betta breeding

[akane]

Yay one of my males actually did manage to hatch fry.

First you start the bettas in small containers separated by cardboard or notecards so they can't see each other. For a short time every day (varies by person but I do about an hour) you remove the card between the male and female. They should start flaring at each other as a display. When the female starts to swim frantically with her head down when in view of the male they are ready to attempt breeding.


This attempt I left the male loose in the tank and introduced the female by adding her to the container but it didn't work very well. It does show the female's behavior toward the male.
http://vid1321.photobucket.com/albums/u ... aclxji.mp4


They need a shallow container of water with a floating object. It helps the male build a nest and keep the eggs and newly hatched fry picked up off the floor and put in the nest. A small sponge filter is usually run and the tank is heated to about 80-82F. Plants around the end with the sponge filter can help conceal the female if the male is getting aggressive. Sadly they tend to tear each others' fins to pieces in the process of courting. Catappa or indian almond leaf is added for it's properties in preventing infection and helping the nest stick together better.


When the male is satisfied with his nesting spot he lures the female in and if she approves they will start swimming in a circle finding the right position to spawn. This pair did fail to find the right position though and after shredding the males dorsal fin the female gave up.




This guy has a few hundred eggs under there and they hatched into little black dots today. He will tend them until they can swim horizontally on their own.


Betta fry will only accept live food and it has to be tiny. Vinegar eels are the easiest and most foolproof. They live in applecider vinegar. My camera is not good enough to get an eel pic because they are barely visible wiggling in a dropper of water when you hold it directly under the light. The white areas are collections of eels. For some reason my eels won't clump along the edges like they are supposed to for easy harvesting. I've been running them through a coffee filter to feed the fry.


And that is how far I've gotten in spawning my bettas. I have a culture of brine shrimp growing that I need to redo and will get pics of. They can't eat that for a few days. Mostly it just becomes try to feed as many of them as possible without the tank water going to crap and killing them. Raise the water level slowly as their labyrinth organ (this allows labyrinth fish to breathe from the surface) develops.

 

[FourRingCircus]

This blows my mind... I am amazed at the process, and the patience and knowledge you have for it! WOW! :clap2:

Thanks for the pics and the added information! I am fascinated, obviously :lol:

 

[MamaSheepdog]

This blows my mind... I am amazed at the process, and the patience and knowledge you have for it! WOW! :clap2:

:yeahthat:

I had no idea the little fry were so picky! When I was a kid my neighbor bred sea horses, and I remember how much time and effort it took hatching out brine shrimp to keep the babies fed.

How old will they be when you need to put them in individual containers, and at what age will they be the size you buy in pet stores?

 

[akane]

Growth rate is extremely variable. The fry release a growth inhibiting hormone to try to stunt the other fry. The bigger the fry the more it releases which gives it the best chance of survival. Water changes, space, variety of foods, and jarring big fry early can all contribute to growth. They usually have color in 8weeks but it can be as soon as 3weeks. When it comes to jarring the majority of the spawn and selling them you start to get into really varied practices and personal choices with each spawn at that point.

 

[Gone]

Awesome post. Bettas are great fish. I never had any success in breeding them myself, but I did breed honey dwarf gouramis (Trichogaster chuna) a few times. They're lovely little fish, but quite difficult at times.

Try to get ahold of some Riccia fluitans. for your tanks. It's a miracle plant for bubble nesters. It forms a finely divided, almost crystalline lattice looking mass at the surface. This provides great structure for bubble nests, a sense of safety for fry, and it's a massive oxygen producer which helps the fry to get a good start. You can actually see small bubbles of pure oxygen form on it periodically. It can be a little hard to get, but if you can get even a small sample it's easy to culture as much as you can use (and more). Oh, and don't believe the wiki page about duckweed crowding it out. I kept both in many tanks and they always achieved a balance, with the Riccia being dominant.

Another thing you probably know about, but I'll throw in here is Melafix. It's a tea tree extract product that worked very well for my bettas and gouramis whenever they got a bit of fin fungus or other infections. It should be safe for fry as well, I seem to remember using it prophylactically with my gouramis. Just never ever use it with smooth skinned fish like puffers and eels. They react Very badly. I nearly killed my dear puffers this way one time.

I remember avoiding any artificial filtration in my fry tanks. I kept them heavily planted and didn't overfeed, with some water changes as needed (very carefully). After I built my circulating range water changes became unnecessary, only having to replace a bit here and there due to evaporation. At one point I had 16 tanks in a range varying from 10-30 gallons each, with one 20 gallon dedicated to filtration (extremely heavily planted with lots of small inverts). I miss my fish.

 

[akane]

I had the breeding tank more heavily planted and I couldn't keep track of the fry and feed them so I went a little more bare. Just some duckweed and a few strips of hornwort.

Bettas are extra sensitive to melafix. They did make a product called betafix for that reason but I just use a much lower dose of melafix than usual. Most use salt instead. Bettas apparently tolerate salt well.

 

[FourRingCircus]

Where do you get duckweed? I have seen it mentioned quite a bit for chicken feed/supplement, but not sure how to get started with it...

 

[Gone]

That's so weird, I wonder if they changed the formulation of Melafix at some point? I clearly remember using it with great results for years with bettas and gouramis, among others. Though I didn't overdo the dosage either, so maybe that's why it worked out OK.

I know what you mean about losing track of fry. In Riccia mats you'd rarely see them, until they grew a bit. I was only breeding fish as a fun experiment, not for sale or anything, so I took a very pragmatic approach to it and didn't worry too much if I couldn't track them very well.

Anyway, love the posts and the setup. It brought back good memories of my own tanks, so thanks for that.

@heritage - You should be able to get some from any pet shop that sells fish. It often comes in as an unnoticed passenger with imported fish, and you only need a very little bit to start a culture. They'd probably give you some for free if you buy something else while you're there.

Also, creeks, swamps, marshes. You can collect it all over North America. Take a little bit to start a culture, and you'll soon have more than you know what to do with. A tray with big surface area will produce more than a smaller, deeper container.

 

[FourRingCircus]

@heritage - You should be able to get some from any pet shop that sells fish. It often comes in as an unnoticed passenger with imported fish, and you only need a very little bit to start a culture. They'd probably give you some for free if you buy something else while you're there.

Also, creeks, swamps, marshes. You can collect it all over North America. Take a little bit to start a culture, and you'll soon have more than you know what to do with. A tray with big surface area will produce more than a smaller, deeper container.

Would a kiddie pool work? We had one blow into our yard with the last storm (we have NO idea where it came from... our neighbor/tenant told me she picked up our pool by the mailbox and I looked at her like :? - ummm... we don't have a pool? It's not like we live in a neighborhood :lol: )... it's too small for the kids to use, but I was going to start researching duck weed more to see if I could use it for that. Or does it need filtration?

 

[Gone]

I don't see why not. If you're culturing it outdoors, you'll just have to watch that it doesn't get taken over by algae. Duckweed certainly doesn't need filtration, but some water movement will help to keep algae in check (a small jet would do it). It likes quite a bit of light, but not so much direct sun that it burns. Other than that, it's a very durable and tenacious plant that divides and grows incredibly fast.

If you have any local marshes or swamps you might even be able to collect enough to make culturing it unnecessary, at least until you decide if it's worthwhile. A pool skimming net would work well for collecting it. You need to consider the possibility of bringing in unwanted parasites with it. I'm not sure that's a serious concern for chickens though.

 

[akane]

Duckweed does great in stagnant water and will help oxygenate places with no surface movement. I just got 1/4th cup of it for $2 from a guy with a pond. He also gave me frogbit and salvinia but the frogbit died (looking to get more) and the salvinia is a pain so I have been stripping it out. It doesn't float as well as the duckweed and it's tiny so if you disturb the water it goes flying around the water column and into any filtration system at all. With duckweed and frogbit you just need your filter output to be below the water line and/or blowing away from the intake. None of the HOB (hang on the back) filters which just overflow the filtered water back into the tank next to their own intake system.

Warning I did end up with damselfly nymphs from the pond plants and if not removed they will eventually eat anything smaller than them. They are interesting if you aren't easily freaked out by weird bugs with weird legs. :lol:

In something like a kiddie pool or a stock tank you can throw in a ton of duckweed, maybe some aquatic plant bulbs you can buy for cheap, and any fish that can use air from the surface. I made 100s of paradise gourami one year doing absolutely nothing. When not breeding something complex I like to setup self contained ecosystems.

 

[FourRingCircus]

I just realized I totally hijacked this post... I'm so sorry

Duckweed does great in stagnant water and will help oxygenate places with no surface movement. I just got 1/4th cup of it for $2 from a guy with a pond. He also gave me frogbit and salvinia but the frogbit died (looking to get more) and the salvinia is a pain so I have been stripping it out. It doesn't float as well as the duckweed and it's tiny so if you disturb the water it goes flying around the water column and into any filtration system at all. With duckweed and frogbit you just need your filter output to be below the water line and/or blowing away from the intake. None of the HOB (hang on the back) filters which just overflow the filtered water back into the tank next to their own intake system.

Warning I did end up with damselfly nymphs from the pond plants and if not removed they will eventually eat anything smaller than them. They are interesting if you aren't easily freaked out by weird bugs with weird legs. :lol:

In something like a kiddie pool or a stock tank you can throw in a ton of duckweed, maybe some aquatic plant bulbs you can buy for cheap, and any fish that can use air from the surface. I made 100s of paradise gourami one year doing absolutely nothing. When not breeding something complex I like to setup self contained ecosystems.

It amazes me the sheer amount of information on this site!

A self-contained eco system would be ideal, something fun to tinker with. DH said he's OK with it as long as I cover it so birds can't land in it and transfer it to other bodies of water (he fishes a lot and so many invasive species are being transported from one body of water to another via birds and boats). A lightweight wire frame wouldn't be all that difficult.

Are water lilies something that would work? My neighbor/tenant has some in a barrel - I could probably "borrow" one or two

What is the benefit for something like Gourami? With the fish, the duckweed, and another plant or two, would I need any filtration or aeration at that point? What would I feed the fish? I have a worm bin...

 

[akane]

If you have small fish most likely you wouldn't need to feed them. They can just live off insects. Gourami and a few similar fish like bettas and paradise fish can breathe air from the surface so they don't need agitation in the water to dissolve oxygen. It makes them better able to survive a stagnant pool. With lots of plants though there are a few other hardy fish that may thrive. Minnows, danios, and mosquito fish are some. Possibly other small livebearers like guppies. Mosquito fish are an invasive livebearer so definitely one to properly contain. Even up here in our northern climate I've netted some in with minnow schools.

A full outdoor pond gets more complex. Whether you want or need substrate on the bottom for your plants to grow in. Whether you need to have water movement and whether you need to go so far as a filtration system as your water movement depends what you do with it. I threw in duckweed, threw in plant bulbs, put in a pair of paradise fish, and didn't touch it for 6 months. Someone was just showing off their stock tank of betta they didn't do anything to. Stuck a couple different similar age spawns together in a large stock tank with algae and did nothing but top off the evaporated water for months. You can get as complicated as you want. You just have to match the plant and fish needs together and weight the benefits with the work. If power is really close you can throw in a small water pump and it will reduce algae, even out the temp, and provide more oxygen in the water. If you put on filtration you can keep more fish in less area but then you have to clean the filtration.