Observations on the HM giant-geno line

Perhaps the most joyful experience so far on doing bettas is in getting the outcome from current spawn, there are just so many wonderful colour turns out in the spawn, all of them active with nice spread. True that some of the offspring have thin finnage, but majority is very nice and thick.

While crossing multi pair won't get you solid coloured bettas, you get some very unexpected colouration thrown at you. Not knowing the outcome perhaps is the best medicine, particularly for those who do not expect much from the colour department. Check out our previous posts to see some of their beautiful pictures.

It's also interesting to find out how some of them turn out to be HMPK when majority is very much long fin. In fact, they are so long, the fin can be considered excessive length. The plus side is that the fin is not even feather tail nor rosetail !

Some of the breeder males are just awesome, show quality (wondered whether we have show happening around -- have heard about QLD show, that's still on?). Would be nice to send them off for a show to compete. They'll lose on colour, but the form is great :) Too bad they're still young though, could easily be beaten by those older fish, but hey, fun is fun.

While many of our previous spawn have decent pectoral fin, width is reasonable, length is slightly shorter than anal, many of the current breeder-quality males actually have very long pectoral fins, not to mention long anal fin to match it (and of course caudal also long). It does seem that they've got tendency of very long fin, hence our confusion when we find some HMPK being thrown in the spawn. About 10 of the breeder-quality females are 8 rays (if not 16, just can't count them as there are too many splits). But that's not only it, the fins are also excessively long, at least for their age and body. So we're kinda waiting to see what they'll turn out in a month time. Currently the 10 females occupy the full tank on their own, large 3" tank. They flare to each other but in a kind way. Big bouncy tummy, so fingers crossed we'd choose 1 to be crossed with D&S half-giant (still sometime to get them ready for F2, they still need proper growth).

Perhaps one that we're still complaining about is the tendency of their finnage to be "too long". This has detrimental effect when environment isn't as clean and water changes not happening too frequently. When environment is not supportive, their top-cornered fins can become bending (either top dorsal, or top caudal). This is particularly noticed when we have some of them being placed in small tanks, the bending happened whenever they go to the water surface where dorsal fin would be folded. Is this genetic? not so sure either. We experimented a bit and noticed that the smaller tank males do have this tendency, while the bigger tank ones are quite free of the problem. Interestingly, some females have shown this as well, initially we thought "oh, crap, it's genetic", but then upon closer inspection, it wasn't actually bending. The females that show this "bending" are in fact have heavy branchings such that the most outer caudal rays are being "pushed" aside, hence it looks like as if they were bending. The females would swim naturally, and when they flare, you'd notice that "bending" went away.

The $64,000 question is then whether they will turn out to be giants after all. While some will not be giants (most giant spawns will yield certain percentage of "regular sized" bettas that carry giant gene), some half of them do seem to be giants or at least carry it. It's not as thick finnage as you'd want a giant to be, but that could very well be because of the "line". The size and growth, however, are impressive. A set of breeder-quality males, for instance, are the size of a standard full-grown HM now, and they are only about 3 months old. Their size beat easily some adult HM males, but funnily you can really see that they're just "boys". They've got the young smaller face, that innocent face.

Health of the spawn has been great. None of the fish sick with anything whatsoever. They don't have those typical problems with HM, such as collapse fins, fin rot, etc. All in all, there had been no issue at all with these guys. This is considered special, since in their early days we had quite frequent interruptions to our electricity, hence nights could be pretty cold at times and yet they were not affected. Other lines, including our HMPK giant lines, were affected by such interruptions, so these guys can be said as the winner of the breed for now. Hot weather and ice block didn't seem to worry them as well.

Are there any SDs in the spawn? Yes, of course, there are. There are 3 SD noticed so far. The real number could be larger (don't know if any fish sold were SD or HM cause we sold them young). Their body is quite large, but that could be attributed to large tank. The one thing that we found weird about these SDs are their finnage branchings. They are actually 4 and 8 rays branchings. So the branching is actually quite nice, but somehow they stayed at SD. It could be that they lack the necessary exercises, our fault really, cause we didn't have enough tanks for all fish, hence they were neglected for awhile and their finnage being torn during flaring. While the number of SD is, hopefully, low, it does seem that this line require constant flaring exercises to build their fin. Once they've got to be HM or OHM, lesser exercise regiment can be done without harm. Some of them have very straight finnage, which means without any exercise they'll always be HM or OHM, they form the typical D shape needed for desirable HM line. Oh, they don't have DT line ;) Isn't that great outcome? Such nice spawn without the help of DT.

So, what would we like to improve on the current line? This would be the list:

1. get bigger giants, the bigger the better, with longer tail
   
2. exteme branchings, also like this experiment
3. some OHM females would be good ;) We've got OHM in males, but would love to have on females too
4. crossing with our copper, to achieve yet bigger giant
5. get one of those "sky hawk" dorsal, that would be awesome
6. improve the strength of the rays, perhaps crossing to other stronger finnage giants
7. anyone has nice dragon giants? that would be a good mix for this lot ;)