fry as can -possibly- be had) or a reliable source to sale them through, or do you have other plans in mind?

Everything I've read on betta breeding says they need to be in the same tank together, but still be safe from one another, in order to get in the mood. We had ours almost breed the other day (probably would've if we would've spent more than an hour watching them before we had other things to do so we split them back up) and all we are doing is we got a glass vase the exact same height as the 10g the male is in, put the female in the glass vase inside his tank and feed them both brine shrimp and a very protein rich diet. The goal is to have them see one another for long periods of time (days on end) and get them a little extra fat on them, because it takes a lot of energy to do their breeding. Our female spent the better part of a week and a half in that vase inside the 10g before we first introduced them and they did marvelously, and will probably breed the next time we try that. It is always harder with virgin betttas, apparently they are like any other species... instinctually they know what to do, but the awkwardness and fumbling around still occurs.

We actually watched as the female would curl up like they do when the male encircles them, he would just swim by her and look at her, then he'd start the encircling action, but she'd be 3 or 4 inches away from him.. like they are practicing their method.

If you use that method of female inside a container inside the male's tank, make sure to cover the female's container.. it keeps her in and the male out.

I still would like to know how you plan to take care of them. They could have as many as several hundred fry... and in the off chance that you have the majority of them survive you could be looking at a seperate tank for each male by the time they are 3 months old, and the females would need a large tank, and may get aggressive and need to be split up.

o0Faraz0o

WELL GOOD QUESTIONS 2 weeks ago i went to a friends house whos parents are cichlid breeders and have been for osme years now they had these rooms set up for breeding and all and had a huge inbuilt 200gallon tank in there living room full of cichlid it was amazing anyway i stayed there for 1 night and we like talked alot about fish and breeding and all that. in the conversation i said that i would like to breed bettas and so on. his mum told me that if i could breed betta fish they where happy to take them when there about 2 to 3 weeks old and raise them to sell and what ever later on seemed like a good idea to me. Meant i can earn some money doing some im interested in and i was thinking ill keep like 1 or 2 of the fry and raise them my self hopefully they would survive to adulthood.

Clare12345

Cheif waterchanger, do you put yours in a full 10 gallon or a 5 inch full ten gallon tank?

COBettaCouple

To breed Betta Splendens, I would recommend the minimum of 200 1g glass jars or 2g glass rectangular tanks plus 6 10g tanks and a 55g tank. Also a room to setup all the tanks in along with a controllable heating/cooling unit for that room to keep the water in all the tanks at 80F.

You'll also need to setup a half dozen BBS hatcheries and have at least 5 of them producing at any time, only having 1 offline for a day to start a new batch in it, rotating through them during the week.

Have a good supply of liquid vitamins and meds stocked along with a lot of Prime water conditioner. Daily 50% water changes on every tank/jar is needed. The fry will need fed (but not overfed) the BBS 4 times a day at first, then 3 times after a couple weeks, then 2 times after they're a month old.

Conditioning the pair to spawn is a step-by-step process detailed in this page: http://www.flippersandfins.net/bettabreedingarticle.htm

Expect up to 500 fry so you might need more than 250 fry jars/tanks.

It's a huge amount of space, time, money and work and to be honest, unless you're breeding show bettas, not a profitable enterprise. We love Bettas, but aren't going to breed splendens. A few wild species are less intensive to breed.

o0Faraz0o

oh wow now that u say that...... MIND CHANGED

wat do u mean by the wild species are less intensive to breed?? i so like umm bettas that r taken from the wild but r just the same type as in like veil tail and crowntail cause the onnly bettas here r like the Jar ones that get lucky and someone takes them home.

Barbrella

Good idea.

I've got beautiful and females, but since I"m not prepared to change the water in about 100 glass jars every day (never mind all the other many chores associated with breeding bettas) I have no intention of ever breeding them.

Selling petstore betta babies might net you about 2.00 each. Very unprofitable undertaking.

0morrokh

By wild bettas he means different species of bettas. Pet store bettas are Betta splendens, but there are a lot of other species in that genus. They're called 'wild bettas' because they're newer species to the hobby and still wild-type, not developed into strains like splendens.

I'm glad you changed your mind. I think we would better spend our time caring for rescued pet store bettas, rather than producing more of them. The main market for petstore quality (in other words cheap poor stock) bettas is people who don't always have fish keeping experience, but just want a cheap fish to throw in a bowl, so it's hard to find really good homes for all the fry, if they're not show quality bettas.

Chief_waterchanger

Mahachai bettas for instance, is a different type of betta. Dino and I put a male and female mahachai together just because we had no where else to house them at that moment and the next day they had bred.. they stayed together just fine and we've got some subadult fry. That was achieved in a 10g tank.

Clare, our Betta splendens have not yet successfully bred, but as I said, I believe they would've had we had more time to spend out there watching them the other day. They are in a full 10g tank. Each has their own, but the female goes into a large glass vase into the male's tank so they can get all worked up, then they are let together only when we can be there to constantly supervise. Sorry for slow response, Clare.

COBettaCouple

Yea, the Mahachai are easier to breed in that you'll not need as many tanks for the fry/adolescents. Problems definitely can come up and we learned a lot of those when we bred our pair. I'd want to have a 10g tank and either a big tank, like a 55g or some smaller tanks to allow the fry room to grow.

Also a lot of java moss and water sprite for them as well as caves with no rough surfaces inside or outside and a good supply of almond tree leaves and the other things you'd normally keep for any tank (conditioner, meds, filter media).