Clearing out stock

Been awhile not updating things. Heatwave is still hitting hard for most part of the country, poor Melbourne and Adelaide ppl. Temperature here isn't that great either since last week, but at least now we are settled to 27-29C to early 30s. West is still awful, upto 10 degrees higher.

Here some shots of our HM juvies from our giant spawn (update of the 40 days trouble forecast), taken last week. They are separated into individual tanks now, and have grown much bigger and prettier. If we have time, we'll take their updated pictures during the weekend. They are 2 months old today (yesterday?), we should have taken their pics for celebration :)

They are very active and are showing large finnage.







We've still got some left from last sale, and we've got to clear out the stock quick.

For those who are still interested on them, here are the deal, do contact us quick cause they are priced to sell and they have to be out of the door in a week time.

1. 5 pairs of HMPK $100. Check http://mybettas.110mb.com under stock for sample. Ready to breed, all HMPK or OHMPK.
2. 5 pairs of "bigger" HM juvies $75, sample pics above, pics to be updated later
3. 10 random of "younger" HM juvies $60 (approx 5 males & 5 females)

With every purchase there always be a surprise bonus :)

Shipping to east coast $25. Shipping to Sydney will be same-day delivery, other cities should be 1 day delivery.

Oh, free shipping when you buy more than 2 combinations! Our email is on the right-panel, in case you're looking for it.

>>> Update some pics below. Most are not spreading to the max, but you get the idea, with little exercise they'll be HM easily soon. In case you've missed it, they are all coming from giant spawn at age of 2 month atm.







Slightly decent pic of the red marble, he moves too much :)


Pic of the pineapple boy, just couldn't resist him.


This one doesn't want to pose nicely, but he's actually slightly OHM, only just :)




PS. a number of enquiries came. If you're interested on buying more than 1 lot, any subsequent cheaper lot (2nd, 3rd, etc) will be half-price. Hope that helps in expanding your betta collection...

Further note, it seems there are a very few (3-5 noticed so far) of HMPKs in the spawn. This indicates that the parentage inherited their giant genes from HMPK somewhere. While the vast majority of the juvies are long fin, we can't guarantee that you'll get all long fin (specially when females are involved).

>>> Added: YouTube video of 2 males, 2 months old. Warning, size: 15MB (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6weEX4VRRA). There is a 70MB version of it, but that's way too long and large for uploading

>>> Added: found 2 lot of "large" juvie HMPKs in the tanks, for those interested, they are $60 per lot (5 pairs). Here is a sample of lavendar boy HMPK. Colours range from pineapple, lavendar, green lace, etc.

Extreme branchings for HM giants?

Just occured to us that 32 or 64 rays branching may not look too great on normal HM, but wouldn't it be awesome on giant HM? This type of branching would suit the body of a giant, when everything is so big. Just pondering....

Of course one would only find 50% giant on this type of branching, if lucky, but it's still something interesting to see.

So far we've seen 16 rays, perhaps 32 rays males on 4+ inches, expect to see a lot more :) Wonder how the fry will turn out, just like the dad/mom?

Giant female breeders

Definitely not the best pics, but it's so difficult to get good lightings for these guys and they keep moving/dancing too fast. But we thought it would be better to take their pics now before they're off to XL, otherwise they'll be gone forever :)

2 females here, at the back, flaring against HMPK boy. All fish are 3.5 to 4 months old. The females are mostly 16 rays branching, with some branchings perhaps at 8 rays. Both are very close to HM spread.

The comparisons with male may not be appropriate, would be better to compare them with normal HMPK female, but you get the point. Comparing them with male shows how they are larger than the male. Comparing them to standard HMPK female would have been showing how they are easily double it :)

We've been keeping these females as reserved for sometime as part of another 10 or so females, XL finally wanting them :) Certainly going to miss them....





Remind to self: do not be tempted to spawn them!

Cool toys for blogging

Non-betta related, but just thought to mention to you guys. If you have any comments on this blog whatsoever, feel free to leave feedback. We've just installed some new widgets for the posts:

1. the usual comments/opinions feedback, if you want to say in length or even argue with the post
2. quick and easy "Readers say" where you can just tick the relevant option (let us know if you think there ought to be more options)
3. quick and easy "rating" system, if you find any post to be of any value
4. the email icon is also useful if you'd like to forward the post to someone

Anywho...feel free to leave as much or as little feedback on the posts.

Finally, some skin layout arrangements of the blog, hope you find it easier to read them. Search button on the right panel is good if you can't quite nail down which of those posts discuss certain keywords that you were looking for.

Some ideas for dotted bettas

Interesting how people call their bettas, or their strains, and come up with all sorts of names. We've called some of our bettas "dalmatian" cause they really look like dalmatian dots to us, at least their appearence does resemble one :)

A similar dotted pattern for instance is called "orange dot" or "dotted orange" when it appears on orange-based bettas. This doesn't get fancy name to it, since no one can figure out what it resembles. A variant to "orange dot" seems to be "orange polka" or "polka dot". Again, this name is not catchy enough and people have difficulties of relating to it (who's in the textile industry these days?). Calling the bettas with fruity name such as "mandarin" isn't really attractive either. Similarly, a yellow-dotted on melano doesn't really get fancy name either.

Another name, though not related to the dots, used frequently and becomes strongly associated with strong yellow colouration is "yellow banana". Perhaps, banana in some countries are really strong yellow. It refers to "intense yellow" but it seems "yellow banana" sounded better?

Now, what about orange-dotted on chocolate bettas? Recent name to it, which seems to fetch ridiculous price, is called "armageddon". Not sure what the history of that name, it doesn't really look like the end of the world, but it sure is catchy.

As with most dotted fish, they are inherited! So, it's kinda funny when the seller tries to reassure that the offspring will be armageddonized. In fact, it is so strongly inherited that it is difficult to get rid of the gene, just like marble ;)

Talking about armageddon, it seems the line comes from black orange being crossed to dotted orange. We're not quite so sure what was the fuss about. Surely it's fairly easy to produce these days, but why would the price be ridiculous?

Anywho, what kind of dotted fish would you like? How about some of the ideas here:

1. dotted copper red - copper red with with orange dots. you could try to cross copper gold with dotted orange or dotted black orange, it will produce copper red and hope that some of the fry carries orange dot. you may ended up with dalmatian or red marble, but that's pretty as well :)
   
2. dotted MG - MG crosses with black orange dotted, you get multi but some will be MG and black orange too, just a matter of placement where the dots ended up. maybe this is the way they've got armageddon initially!
   
3. dotted red - surely they can try to cross dotted orange or dotted black orange to super red (or extended red). c'mon, we like to see the flaming red! Some multi colour are expected as well, but there may be a few nice dots in the mix
   
4. red gold dotted! - now that's something to look forward to. the golden body with red finnage, and throws a bit of red or orange dot on that beautiful finnage. you may need to get either orange black dot or orange dot and cross it with a platinum gold. The outcome should be red gold and we'll see whether the dots will show up ;) Some fry will be cambodian based while others would be black base (if you cross to black orange).
   

A bit of warning though, bettas carrying dots usually yield to some marbles being thrown in the spawn. So it really depends on the parentage of your fish. Nevertheless, if you're bored, and want to experiment on the dots, why not give the above a try? Worst case you'll get beautiful multi colour offspring and even some weird colours from the mix. If you manage to get any of the above colouration, do show it off to everyone!

Showing off after full tummy

As with any animals, bettas are so much fun and energetic when they are young. This is especially true when they are teenager, just about to sprout, and still finding their own territory.

Everyday when we feed them, these youngster of barely 2 months old, effective beg for food. However, once their tummy full, a much more attractive activities happening! That's when they started to flare to each other, moving about the tank and pretty much teasing each other to see who can spread the biggest tail :)

Perhaps this is an early exercises that they're practicing, before they reach adulthood. Just like a young lion cub will tease each other and learn how to hunt before they are completely on their own, hunting and finding their own foods.

Anyway, here are two pictures of them flaring, after a full stomach.





They flare to both males and females, don't really care who stands on their path. VZ kept saying "males have their own ego on flaring, but females don't want to be left behind too!" This ritual is more apparent when their tummy full. On other times they seemed to be quite peaceful, with some occasional flaring, not as frequent.

The nice thing is, of course, rarely any of them hurt. They break off when the flaring gets intensified. This kind of flaring, will continue for another 1 or 2 weeks before the bigger males get separated. From then on, they will flare and fight like an adult :)

For those interested, the fry are still available for the lot of 10. Better contact us soon and enjoy your own flaring show :)

Guess your betta sex

Bettas identifications have been an interesting game, when done during the early stages of your bettas, say when they are 1.5 month to 2 months old. Sometimes they are very easily identified, while other times you'd need to rely on your gut feeling or plain simply guess skills :)

While various variants of bettas (CT, PK, HM, VT, etc) may have slight variations on the way to identify them, the methods mentioned here are applicable in general.

So, here's some simplified methods. Currently we are showing methods for long fin betta, specifically HM.

The first one, is very easy to spot. This is a female. She has the egg repository clearly concealled under her tummy skin and a much larger egg peck popping up.


On a smaller female, you may still see the egg repository faintly showing off under the skin, and also a smaller egg peck. This is when you have a little doubt whether that was really a female you're looking at, or you need zoom glasses just to freeze her to check her clearer! This is when you need other clues to help you out. The easiest one would be to check her anal fin length compared to her peduncle. If the anal roughly same length as peduncle, or even shorter, then chances you're looking at a female. Short caudal fin (in an HM line) is also good indication that it's a she! Caudal fin length as a cue can't be used for PK though, cause all PK is short! Anal fin is also helpful, you'll notice that usually the height of female's anal fin is half of the male's. That is, if you measure the height of her anal fin, you will notice that she has a much shorter anal compared to the male's counterpart.


Note that on the first pictured female, and the one below, the anal fin is slightly longer than her peduncle. This is because the line is an HM, hence she does have the tendency of having longer anal.


There are times when you just have to say, "hmm....not sure about this one". Check this fish for instance, it doesn't have egg repository, it does have egg peck but we can't be sure of doing identification based on egg peck alone, cause males also have egg pecks (as we will see soon). The fish's anal and caudal seem to be short enough. Gut feeling tells us that this would be a male, though he doesn't sprout yet. Why would that be the case? Cause the caudal seems to be a tad longer than other females. The lack of egg repository is also a good guess, cause usually small females already have some small number of eggs stored in the body.


Here's another "unknown". The fish clearly has short fin at the moment. Egg peck is clearly shown there. No sign of egg repository. So it'll be a matter of time (1 week perhaps) before it shows off and identifiable.


Another unknown, due to young age. Anal has started to grow a bit longer, hence may just be a male in 1 week time.


A clear identification between males and "unknown" can be seen in the following picture. Upper fish is unknown, but lower fish has clearly show long fin trait and therefore identifiable as male.


Here is for the fun of it, another male. Egg peck is clearly showing up, but he's definitely a boy. Anal and caudal are giving away his sex, of course.


Some more males.




So, hopefully you can go about and try to identify your fish now :) Don't worry if you have mistakenly identify them though, no harm done.

Bettas feeding frequency

Feeding frequency has been discussed numerous times in forums. We have been experimenting with a number of feeding rituals, ranging from regular 3x feedings per day to 2x feedings per week. So, what's the conclusion?

With regular frequent feedings, provided each feeding is completely making them full tummy, you would expect that you're doing much more regular water changes. This is unavoidable as they produce faster waste. However, it does seem that the fry grow faster too, before the growth stabilizes at around 3 to 4 months old, and then it goes steadily growing at a slower pace. Frequent feedings extremely required for younger fry, they need all the food to grow. The problem with young fry, such as those 1 month old, is in knowing when they are hungry. Lateness in feeding them will resulted on some fry to stunt and non-active. Feeding them too much will make them lazy, triggering BSD and other sorts of health issues.

Prolonged frequent feeding to older bettas will result on cutting their life expectancy. This is interesting, as it seems, the faster the cells grow, obviously the faster they will die too. In some instances, their life expectancy will only be up to 1 year, with an average of 8 months. Most die due to stomach-related diseases or internal parasites (note, more food, more gunk, more chance of infections).

Infrequent feeding, when applied to older fish such as those older than 3 months, seemed to be doing just fine. Bettas live double to tripple of their frequent feeding counterparts. In some instances, some bettas live over 2.5 years and yet having the youth body of 8 months old! Body growth slows down considerably, they will keep searching for foods and yet you must have a strong heart not to feed them! You will, however, get much greater death rate as you need to know when your bettas really hungry and need the feeding, otherwise they will just starve.

In one of the experiments, feeding them with a slice of bread (e.g. vegetarian) infrequently while cutting off all meat foods seemed to get them through. But this is not recommended. Although bettas are omnivore, they need their meat! This feeding regime has average survival rate of 50% to the age of 1.5 year. Wonder if anyone ever analyzed whether this type of feeding is no difference from feeding bettas with pellets? Sure, pellets have all the "vitamins" added to it, but at the end of the day it doesn't come from meat product, isn't it?

Our practice these days is to feed younger fry of less than 3 months old 3x and anything larger will get their feeding irregularly. They are only fed meat either in the form of live food or frozen. Sometimes they get 1x per day, sometimes 2x per day, sometimes 1x per 2 or 3 days. Irrespective of the feeding regime, they need regular exercises, so keep that in mind. You may "visit" your bettas, and they're looking forward to see you feeding them, but instead you may only uncard them so they can flare :)

Hot hot hot, ways to cool things down

It seems  the days gone from tough to tougher. Yo-yo weather last time was only the beginning. Last 2 days had been extremely hot at our place (though the afternoon seemed to be okay when the predicted thunderstorm hits). It seems more to be expected to come over the coming weeks, bush fire has started as well...

The water in the tank must have been more than 30 degree easily. Feeding fry doesn't seem to be so much fun anymore, worms placed in such warm water will just die off in a matter of an hour (or less, didn't monitor this). Quite surprising that the fry didn't want to take their foods, must have been busy trying to figure out how to cool their temperature down.

This time, we're prepared, just. The whole freezer has been preoccupied by blocks of ice. Tank temperature is lowered to 20 degree in the morning, let the temperature rises slowly by the warm air, and then in the afternoon a bunch of ice blocks dumped to the tank to further lower it to mid 20s. 5 Large tanks seemed to be doing okay with this technique. It also gives us some time to refill the freezer, making sure we have sufficient ice blocks.

Now, the problem is the 50-odd single containers. Moving them to the coolest area in house, the bathroom, doesn't seem to help. Temperature isn't getting 40 degree like outside, but it's still a fair 30+ degree. The problem is, in the morning the living room would be hotter cause it's facing east, but in the afternoon the bathroom which is facing west got the hit. This means, we have to move them from bathroom to living room in the afternoon, even though living room's temperature doesn't go down that quickly. Too tired to move them around, so they stay there. VZ has been complaining how she can't find her daily make up but she understands it's a temporary measure. Kids seemed to be okay with all this, they find it

No one has ample time to really get aircon fixed, it'll cost couple of grand cause it's ducted. So much for trusting the previous owner about top notch ducted aircon, they must had been cutting too much corner on doing the job.

We're testing a idea that we'll use when the temp rises too high next time. It works like this. Put individual fish to plastic bag (still need to buy this bag, don't have the good size at the moment), and then put the bag in the empty container. In the morning of predicted hot weather, we will each take some of the bettas to the office. This is fairly easily done by punching a hole in the mid level of the bag (above water level of course) and passing through a strong robe through it, before putting all bags into big shopping bag. Making sure we're not spilling any water, the robe act as the hanger for the bags. This way, they can get luxury treatment of aircon in the office, which usually stays around 25 degree :D

Well, we figured, we only have to do this once or twice, so it's no biggy. At the end of the day, when we came back home, we just offload the plastic bags back into the empty container, ready for the next heatwave. This whole trouble seems to be only worth doing when the temperature to be predicted 40+, anything lower than that seems to be manageable by the adult bettas.

Moments to remember in your betta's life

okay, just like any of your kids, when you treasure any  moments spent, what would be the moments you'd like to remember for your bettas? Though each betta is different, making the global theme (e.g. "spawning") somewhat dull, the specific detail of the moment worth remembering (e.g. when the female teases the male) !

In our case, here are the top moments, from "the start" to "the end is the beginning":

1. courting, when male and female dance the ritual; each tries to impress the other, teases one another, just reminded your teenage years ! ahh, specially that "first love"
2. wrapping, egg dropping; how both male and female freeze on that split second moment
3. picking up the eggs, thy both need to pick the eggs. love you honey, let's get the eggs to safe place
4. seen how relieved the female after spawning? she'll go to the corner, keep one eye at the nest, sometimes come by and help the male pick the fallen eggs
   
5. male tending egg; some males would stand there, staring at the eggs, and not move an inch! remember how you waited in the hospital for the baby's arrival?! Your male must have been waiting there patiently, making sure no single egg left behind, all taken care of
6. hang in there, boy! your fry first hatching and trying to cling to his life, on the tank's glass or on that single bubble his dad had made for him, and perhaps a bit overcrowded competing with some of his siblings!
7. you miss that one, that one, and that one. oh, c'mon, surely you can pick them all up quicker!! that's when the male tries his damn hard to pick the fry, and you sounded more like your mom, nagging your dad for his inefficiency :)
8. patient is virtue. see how the male patiently picking up the fry, despite the very same fry may have fallen off the bubble every single time he spits him out
9. see how proud the mom in picking up her fry too...she would pick the nearby fry, make some bubbles for them, and spit them out, while keeping safe distance from the dad
   
10. don't play too far...that's when the dad keep picking up as many free-swimming fry and move them closer to his bubblenest
    
11. chase, boy, chase it! nearly there, nearly there, got it! good boy...that's when you see him snatch his first brine shrimp :)
12. no, not that one, no! that's when you're screaming to him when he tried to eat that over-lengthy worm, but then you felt all good when he learnt how to split the worm in half :)
13. how they all stare at you when they are hungry...hurry, hurry, hurry!! we want food !!
    
14. his first flare...that's memorable, how he flares to another sibling after a full tummy
15. he's a teenager now, see how he flares to another male, how he keeps a good eye on that gorgeous female, how excited he becomes :)

With any good moments, there are bad ones. Here are sad moments that hurt, wish they never happened:

1. make the damn bubble, boy! why can't you make a single damn bubble! there is a gorgeous female there, make it, damn it!
2. ah, crap, that's it! you just torn the most beautiful female caudal I've got. I hope it's all worth it, otherwise you're off to the toilet!
   
3. you big dumb boy, how hard could it be wrapping that female! do i need to teach you that!! wrap her from that direction...no, no, not in that corner again! there isn't enough space there, stupid idiot !
4. oh please, don't drop that egg yet...no, wait when the male wrap you...ah, crap, what's wrong with you two. those eggs are not fertilized, focus, focus on wrapping, not on picking those unfertilized eggs!!
5. third time's a charm? i'm warning you, do it properly this time or you're out of the priority list
   
6. did you just suspect your female cheated on you?! that's your fry fallen there, pick them up!
7. where did you spit your fry? i didn't see it ! sh*t, did you just eat your own fry?! i'm watching you, dont you dare do that again! spit them up right away!! now !!!
8. what's wrong with him, he doesn't look good...c'mon boy, you've got plenty of fry to take care of, are you okay?
9. ah, darn, i've got no food and there are plenty of hungry fry here. what should i do? is there a nearby shop open? who has some supply?! someone, help me!
10. no, not that over-lengthy worm, don't eat that one! ah, crap, now what do i do? you see, i told you not to snap that one, you can't breath? wait, let me see if I can pull that worm out of your mouth...
11. what's wrong with you guys? why are you dying off one by one? i've changed the whole tank's water, but still dying off, what should i do?
    
12. what the hell are you doing on the floor? mobbing? stupid fish, do not jump!
13. how many times do i need to tell you, do not get into your brother's room! now see what you've done, both of you, *sigh* all that beautiful fins, ruin :'(
14. that's another male there, flare! you coward!

"You've seemed to have gone through so much suffering, if you were given another chance, would you give it another try?" YES! It's all worth the experience.

Grow boy, grow!

That's the frustration when you're expecting a fry to show off their true potential. Unfortunately, fish is not going to grow overnight and many have realized this but still deep inside expect their fish to behave somewhat differently.

In order to get your fish growing to large size, particularly if they are giants, many breeders suggest to do the following:

• large tank for the boy
• frequent water changes or at least frequent topping up the water
• flaring activity, be it to another male or to that gorgeous female next door
• irregular feeding (boy is different than girl, they worries about their ego rather than stomach)
• don't keep a wall clock next to your tank, watching the minutes go won't help!

There has been some people saying that they keep their fry together in community tank till they are of age 3 months old. We have never been successful on doing this, at the age of 2.5 months at least they will start flaring which sadly resulted in torn fins. The opposite sometimes is worst too. Early separation causes the boy to have "early withdrawal syndrome" where he's so scared, not in the mood, stressed up, and basically stunt. Temperature plays significant role if you're separating him. We find, with less fluctuation and frequent flaring, the boy will turn out okay.

Now the challenge of getting him large size in very short amount of time is still a puzzle to us. While females are easier to handle (just keep feeding them foods), the males growth is somewhat restricted. Our experimentation has shown that males with females insight grow faster than the ones purely isolated with other males. Females with males insight will mature faster than their all-females counterpart, but their sizes are no difference than all-females.

Large tank for a single boy seems to be problematic as well. He's getting the feeling of too isolated, the tank is just too big for him, and he's lonely. Less interaction seems to reduce his growth rate.

So, as you can see, there are lots of things that we still need to learn on giant bettas, particularly the long fins. HMPK seems to be somewhat easier, their bulky body size is purely the result of exercises and foods. Finnage isn't something to worry about, they are not so troublesome compared to their long fins.

Another experimentation that we did, which was quite successful, was to have around 8 bettas or so in a large tank. Each betta is caged in a cut off 2L or 3L bottles, and a single betta is let roam free in the large tank. You'd see flaring exercises happening for a good half hour to 1 hour before you need to isolate them again. Isolation is as simple as the caging, by getting a 4L milk bottle cut off to form the cage. You can vary the number of bettas in a tank, depending how big your cages and your tank, but the point of the experiment was to show that they do indeed grow much faster and larger in such environment. Now, the only thing that you need to do is to make sure each caged betta has a chance to roam free in the tank, just re-cage the previously free betta and let another one free. This exercise not only build the size of your bettas, but also build their temperament. They will be accustom to disturbance, changes, and will flare instantly to any other bettas. Nothing more rewarding than to see your bettas flare like crazy showing off that beautiful finnage!

Unfortunately, this experimentation could not scale. If you only have a couple bettas, it's all great. If you have lots of them, you'd need lots of large-size tanks. Some bettas are very good in jumping or swimming through small openings on the lower part of your cage (if you didn't cut the cage in straight line). So, from time to time you've got "accidental" fights, which you will regret cause your beautiful bettas won't look the same anymore :)

We haven't experiment with drip system yet, lots of other breeders are having good response with this system. The problem with drip system, in our opinion, are three fold. first the waste of electricity (heater) that it requires. Controlling temperature to be around, say 27 degree Celcius, needs a 300 watt heater running all the time. Summer may help, but that's only about 2 or 3 months of the year, whatever happened to the rest of the year? States where sun shines close to all year round, such as QLD and NT, are somewhat lucky. They just don't need to worry about heaters. 2nd problem is the growth of algae on each container in the drip, sometimes rendering the whole thing to be pointless cause your bettas can't flare with other bettas. third problem is the accumulation of waste product in the dripper. Slowly but sure you'll get the dripper blocked, water pressure and distribution no longer in balance. Oh, did we forget the frequent amount of topping water? Drip system evaporates water much faster.

Home-made drip system would be fantastic, if they can address many of the above problems efficiently. We're still searching for best design for drip system. Something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg to build, last for sometime, and doesn't cost too much to run.

Anyhow, getting back to raising large boy. We haven't been paying much attention to foods and its influences to betta size. While it has been known that live foods stimulate growth and colour on bettas, frozen foods or pellets seem to deliver the same outcome provided the bettas are exercised properly. Hence, this is still an unknown area for us. Some experimentations that we did where we fed a tank solely with frozen food and another with live food didn't show noticeable differences. This ignores some side effect of certain foods (e.g. feeding frozen food incorrectly can cause bloating easily; live worms may carry diseases; etc).

The joy of mistaken identity

Funny how some sellers treat us very well cause they assume we were someone else. On the plus side, we've got good deals (the guys must have been having good reputation), but on another side we've felt bad to take advantage of them. We tried to rectify this whenever we can, but after awhile, we just ignore it :)

This happens both in Discuss and Betta communities (though we're being identified as different persons). It may have been the fact that we don't socialize much and would like to keep our daily life as private.

Doh, as much we love the hobby, the hobby should stay as it is. Don't get us wrong, we love old friends and new ones. Still keeping in touch with them. Some we hated but they stick like magnet, in a good way..., but the dealings are more *to the point* these days. You want X, we have X, we'll give you X. Go away, do your experiments, and if you have something we love, we'll contact you and get it... Perhaps we just get older, more isolated and do things on our own. Besides, who can socialize with us these days, with the very limited (and odd) time we've been having.

This mode of communication has its downs. We come to accustom that not everyone is going to reply back to us. Things get sorted in days, rather than minutes. The good thing about it, we also are not expected to reply to anyone unless we have free time. So if you don't hear from us for days, don't be surprised. Most times we're here and there, but sometimes VZ and me will have to travel as part of the job.

So for those out there, if you are looking for your long lost friend, we used to be moving about, stayed for a year in QLD (back 5 years ago), landed in Parramatta (8 months or so) and now North Turra. Previously we stayed briefly in Perth, that was the good old time when nothing can be found there (in the pet shop). Otherwise, you're looking at the wrong guys (but happy to get acquainted with you! though keep your distance). AD has a bunch of his lost friends, but that's because most of them went back to Vietnam :)

40 days old trouble forecast

Usually we don't have to worry about fry till they're really about 2 months old. These guys are growing so fast that we have been splitting them up into 3 tanks, got half of them killed due to over-lengthy worms, and yet we've got too many of them to take care of. Today we notice that many of them have started to flare, so that's another headache to figure out where to put them....

Now, here's your chance. We need to clear up them all and will only keep about 20 or so of them, the rest can go. This is your chance to get potentially good genes (well, the parents are awesome, but we're yet to see what the fry will turn out).

They are for sale, for lots of 10 random. Their colours range from multi, lavendar, to a few mustard gas. Unsexed (though there are some apparent males already). All long fin (or apparent long fin, since parents were long fins, check parent pictures below).

They are 40 days old today, with length about 1 inches.

Cost: $40 per lot of 10.
If you purchase at least 2 of our other fish (only a few copper gold HM, green red HMPKs, dalmatian HMPKs left; check http://mybettas.110mb.com), you can buy each lot of 10 for the special price of $20 (half priced).

Now here's some pictures of them.





Their last week picture at age 33 days:


One of the fry at age 40 days old, marble. Not sure whether male or female (your guess?)


Their parents, the male was an OHM.


Mom was a nice HM.



As you can see, their parentage has very nice genes. They should be giant geno, both parents are giants (and their growth rate and size are indication of giants anyway).

If you're interested, contact us at our email. They need to be sold asap while their finnage still "intact" :). Given nice feedings, in 2 weeks time you'd be looking at very nice lot of bettas!. You can still keep them in community tank, provided they have large space (not crowded like what we've got here).

>> Update on some pictures.

The smaller tank view.


One of the boy, with 1 slice torn on anal. Must have been flaring with another one sometime ago.


One of the MG flavour.


Green boy.


Flaring a bit.


Another boy.

Fry roster, who feeds what and when

Ever since we've been breeding bettas, and other fish -- but we failed at them :), we've developed a certain ritual or rather habit. It's gone the days when we breed 3 pairs per week and even up to 10-15 spawnings per month. We are getting older, busier, or simply lazier. These days, we only breed about 3 pairs per month and the breeding period usually only last for 2 or 3 months.

Pretty much not interested anymore in crossing all different combinations in the hope to diversified the lines and doing "divide and conquer" approach. We'll just pick the best 3 pairs, cross them, and wait for another 2 months to see the outcome. Some of the initial fish still remain with us, in case we're developing further F2/3/4 on the line.

Perhaps this is the natural progression of the hobby. In the old days, it's so difficult to produce a successful spawn. The aim was to get as much milk, ooppssss...fry, as possible out of the parents. These days, we're more focused on which male to be crossed to which female, ignoring how many fry they'll produce (if we're lucky to get them spawn to begin with -- giants are just so difficult in spawning them). In fact, the number of fry produced, as long they're about 100, that sounded good already. Getting 300, 400, or even more fry is just unwanted outcome :) Who's going to take care of them? It requires a fulltime 2 person to really handle so many fry. 3 people rotating on taking care of them is still manageable, but it sure works out funny sometimes.

AD loves to feed the females a lot more than the males. He likes the females bigger and stronger. He is the morning guy, who'd wake up at 4am to give a nice round to all fish (females more) before he's off to work. VZ only likes fry under age of 2.5 months in the community tanks. She feeds them with mozzie larvae and sometimes chopped worms. She'd sit in front of the tanks for at least half an hour on every feeding, just watching the fry trying to catch the larvae :). She has more flexible hours but usually starts off at 9am, again before her work. I need to pick up the slack doing the roster in the afternoon on making sure every fish got fed, otherwise we had the old incident of "why is it so smelly here?". That's when we realized a fish in a container somewhere had been dead for a couple of days and no one noticed it (well, partly because it is hidden in the stacks of containers, but also because everyone else assumes someone else had feed them!)

Increasingly frequent, we found a container full of live worms but without the fish ! Everyone then got busy trying to figure out where on earth the fish went to....Usually we'll find him either on nearby container, or dry on the floor somewhere.

Night is the only blissful time when all of us able to sit down together, sitting next to 2 big tanks enjoying the small fry flaring. That's also the best time to feed the fry again, with mozzie larvae this time. At least VZ can sit down and started to pick her favourite colours. Oh yes, did we mention that we also play the game "guess whether it's a male or female" on the small fry. It gets very challenging specially when the fry is barely 1.5 or 2 months old. It's only a matter of weeks till we knew who win the game :)

Did we mention that all of this roster has to be done while we're taking care of the kids too? Now, that's tiring and yet so relaxing (such oxymoron is surprisingly "understandable" amongst breeders and parents).

Yo-yo on temperature

Last couple of days had been nightmare, for us and for our fishes. The heat wave made us can't sleep at night, or day for that matters. The garage/shed which acts as the fish room must had heated up close to 40 degrees or more. Some casualties happened, a couple of males (and females) stopped breathing altogether, must have been because there wasn't much oxygen in the air....Putting 3 large fans didn't really help, the air was hot ! The shed is facing west, so sun exposure is worsen till late night.

This year had been worst than last couple of years. Two or three years ago, there were a day or two of summer, but back then things weren't so bad. We moved the fish to the house, turn on the aircon and all was well...This year, aircon is broken, fan was no help, the freezer did its best on producing small ice cubes !

Yes, we put the ice cubes in the tank, that helps a bit on the community tank. Breaking the ice cubes, without proper tools, for male containers is much trickier. That's when fork comes handy, but still some males were silly enough to "stick" to the ice. Perhaps they liked the taste of the ice better than the water in their containers...70 or so containers were easily moved into the house, at least it was a couple of degrees lower than the shed.

Interestingly enough though, some males made the biggest bubblenest on hot summer. What's going through their tiny heads is anyone's guess. While majority of the males didn't even bother to flare, let alone swimming around, some managed to kill the time by building their nest :)

Yesterday things getting better when the temperature dropped to manageable level. But today, it gets cooler again. While we can cope okay for such change of temperature, wonder how the fish manage this sudden change...We've noticed clamp fins and whitespot/ick on smaller fish, that's not a good sign....So today, we ended bring up the heater to the fish room. Just wanted to gradually lower the temperature till they're stable enough.

When one think about this, one would laugh on how silly sometimes we're doing *anything* just for the sake of the fish. Some of the silliest things heard about. Now, that's what's called "hobby" folks.

Careful in dealings with sellers

As with any adults, white lie typically considered okay. But where would one stop? Recent dealings with some sellers had lead us to believe that they are not totally honest on things.

Here's a quote (cut off XXX due to privacy reason):
"you can have them if you can send money to my paypal now at XXX but must be right now since i need money to pay for my son tuition tomorrow or they will not let him take a final test".

It sounded like one of the email scam we've been hearing on the news these couple of year...

Normally, we would symphatize with such situations, after all, many people including us had experienced how stressing it would be when times are tough and totally cornered with very limited options. Yes, we've helped previously as the reasons made sense, and we gave the benefit of the doubts. However, this time, the reasons are WAY different from the previous ones, and they were only a couple of days apart ! Surely one wouldn't be hit by a series of bad luck, but who knows...they could be on the downturn if not sliding way faster than a landslide.

If they told the truth, we may be more willing to listen...Supposed they tell the truth, would you wait till last minute (really...last minute!) to try find that tuition fee? If you do, then boy, you really need to smack your head for being ontime. We kinda wondered how much would that tuition fee be, particularly they were asking couple of hundreds usd. Child education these days is just getting out of reach, even in the third-world country, or could it be *because* it is in the third-world country!

Suffice to say, be very careful on every dealing you're having with sellers. They may have the goods, but interestingly they may come up with all sorts of stories to make you feel sorry for them. Talk to other people, us, your transhippers, etc to find out if they knew something is odd about a particular seller before you drag your sorry ignorant a** (sarcasm doesn't always work here, but you get the point).

How sad that one's action could cause distrust to the community.

Mozzie larvae and swim bladder

In one of the tanks we've exclusively fed mozzie larvae to the fry started when they're 2 weeks old. We noticed that half of the fry had difficulty with their swim bladder. It seems some of them have difficulty swimming to the bottom of the tank, as if their bladder is full of air....

It got us thinking, could it be that the mozzie larvae is full of skeletal bones rather than nutrient...Or perhaps they're just lazy cause mozzie larvae like to float on water surface, hence a lot easier for the fry to snap them without much of exercise.

Luckily, starving them for a day solves the problem, they started to scour the tank on every corner.

This is different compare to feeding adult bettas with "large" mozzie larvae though. Unlike small larvae, it seems large larvae is a lot more active and alert, hence has tendency to run off whenever something is getting closer to them. Very good exercise for any bettas :)

Warm weather and bubblenest

These guys build bubblenest fairly quick, in a night. Yesterday we changed their water, and they've been at it flaring since then :)



Though young age, they're ready to spawn ;)

Seems the heat wave helps them a lot, or it could be just our feeling...

Small bettas

Remember when we discussed the david and goliath of bettas? Comparing "micro" HM vs giants?

Well, we've got our own share of small bettas. All of their siblings are normal bettas and giant geno, but a couple of them managed to be very small. We believed they are "stunt" cause we only got a small number of them but this is the first time we've seen these guys on any of our spawns. Perhaps it's because stunt bettas had tendency of not surviving?

There are many reasons why some bettas stunt, in our case perhaps because there were so many of their siblings and competing for food doesn't seem to be a skill that these guys are good at.

This boy, for instance, is nearly 3 months old, but has a size of merely 3cm (1.5 inches). Amazing how small this boy is, cause he actually looks quite "normal". He doesn't seem to have rosetail gene, with very nice tail length.


This boy is definitely rosetail. He has some nippings on the caudal and anal fins, but surely that will grow back....He may grow bigger, just slightly, but still pretty small. Measuring at the moment at 3.3cm in total length, he looks better than when we picked him up from growout tank couple of days ago. Look to be OHM if he spreads that caudal.


What kind of dwarf males without their companion females? Here they are the females. Measuring at about 2.5cm and definitely carrying rosetail, the females have spread 170+ degree caudal.


Anyone interested on these guys, let us know. They are $10 each ono (donate the money!) and we'll hand you the fish. By no means we're encouraging dwarf or micro HM bettas, but who are we to decide which direction evolution will take these guys to? As long they are healthy, you're on the right track...

Breadthtaking betta

Once in a while, we see some interesting bettas. Have a look at this boy. He may very well be one-off in the spawn, but he sure looks very nice! For those who are interested, the boy is still available for another couple of days (contact us and we'll provide the link).

(permission given by breeder for image reproduction)


This boy reminds us of the spanish flamenco dance, the flamingo :)

Now, if only all HM bettas have this nice volume and trait....Something for breeders out there as challenge to produce and improve the quality of bettas!

Another nice one is this platinum BF boy. Nice balance BF coming from a platinum line, that's not seen everyday... :)

Sample of OHM female

Well, the picture isn't really showing OHM, but you can see that she doesn't spread to the max as yet ;)



She's carrying rosetail by the look of it. They were a couple of rosetails OHM in the spawn (5?) but this female is the only one standing up of the rest. For start, she has longer-than-usual finnage. FYI, most rosetail females have shorter finnage, despite they may be full HM lineage. This female has full HM long fin finnage, so that's a good news, sort of....

Furthermore, this female is very nice since she can close/collapse that caudal (well, all of the rosetails on this lot can collapse their tail). We shall see what will be her match, but it seems she wont be mating another rosetails ;)

Colour-wise, this female isn't so attractive. She is either a blue orchid or just merely blue lace. Eitherway, it isn't so interesting aspect of her. Scale misalignment doesn't seem to be too extreme on her, which may explain why she looks more "normal" for a rosetail. Did we mention that she's either a 16 rays or 32 rays branching? The branching is so thinly spaced that we lost count on it, not even after we zoomed on the picture (wished we took fine quality pics).

Her sibling brother, a rosetail long fin OHM, had just died, injury due to fighting. Increasingly we've got more fish fighting these days, they just love to do some jumpings. Can't be avoided really, there are so many containers stacked and not enough lids around.

The plan is to have this female crossed back to her half sibling. Particularly to the "lame" SD giant boy that we had :) Hope they will improve the line. This matching should produce some giants but we'll see.....

Copper red update

This guy has developed a fair bit, though still not as grande or large as his dad. About 3 months at the moment. He has nice branchings, though certainly weird caudal. Somehow the caudal branches like he's having feathertail or CT gene. None of the parents is known to have CT gene, but the dad had feathertail, so that may explain it (this lot seems to be stronger feathertail gene though).





There are only 10 fry from the whole spawn, due to the extreme size of both parents. Most eggs just gone fungusy. This makes this spawn one of the most expensive successful spawn that we had. It was so rewarding to finally had the parents "make out" and the joy that we've got when we saw *some* fry! Out of the spawn, some die off (about 6 dead?). There are only 4 males in the lot but currently the count down is going to 3 on last count. The other 2 weren't developing as nicely, more like "reject", which is very disappointing.



2 females (1 having health issue) are similar to this boy, awesome colouring and branchings. 1 of the females is stunted. She grows and behaves quite normal, but the fins had been collapsing or at least isn't growing as beautifully as it should be...The others are quite great with very promising size, some are 2-4 branchings if not more.

Interesting to see that they had initially very fast growth rate but seemed to get slowed down on the age of 3 months onwards. With this kind of rate, pessimistically we may only dream for them to get the size of their parents in the age of 1-2 years old, if they ever be continue growing!

We've got long plan for this spawn. Thinking of keeping them all till they're large and see if we can strike better luck on them. Was considering to offload these guys to some breeders too (they were fully booked; sorry), so we'll see how it goes...

Update pictures

Spent couple of hours yesterday (might as well, before the shift started) and here are some pics of the fish, updated. Only managed to drag out about 10-15 of the containers before totally giving up on taking pictures, just too many of them

This is one of the female that we forgot to include previously, she's a giant female. rays seemed to be having CT trait though most of the discovered lot had this (and none of their parents had this, so it could be just environment or something else). This female is 4 branching, also pay attention to her scales. Carry rosetail? but the tail is not ruggerised at all....or could it be because they were starved for so long that the body "shrink" and the scales fused together with that kind of pattern? Eitherway, it will be interesting to see the outcome of her fry.



Multi boy. This one is fiesty. If no one wants him, we may want to keep him and see if he grows bigger. He is giant geno, but the size looks like 50% giant, maybe because he's just too young and still growing.



Sample of a reject. This copper gold has nice spread caudal though it is bending on the top. Our fault really, his tank was small and shallow, hindering his tail spread whenever he flares...if no one wants him, happy for us to keep him, just for the sake of seeing how large his tail can grow.


Again, sample of reject boy. He's an SD, fins growing already (didn't notice that he was torn to pieces previously, did you?)


Again, a reject SD. copper black red. very active and nice, just not spreading as we want him to be (and again, he was torn to pieces previously, still can notice his healed caudal)


Nice SD. reject. caudal bent on top. again perhaps due to container. we only had 2 bent caudal on the whole spawn, so that's good indication that it may very well be environment.


Previously never pictured boy. just scooped from growout tank. anal is a bit trimmed but healing well, caudal is fairly large for hmpk, but also spread nicely. JG may like this boy?


Agressive dalmatian boy. 2 of his pictures, just for fun. currently reserved to JG.



Another dalmatian for JG.




And another...(doh!)


Another multi giant, agressive and ready to breed ;)


Green red boy, he makes lots of bubbles :)


Green bf, reject, anyone out there like him? He has bent dorsal, but otherwise nice SD.



Female giant hm geno. reserved. caudal branching is disappointing, but anal is very nice. so, hopefully keeping her for awhile we'll see how she grows...



The rest of the clan?? Just not having any luxurious time to take their pictures and our photography skills still not improving :(