FishKing

I have a male and a female betta. Resently my male had built a bubble nest, but within one day it was gone. The female dose not show much interest in the male, but she is ready and willing to breed. The female does not normaly flare at the male unless I have showed her a reflection of herself that she flares at showing her willingness to breed. The male has not built a bubble nest since the first and only only one he had built one month ago yet he shows alot of interest in the female.

chickadee

Not every female and male betta will breed together. They are like every other animal, sometimes the chemistry is just not there. Have you been feeding them to condition them and doing the other things you need to be doing to prepare for the breeding process. It is not as simple as just putting them together like for some fish. There is a lot of preparation and the conditioning process takes time. If they are not properly conditioned with foods and water conditions, they will not spawn no matter how eager they seem to be.

How much study have you done on betta breeding? If you cannot say that you have a tank ready for the breeding process that is not the regular tank that they live it, then you are not ready let alone able to do this knowledgably. Do you know what foods they should be eating now and how much and do you know what the water parameters need to be and what you need to provide during and after the breeding process. Breeding betta splendens is dangerous for the fish if you do not know what you are doing and you could very likely lose one or both of your pair.

If you have all the things in hand and you are totally prepared then I am sorry if I sound harsh. It is just that a lot of people look at breeding bettas like having guppies. Simple. And it is not anything of the kind. You will never have worked so hard at anything in your life, if you get through the breeding and raising fry process and you may spend a fortune at it. It takes lots of space, time and hard work and money for the correct equipment.

By the way, a female flaring does not indicate that they are ready and willing to breed. They need to be a lot more than just flaring. All that means is they are irritated by seeing another fish.

Rose

FishKing

The breeding tank is the males 2 gallon aquarium. Both fish are kept in constant sight of each other. Both of there aquariums are at a constant temperature of 80 degrees fahrenheit. The PH is about 7.0. The breeding aquarium has many plants in which the female can hind behind during the breeding period. I have been feeding them blood worms and guppy fry for the past 2 weeks. The males aquarium is filtered with an air filter. The hardness of the water is soft. All of these are traits of both aquariums except the filter. I have a separate half gallon tank for the fry filtered with a sponge filter, and I know the female is ready because she has a white gravid tube on her anal lining and has developed eggs. My question is why has the male not built another bubble nest.

sirdarksol

Chickadee is much better with this info than I am, but I do have one point.
Guppy fry, presuming you're getting the cheap ones from the pet stores, are not ideal. They are empty calories. The various feeders at pet stores are so poorly cared for that they have nearly no nutritional value.
If you're raising your own guppy fry, ignore this message.

Welcome to fishlore.

FishKing

yes, they are my own guppy fry

chickadee

A breeding tank needs to be at least 10 gallons and cannot be the tank that either betta is housed in as they will both have to seperated from the betta fry before or soon after hatching (with respect to the male) or they will eat them. The male stays with the fry until they become free swimming and then has to be taken out of the tank and put back into a tank to himself. The female has to be taken out immediately after the last of the eggs are distributed if possible or all dickens will break out and 2 gallons no matter how well planted is not enough room for them to both be in even if there were no other things in there. There is just not enough water for them to remain healthy ovenight even. Soft water does not tell me anything and I do hope that this does not mean commercially softened water like with salt added, that is not good for fish. Protein foods are good but there is not enough protein on a guppy fry to matter. Bloodworms will not do the job of conditioning very well either as this is the regular diet and while rich in protein is still not a good conditioning food by itself. You obviously have no idea what to do or what is needed and have done very little to prepare as you do not even have the fry tank set up and do you have the accumulation of other things even started. [jars for the males, extra supplies for all the water changes you will be doing and I mean a lot of water changes (daily for the tanks that involve the fish until they are big enough to have well developed fins at least - spikes of nitrite due to bad water conditions will result in deformed and unformed fins).] I told you there is a lot to this and you are not ready for it. To try to breed these fish when you are so unprepared and uninformed is totally irresponsible and cruel to the fish.
This is blunt and perhaps not what you want to hear but I think you need to leave the breeding of bettas to the professionals. You are not ready or able to handle it the way things are. Just fix it so they are not seeing each other all the time and allow her to discharge her eggs unfertilized. That would be for the best.

Rose

FishKing

Chickadee or any other member could you tell me a legitimate website to get really good looking bettas. Also nobody has answered my question. Why hasn't my male built another bubble nest?

Barbrella

No one can answer that. He might be ill, stressed or maybe the water quality is not good. Maybe he's not just in the mood.

Before gettting more bettas to breed, you'll need to have everything ready in advance, as Chickadee mentioned:
10 gal tank for spawning
frozen/live food like bloodworms, brine shrimp, blackworms to condition the breeding pair
30 gal tank for raising fry
about 100, 1 gal jars to raise the male fry (since your half gallon jar is good for only one baby)
heaters, mini sponge filters and siphons
equipment to produce enough fresh food every day for all those fry and lots of time to change the water in all those jars every single day for the reasons chickadee outlined. You'll need to keep all those jars in a room that is a constant high temperature since you can't use heaters in them.

The initial cost you're looking at is probably close to 400$, not counting the pair of fish.

Then, after all that is set up and ready, to order a pair of breeding quality bettas, you can go to www.aquabid.com

Costs vary, but I doubt the fish and shipping will be less than 100$.

And then you're ready to start, but first I suggest you go to Google, type in "breeding bettas" and read all you can since the subject is too involved to go into detail here.

chickadee

The equipment as listed is a minimum of equipment and everything on it needs to be on hand before you get ready to introduce a breeding pair and to have the best luck the two should be a BREEDING PAIR rather than just two bettas that happen to be male and female. I would say that a really good quality breeding pair will be at least $100 and the shipping will be at least $50 for a good transhipper who knows what they are doing and will pack them well and keep them in the best of conditions. Your costs can reach as stated by Dave as high as $1000-$2000 before this is over if you do it right and get the best equipment that you can buy and do everything that you need to to keep the bettas and the fry alive.

Rose

COBettaCouple

They have a variety of reasons for building a bubble nest, everything from weather to boredom to being happy to thoughts of mating, etc. We've actually only had 1 male that regularly build nests. We had 1 who build a nest once and that was it. Not building one is fine and it's really more a matter of what caused him to build a nest.

Females usually will show happy stripes long before they're ready for being introduced to the male and at least a 10g is needed for that. We've thought about breeding splendens, but just don't have the room, money or time needed.
http://www.flippersandfins.net/bettabreedingarticle.htm is a good article on the expense and time of just the spawning. Raising the fry is the real challenge though and I would recommend a room with a heater and here in Denver, a purifier/humidifier.