female or wild?

Can anyone tell me how I know if my betta is female or a wild one? I bought what I thought was a pair of bettas, put them in the tank with my other fish and the male one died not long after that. Of course, I did not know I needed to keep them separate unless spawning, so that could have been the problem. But I just read on the website that there is a wild version that looks like the female only more colorful. And now I am worried that maybe I put two males together unknowingly. My "female" is solid royal blue. The pictures on here show only the pale females.

 

I do not see the pictures.

What we are used to seeing in the stores are the pretty bubblenesters in the Betta splendens group. They can be of the Veiltail (most common) or Crowntail variety more often than not. There are however 47 species of Betta that are recorded in my books, most of which do not have the long, flowing fins for the male. It would be very unusual for a local pet store to carry some of these less common species of Betta. They can be of several colors. It would be very unusual not to notice a wild Betta however as they tend to be much larger than the "normal" size we are used to.

If you could indeed send some pictures, it would help me a lot to determine what kind of Betta you have, as the mouth shape is important and the overall body size and shape will tell me a lot.

Rose

 

HI there.

I know I'm a newbie to this site, but I would like to offer an addition here. I have an imbellis that I bought from Petsmart a year and a half ago, and not too long after I purchased him, I saw "roundtail Splendens" (probably just plakats, but I didn't look carefully) being advertised from PJ's Pets. So, some chains do sell short-finned males.

A good way to determine if you have a female betta is to look for the ovipositor. Follow this link: , it leads to a pic of a female betta. You can sort of see the white spot on the belly, just behind the ventals. All females have one, although some are harder to see than others.

 

Nice pictures! and yes the Ovipositor is very visible on the green female: but you are right that it is not always visible on all Betta females. I am glad to hear that some of the other species are being represented in the pet stores and chains now, but I do wish they clearly labeled them as some could be mistaken for females and placed with the males. The general rule of thumb however does remain not to mix the females and male even until you are ready to breed them. It is not wise until the female shows signs of being ready to breed and that means coloration changes in the form of horizontal striping in most cases (these may be hard to see on dark colored fish).

Females do well together in groups of 3 or more, but not in combination with the males. There needs to be a dominant female in the tank to keep the group from bullying each other.

Rose

 

I'm sorry. I was meaning the pictures I saw on the site. Unfortunately, I do not have a digital camera to take a picture of my Betta and add on here.
I am afraid I do not know much about fish. I buy them to look at, and I like the colorful ones the best, which is why when I saw a blue female among all the pale brown ones, I picked her. I confess I do not know what an ovipositor is so I do not know what I am looking for. I did check out the pictures on the crabby link and tried my ignorant best to compare the pics to my Betta. While my girl is definitely darker than all of those fish, her fins are shorter than the males, but her dorsal (?) fin appears longer than the females. She is definitely smaller than the male one I bought, so I probably just got lucky enough to find the most colorful female. ;D My tank is filled with beautiful colors, my blue Betta, my red tip finned shark, an orange Molli, and a white one, and lots of beautifully bright fancytail guppies (they just keep breeding - I thought the babies would get eaten). Oh yeah, can't forget my plecostomas, and my ghost shrimp. I love my tank, and my fish, but enjoy their beauty is all I do.
Thank you for your help Oh yeah, I tried to look at her mouth shape while she was eating. It looks more pointy than the ones pictured on the crabby link with a pronounced under bite. But in truth, I really don't know what I should be looking at. hehe I wish I could send pictures, because she is very beautiful. As I was watching her a minute ago, I noticed the slightest hint of red as she turned past me. I also tried to look for horizontal lines. I could find a diamond pattern if I looked really close, but nothing horizontal or just vertical was visible.