What affects the gender ratio when breeding betta fish?

I am currently doing a betta breeding project. this will be my third time trying this. I just wanted to know if there is any way to manipulate the male to female ratio in the yield. my first time breeding I succeeded with 80 females and 2 males. second time was completely female. I had a planted tank both times with the temperature at 78 degrees fahrenheit as it was the default setting of the heater I used. the ph level was unknown. this time I was going to try breeding this new pair in 80-82 degrees fahrenheit and a 6.0 ph level as I have heard some rumors that higher temperature and more acidic ph produces more males to female ratio. I would like some helps, pointers and tips. please share anything you know so that I can make this an official report as this is for scientific experimentation. please and thank you.

 

Hmm what do you mean by ratio? Do you want there to be mainly female babies? And for pH and tempature it's really just an experiment. Play with it. Let me know how it goes

 

I was told to bring the water temp down. my first attempt 20 females and 10 males at 85 degree F .

 

10 males?! No I would say 2 males for every 20 females. How big of a tank are they staying in?

 

it was in a 20 gallon tank. yea at first I thought they were all females at one point. but when the tails started to bloom. iI was surprised

 

Sarah73, Ratio is the relative number of each sex in a spawn. When 858kidSD said 20 females and 10 males, that's how many of each sex he/she got in the spawn.

I am not personally aware of factors in sex determination in Bettas, though I have seen various conditions influence other types of fish many times. Temperature and pH are two of the most common factors to influence sex ratios.

I have also seen that sex ratios in some species seem severely skewed toward female initially, then late developing males will start turning up. Sometimes this is due to overcrowding the fry, as the dominant male fry will suppress development of other males. However, a completely female spawn is certainly not from this. I have bred Bettas in moderately hard, slightly alkaline water at 82F, and my sex ratios were not severely off of 50/50.

There is the possiblility of a genetic flaw, something that would only appear in the males, but is fatal. With all the inbreeding and new variants of Bettas, I would be most worried about this.

 

thanks Coradee ^^

basically I'm trying to see if I can get more males this time around breeding. I ended up with more females my first two times breeding a couple years ago. so I wanted to see if there was some way for me to manipulate my results into producing more male bettas

 

basically I'm trying to see if I can get more males this time around breeding. I ended up with more females my first two times breeding a couple years ago. so I wanted to see if there was some way for me to manipulate my results into producing more male bettas

oh I see

 

so far my pair is not ready to spawn yet. still waiting for the female to have stripes. other than that temperature is currently 82 degrees fahrenheit and ph level at 7.2