Reflection on current giant batches

It's good to record it somewhere of our reflection on the current giant batches. In a simple words, what's good, what's bad, and what needs improving.

The bad first:

• anal fin is a typical HMPK, a tad long, making it shorter would be good
• some long fin has SD caudal, not quite HM

The good:

• very nice, broad and high dorsal. Some HMPK shows dorsal broadness indicative of DT despite no DT gene
• HMPK has awesome form, nearly 100% shortfin males are HMPK with close to perfect D shape
• body is thick and big, pretty strong indicative of giant genes
• rays quite thick
  

What can be improved:

• more colours would be good, currently all are blue/red, green/red, copper-ish, black orchid, green, blue, marbles.
• ray branching varies from 2, 4, to 8. Majority males are in the area of 4 branches. Not sure if they'll branch further (cause parents were 16 rays). Indicative of fresh new bloods in this line, still unstable as far as ray counts go.
  
• caudal for long fin needs improvement by crossing to siblings or another good-caudal fish
• while majority is large size giants, only small (maybe 20%?) will be true giants. Crossing the largest ones will improve the odds further.
  

Top ten Mastercart betta commercials

Yes, the title has that mistake on purpose :-)

10. A pair of bettas $150, tank setup $200, your bettas finally spawned, priceless.

9. Gold giant pair $250, deluxe breeding tank $80, your bettas decided "be friends", priceless.

8. New barrack $350, DYI sump toolkit $55, mobbing your floor in the morning, priceless.

7. Gravel $20, new rainbow lighting $12, betta caught on artificial plant, priceless.

6. Heaters $200, (overdue) electricity bill $600, melted frozen food, priceless.

5. Live blackworms $100, home-made chopping kit $3, watching your fry choking on worms, priceless.

4. Buying MyBettas' 10 fish $100, DYI barrack $150, finding 4 dried bettas on the floor in the morning, priceless.

3. Imported pair $150, tank filter $40, your only-10-survived fry eating BBS, priceless.

2. Spawning ebook $10, buying that gorgeous HM male $100, looking his tail shredded by your 'female', priceless.

1. Moving house $500, taking your in-laws to dinner $400, their cat munch on your bettas, priceless.

How do you know if it's really a giant?

This question has been raised so many times and recently this has been raised by a particular buyer (again), so we thought we better explain it here and explore this further. We'll update this blog as we go in showing the growth and progress of 1 particular male...

Before we delve deep, let's talk about the logic behind it first. If you buy adult giant, then there is doubt, it's easy to measure them. Just get your ruler, see if they're bigger than 2.5 inches for HMPK, and you're set - they are giant. Whether they are 75% giant or 100% true giant, that's different story, but at least you can be certain that they are giants. A couple of example of such large giants are shown here for males and females or our current for-sale females. On rare occasions, we could be lucky to show such pictorial comparisons - when we have standard HM/HMPK lines going on the same time. Unfortunately, these days we can't do that, we don't have time for multiple batches of spawning, so we only spawn 1 or 2 pairs every a couple of months....

But what if what you've got is merely juveniles? There is no point of reference to compare them. The only thing that you need to be aware is their age and what size they are currently.

So, here is an example of our current giant spawn on sale. When you get them, the HMPK will be the size of your standard adult HMPK, and the HM barely gets to the size of standard adult HM.

The first comment that you'd hear from uneducated eyes would be "it's not really that big, isn't it?". Are we irritated or offended with such comments? No, not at all :-) When you have started breeding your own, you'll appreciate much more of their giant-ness, as mentioned on point 4 of this post "You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? Go breed bettas and show us what you meant."

While we can't be sure whether this particular boy is a true giant or merely 75% giant, we are certain that he's a giant. In fact we're willing to bet on it - send your wager on email, we'll start gambling racket ;). Currently he's 1.5 month old or so (definitely less than 2 months old), and he has the size of standard adult HMPK. Yes, he's not very big yet, but wait a minute....how old is your standard adult HMPK? They are at least 1 year old if not much older (many bettas sold in your LFS range from 1 year to 1.5 year old, occasionally you've got 8 or 9 months old too). So, here you have a 1.5 months old betta with the size of a 1 year old. Now, that's perhaps a strong statement only understood by people who breed bettas - cause you won't have a clue what a standard 1.5 month old betta looks like unless you've bred them and rear them! For those who wants to know, the average 1.5 months old standard betta would be so tiny, you can't even yet identify whether they are male or female.

Anyway, rather than trying to explain everything through words, we thought we'll show you the progress of 1 single boy from the current for-sale batch. No, he's not the biggest of them all, nor he is our next choice of breeder. He's just an ordinary giant betta being pulled from the for-sale lot for the very reason of this comparisons.

1.5 months old, size of standard adult betta.


We'll update this in the interval of 2 weeks, till he's about 2.5 inches or more. This should take a good 1 or 2 months of update :-)

For those who have standard HMPK that you'd like to compare to this boy, shoot us email and we'll see what we can do to compare them side by side. It sounded silly to go to LFS and purchase an HMPK just to do such comparison, particularly if we're not interested in maintaining pure HMPK lines...

Advanced breeding technique - conquering "let's be friend" bettas

Nothing annoys you more than buying very expensive pair of bettas only to find that they're more than happy just "be friend" rather than doing the real spawning. This surprisingly happens very frequently to many beginners (and also advanced) breeders.

Typically, you'd have male and female eager to spawn, flare like crazy, but when you put them together, they're not getting into any actions even after you've left them for a week or two there. Sad story is, they may get tired and given up on spawning :(

There are multitude of reasons why they like to be friends only, and that's for you to analyze and figure out. Some techniques such as putting another male in the tank (to get his ego up and charging up), or pairing with another female, etc are left for you to try out. On this blog, we're going to explore one technique based on trisome experience that has been quite successful for us from time to time.

Why do you want to still pursue the spawning for them? Well, perhaps because they have very nice genes that you like, but whatever the reasons, it has to be strong enough that you want them to spawn. One example when we wanted our pair to spawn was when we desperately wanted to get the male's gene since he was the last of his line and the female was the best that we've got. That boy was sulking, practically ignored the female after 2nd day of meeting, and the same goes for the female...Definitely not a good sight particularly when you have such a high hope for them.

So, in order for this technique to be successful, you need to make sure that both the male and female are still interested, they still flare occasionally or at least there is intention from them to show off and perhaps get into spawning at later stage - go ask your bettas direct, they'll tell you up front of their real intentions...

What do you need? You need another pair of bettas. This is the rundown list of their conditions:

1. Let's call Male1 and Female1 are the pair that you really wanted to spawn
2. Let's call Male2 and Female2 are your bait.
3. Female2 has to be smaller and inferior than Male1. Male1 has to feel that he's macho again, and female2 is interested in spawning with him. Female2 can come from any line, anything that you don't really care much about (or less important than your female1)
   
4. Male2 has to be aggressive and brutal. He doesn't have to be the best looking betta that you have, so long he's aggressive, you're good to go
5. Condition them well, they won't breed if you don't feed them well, no matter how big or old they might be.
   

Now, say you've known that either the male1 or female1 has that history for being friends. Now you need to make sure that male1 builds nice bubblenest, spawning has to happen when there is bubblenest on most occasion - some odd couple may spawn without bubblenest, but the nature has dictated that they ought to use the nest! How do you get the male to build the nest? Well, pair him up with female2, your bait female. As said, female2 has to be smaller than male1, less aggressive etc. Only when you get a good nest that you can try this technique, cause otherwise you might as well put your male for display purposes only.

When you notice that male1 has built half of the nest, a good small spoon size, you need to put female1 with male2 in another tank, and let her get beaten up. She has to feel submissive and ready to release that eggs. We don't care if male2 has built nest or not, but typically he would have built a nice nest too. So, while the 2 pairs seemingly progressing their spawning attempt (male1 trying his best to build his nest, male2 trying his best to beat female1), you need to watch for both pairs on 2 conditions (usually they come very close to happen on the same time):

1. male1 has built nice nest, bigger and thicker, but you predict that he'll "be friend" again
2. female1 is nearly submissive and wanted to get wrapped by male2

Once the above condition happens, which typically happens on 2nd or 3rd day (or longer, depending the nature of your pairs), you can do the swapping. Take female1 out, put her into male1 tank, remove female2 from the tank. They'll get a bit of dancing again, and by this time the male has already got that nice nest and the female is beaten up. You may notice that the female would try the water again by flaring to the male, but usually she'll get into action within a good an hour or so. After all, she's holding all of those eggs and they're about to burst out, she usually won't have much choice ;)

This technique requires you to monitor them closely. You don't need to be expert in bettas spawning to do this technique, but it does require you to get a good feel on the timing. If your timing is not right, you won't get them to spawn. If you take out female1 too early to join male1, she may still have that strength to hold the eggs and therefore she's not going to release them. A good time to introduce her to male1 typically when you started to notice a few eggs started to fall off, or she gets into spawning wrap with male2.

If you notice that male1 is ready to get into sulking mode before female1 is ready, you can take out female2 out of his tank and left him alone there. He needs to be alone, don't let him get into sulking mode or "be friend" mode. How do you know he's getting "be friend" mode? Well, you notice that he doesn't want to maintain his nest anymore, or they go their separate corners of the tank, or he no longer chases the female or tease her. Just take her out of the tank. If you're concerned that he's not maintaining his nest anymore, you can introduce another male there just to get him flaring again (usually this is not enough to get him maintain the nest, but at least he won't be sulking). After a period of no-female there, you can re-introduce the female or new female, just to get him build/maintain the nest. Ensuring this male maintains his nest would be the most difficult step for this technique, since you need him to spawn successfully.

Anyway, once you've introduced female1 to male1, you may notice that female1 will be eager to get spawning done (after all, she's ready to do it with male2 when you interrupted them). Male1 may not yet ready though, he's basically only done half of the job - building bubblenest. He's not mentally ready to do the wrapping yet. So, you'll notice that he chases the female initially, but then you also notice that the female is a lot more submissive now, she'll come under the nest willingly, and that usually leads to successful spawn :-)

What's another lesson that we learn here? Don't throw away your bettas simply they don't fit into your plan. As you can see, you need the help of male2 and female2 to do the right job for your male1/female1 pair. Keep as many pairs of bettas handy, no matter how ugly or unsuitable they are for your plan, you need their help one of those days. Perhaps this is also a good reason for buying bulk ;)

So, there you go, a technique that you can try yourself, if you find that you really want to get something out of your precious pair :) Happy spawning, don't be afraid to experiment, you don't have anything to lose - well, your pair had decided to be friend previously, what worst than having an expensive display pair when your main goal of purchasing them was to get a spawn!

Breeding bait - getting pairs for free

We've given this some thought and perhaps you'll be interested in it too.

A simple question: what does it take to get you to start breeding - apart from our top 10 reasons?

Well, here's the proposal. You purchase any of our fish (whatever lot available at any time when we have a sale, such as from current sale), and if you manage to spawn them and get some fry, if you would like to cross the fry to one of our currently-for-sale bettas, we'll give our bettas (that you're interested in) for free! Limit 1 pair per customer per line of bettas you've purchased from us (it doesn't mean that 1 customer only can get 1 pair, you can get many pairs so long you've spawned whatever lines you've initially purchased from us).

Basically the steps would be:

1. you buy any bettas we have for sale (call this F1).
2. you spawn these bettas (amongst themselves or with your existing bettas)
3. you record the spawning in a blog, forum, pictures of their progress, whatever way for verification
4. when F1 fry is big enough, and if we happen to have some bettas for sale that you're interested to cross your F1 fry to, let us know.
5. we'll give a pair of bettas that you're interested in for free...
6. you'll spawn F1 fry with the new betta(s), and if successful, you can claim yet another free pair from us when your F2 fry is ready (and we have more stock for sale), loop back to step 3.
   

No restriction on what you spawn your bettas with, so long at least 1 of the bettas ought to be coming from us - we're interested on how the line continues too, and perhaps wanting to buy from you ;) Also no restriction on which pair that you're interested in to get for free, so long we have them for sale, you can have them.

In order to qualify for the next free pair, you need to spawn F1's fry to one of the bettas that you've got for free (as mentioned on step 6). Same procedure applies. So, practically, you are helping us to keep the line going and we're helping you to supply your stock so long you're interested in breeding them. Win-win, don't you think?

Let us know if you're interested and happy breeding. For those reading this and had purchased from us in the past, yes, you're qualified to get your free bettas if you'd like to cross your spawn to any of ours - provided you've got your spawn log handy.

Everyone loves a bargain

As that saying "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys", you need to invest a bit to get good stock. We've known so many buyers who are strapped for cash (or so they say) and therefore they negotiate heart and soul over every little things. Perhaps in some ways they save that extra $$$ and on the same time felt good about the deal, but what they ought to remember is that the sellers typically don't make much money over the stock they're selling, therefore the buyers' win is nothing more than imposing the sellers to consume the lost.

Most betta sellers are no difference, they sell their stock (or sell other's stock) with little margin. Squeezing the price isn't helping, particularly if the bulk of the cost is not on the initial price of the stock but rather on other associated costs such as importation or shipping. Sure, there are greedy sellers who'd charge an arm and a leg for their stock but that's what a free market is about, you have the choice to get whoever offers the most cost-effective and yet appealing bettas to you.

Why do we mention this? Well, not because we frequently challenged in such situation, which we do, but because a couple of sellers from o'seas are complaining on this issue too. Bare that in mind when you do your bargaining, don't over do it, or at least don't impose too much. Demanding too much from the sellers is simply a turn off and giving bad image to the rest of us.

If you really must bargain, at least you need to know whether they are a breeder or a reseller. Some have a clear status but the bulk of them are difficult to guess. Statement such as "from our farm" doesn't mean they really have a farm! These are common misconception since a reseller considers their source as their own farms :) Breeders have tendency to give good deals whereas resellers need to make a bit of profit from their purchases, hence you may not get much bargaining power with them.

Overall, the price of the goods reflect their quality. Most of giants sold for instance are sub-standard within their categories, but that's the way it is, the economy is tough and therefore quality sold needs to balance with what's affordable.

Serious breeders typically only purchase good quality stock. You either need good eyes to spot the good quality ones, or you know the stock quality of the sellers'. We've had our fair share of mistakes in spotting good vs bad quality stock, but over the time we'd like to think that we've learnt from our experience.

When a deal is too good to be true, then there usually is a catch with it. On the same token, when the deal is too expensive, there is a chance someone is ripping you off :) So, either way, you're stuck in the middle trying to figure it all out...

Go, hunt for good bargains, be honest to the sellers and get a win-win situation. When both parties achieve win-win, the relationships will carry on to the future purchases and it eases your trouble on identifying trusted sellers.

Biosecurity Australia - the last defence against whatsitsname

Or so some people think.

You can cut them a little bit slack, they don't care so much about hobbyists, what matters is the security of our little wiggly tailed fish in (commercial) ponds throughout Australia. Some joke heard includes "who the #$%^ cares about fish in rivers/ponds and who are the idiots who'd import fish to feed local fish". Well, you can scream your heart out, but the pollies aint gonna hear it - they've got their headphones on.

It will make life a lot harder to get your bettas, not to mention it costs more and more than what they are today - even today's standard is way too high already!

It brings back the memory of voting, you don't like both sides but you ought to stand for something. For those who'd like to put a little bit of resistance, you can go to online petition. If you don't have a clue what it is, chances are it won't affect you yet, but nonetheless you can show a bit of support and fill the petition anyway - who knows you'll be into bettas/cichlids/etc soon and by that time it'll be too late for your vote to count for anything.

The odds are not good, so don't bet on it. What you can bet, however, is to be self-sustain as soon as possible. If you haven't started breeding yet, start now. If you haven't stocked up yet, buy more bettas and be ready. We all know that the tsunami will come, but it seems to come a lot sooner and you're running out of time to save the hobby by not doing anything :(

Anyway, if you seriously want to do something about it, you'll find ways. As for us, we'll give you hands on breeding if that helps at all. Give us a shout ;)

Top ten reasons to start breeding bettas

10. You know you want more of them, the genes must be preserved!

9. If the parent costs you $100 a pop, imagine how much $$$ will you get for all the offspring!

8. Seriously, how hard could it be to get these two to spawn!!?

7. He's kinda lonely there. Wouldn't it be fun to have a full house of these so called fighters?

6. I dare you to do spawn them! Did I hear chicken noises?

5. Do you believe that liar? He said black crosses white produced red, blue, and green - you must try it out!

4. You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? Go breed bettas and show us what you meant.

3. Revenge of a loyal customer: you've bought enough from pet shop, time for them to buy from you.

2. When you've spawned successfully, you get green belt. Spawn more to get black belt - we bow to you O King of Bettas.

1. You ran out of money for the dope, selling the other kidney is not an option, time to make more of this fish and sell them.

Why buy bettas bulk?

Lots of people keep asking why we only sell bulk and rarely per individual bettas. A very common reason is that we don't have time to deal with individual betta (taking pictures, sending per fish basis, etc).

Things that you are not aware is that we sell bulk because learning from our experience as buyer we always wanted the seller to sell bulk!

The thing that you may not be aware of is that, if you want to delve into breeding bettas, which is what we're hoping you do, then you need to buy bulk. Breeding requires trial and error, particularly for new breeders, and lots of the time you fail with 1 pair and may get very successful with another pairing. If you only buy 1 pair, then you will soon discover that you need to purchase yet another pair and start the process again.

Bulk buying is also advantageous if you want to make sure that you get the 'best' genes out of the line. It's akin to choosing the best of the brood in a spawn of 300 fry. One of the fry would be the best of your choice to continue to the next level, why settle with something else? Spawn them as many times, choose the best of any combination, and move on. Chances are, you will not be able to go back on your decision once you've spawned them. It takes a good 2 or 3 months till you know the outcome of your pairing choice :) Buying bulk gives you that choice to choose from the pack and therefore prioritize your breeding plan.

Sure there are other advantages such as saving shipping money, getting them bulk also saves you lots of money that otherwise cost too much to buy them individually. Some people buy bulk cause they want to populate their display tanks, after all, bettas are very beautiful fish to display. Why pay the premium for individual fish when you can get lots of them cheaper ;)

The beauty of buying bulk, as we like to enjoy it from time to time, is getting surprises on what you get. In most cases we won't know what we sent you, they're too young to judge on their quality. There are times we realized that we've sold our best of the brood unknowingly till the buyer shows the fish at much later stage. Basically you get the first pick (randomly through us) of the brood. Some buyers were even willing to pay higher price so long they can pick and choose what they're buying. That's more than acceptable so long they stick with the agreed number of fish per transaction - remember, selling bulk helps us to reduce the number of fish in our stock.

One of the question raised was whether buying bulk of 10 is good enough to "cover all bases". We don't believe so, no. In order to get a pair of the best of the brood, you will need more than 5 pairs to see what kind of pairing is preferable, and with the trial and error (with failure is taken into account) you will need at least 2 of the same males for every plan that you have. If you simply want to "just spawn" a pair, then yes, 10 is a good number to start. But if you are being choosy or simply have plans then you may want to consider to get more than 10.

Reflecting back, we were much more delighted if someone would be able to sell us bulk, if only importation cost isn't so high. Locally available stock can't satisfy our needs/goals and most of the time we ended up importing the necessary fish.

Advice on breeding bettas

There are just too many questions asked over the years, something along the line of "I want to start breeding bettas, but I'm too ..., what are your advice?"

Well, there are too many advices that we (and many other people) can give, perhaps it would take weeks for you to understand/read them all, so we better boil down to bullet points :)

The Nike's approach
The "just do it" is perhaps the best we can offer. You don't know how it feels until you do it. Your first try could be a great success, but there always be something to learn even if it was the greatest failure. It's a journey of self discovery, you get to know your bettas as well as you get to know yourself (of your nervousness, patience, happiness, sadness, anger, etc).

Calm yourself down
Nervous is common but be prepared. Don't over-prepared since that usually triggers more nervousness on your part. Prepare a basic check list, so long you know how/what to do with things not in the checklist, then you're good to go. Trying to work out the best lighting for breeding is the wrong priority in the list!

Commitment
You need lots of it. Don't breed if you are not willing to commit time, money, resources. Not knowing where to dump your bettas is not an excuse, cause you always can approach your LFS to sell them off. Many LFS are happy to buy bettas locally. Sure, you may not get much from them but was that the excuse of you not breeding?

A lonely journey is excruciating, get a friend!
No one asks you to go through breeding experience alone, make sure you always have friends to help you out, giving you advice, encourage you, or basically pat you in the back "you're doing just fine". There are forums with similar minded people, join them. You're reading this blog, aren't you, so you know we're here as well ;)

Get a map
This is just an analogy. Breeding bettas is similar to driving through unknown city. The first thing you'd do if you want to drive through unknown city is to get a map. But even when you look at the map of the city, most of the time you don't have much a clue what the 'real' road condition looks like. So, before you breed, you need to map out the journey. Start writing your map. You are "here", you want to get "there", here are the main intersections, how do you know what certain events/intersections look like, what do you need to do when you get to that point, should you take a left turn or the right? To get an idea of what your breeding map looks like, read articles on the net/forums/blogs/etc.

Find a reason, a desire
Don't start breeding "just because". You need to have a goal, a desire, a strong reason why you think you'd like to start breeding. The reason could be as simple as "I want to get to the next stage", or it could be as religiously as "I'd like to improve Australia's betta quality". Some people settles on "I'm fascinated with their vibrant colours". Without strong reason/desire, your breeding will fail. Not because your bettas failed spawning, but simply because you've given up too early. Breeding bettas is very challenging, at times very frustrating, but also very rewarding when you are successful. Reminding yourself of your reasons/desires will keep you motivated and strong during the stressful times, and you gonna need that!

Be creative
Some people said "I don't have the right environment (tanks) for breeding". These kinds of excuses are just that, excuses. We've bred bettas in all sorts of environment, from a small 10cm x 10cm cube, to a 4 footer, to a 2 footer that we 'split' into 10 compartments with plastic boards, etc. If you have the desire to do it, anything will do. You need to be a little creative in solving your problems. Remember the Nike's approach ;) If we gonna wait for you to get all the necessary gears in place, we may ended up waiting till next year, and by that time your desire is all but gone...

Other than the above, you only need to know the basic checklist for breeding bettas. There are too many articles written on this (including numerous covered in this blog), just grab one. Simple checklist on "choose good male + female", "cage female in chamber", etc, should be a common knowledge to you by now. No need to get worried over tiny details, you should be ok so long you do draw a good "map".

Good luck on your spawning.

Giant active bunch

Just a short movie of the current spawns. We merge them to a big tank yesterday since they have the same hatch date. That saves all of rearing time for us :)

What interesting from this bunch is that they are just a month old but seems to be very competitive. Coming from HM giant lines, there may also be a small few HMPK thrown in. Both males and females flare :) Slightly difficult to differentiate between males and females for some of them, but there are some outstanding males and females sprouting already. We noticed some OHM form there too, that's a good sign. Branching is at 4 at the moment with some few already at 8. No rosetail gene that we're aware of, but we shall see how it turns out.

It's always amusing to watch them flare on every feeding time - since that's the only time we are around. Guess how frequent we need to change their water...Every day! These guys produce so much gunk that every night we have no option but to change their water first before feeding them, they can't see the food! They have consumed a full 1L live worms in 2 weeks time. Growing them would cost a leg and an arm, but that's the nature of these giants.

They are yet to be jarred, perhaps tomorrow or the day after. Lots of jars to be cleaned before they can be occupied.

Enjoy the movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJFZV5qbvg

They are available for sale, for those interested. Random 10 bettas at $100 including shipping. Buy more and you've got discount too, of course. While stock last and our apologies again: we can't take individual pictures or select any particular fish for your order - there is simply no time for us to do that. First come first served ;) And before we forget, you *may* see a nip on your ordered bettas, watch the movie and you'll understand why we can't control such small nipping. Definitely no major nipping yet ;)

They grow extremely fast, barely a week ago they were not even sprouting and flaring much yet :) We're more than looking forward to getting good giant genes out of them.

If you want them, email us.

>> Update, here is a sample picture of one of the boys. Most of them are of similar quality, nice form :)

1) avail, bonus


>> Update, for those looking for HMPK, it's confirmed. Some HMPK in the batch. Enjoy their low resolution photos :)

2) similar fish avail




3) similar avail


4) similar fish avail


>> More pix as they're freshly jarred...Some lucky ones will depart very soon :)


5) similar avail


6) similar avail, bonus


7) avail


8) similar avail


9) avail


10) similar avail


Some have requested that they'd like to choose what to be sent to them. We thought "fair enough". Here's your chance, have a choose from the above pictures, you can only choose 3 from the above. If they are avail, then they'll go to you, otherwise we'll let you know if something similar avail ("similar" refers to form, not to colour - when we say they are similar, you will get same exact form). So, 3 of your choice, and 7 randomly from us. The random ones will come from newly jarred bettas and if they are females, they will come from the grow out tank. First come first served, your chosen fish may be offered to the first person who wants it and pays for it! Keep watch of this page, we'll post more pictures of the males AND females! Yes, there are some very promising females seen in the tank and they'll be made available too. Remember, we haven't even reserved them for our stock yet, hence you'll get the first pick of some of the very best :)

Also, apologies for those who felt disadvantaged on the above offer (those who purchased from us previously and didn't have the chance to get the pick). If you would like to purchase more from us, you get to pick up to 5 of your choice out of the bulk of 10.

Some pictures above are marked "bonus". You can pick 1 as your bonus provided you buy 1 lot, for free, while stock lasts. They are free because there is something wrong with them! It could be torn anal fin (picture could be taken prior to the torn), it could be SD form, it could be slight imperfection on one of the fin (imperfection in our eyes, which usually very minor in other people's eyes), etc. Only about 5 fish available as bonus. Contact us if you want to know what's wrong with your chosen one.

>> Update, took a few more pix of newly jarred ones, a bit of accidental fight on one of them... Can't take pix of females, running out of jars :(

11. Only a few of black orchids, here's one of them.


12. Also very few copper green marble, nice colouration...


13. This one is nice pattern with great attitude too. Definitely one to watch for.


14. Can't get enough of this guy, aggressive and moving fast. Slight OHMPK.




Body thickness for the boys above (and their females) are really nice. Over the weekend we'll need to sit down and properly select a few for our next generation. In the meantime, any of the above that you're interested, you better yell fast before they're gone! Special note to those HMPK fanatic, they are bloody good form, go get them now!

Our apologies for those who have special requests (e.g. choose X, Y, or wanting to pickup/visit us), time is not permitting and that's why we cover the postage to get a quick sale without much fuss....Thanks for understanding.

>> PS. For those intrigue on the size and progress of these batches, we've picked 1 male above and started to track his development size on this post. It'll be updated every 2 weeks or so, so you better follow it to see or compare what you've got there with what we've got (and how we grow him).

>> Warning: DO NOT try to spawn them yet, despite their perceived standard adult bettas size. They're only 1.5 months old atm. Instead, feed them lots and lots of food and you'll be amaze on how big they'll get...

Question: can I spawn giant with standard bettas

> i have giant male and female but fail to spawn them, can i spawn each giant
> with normal betta?

This depends heavily on their sizes. If the size of the giant male is slightly bigger than the female (e.g. he's still young or he's only half-giant), yes, they will spawn. If your giant male is way too big compared to the standard female betta, then chances he will fail at wrapping her. She'll just pass through the big loop. On the same logic, usually if you try to spawn a giant female against standard betta, you will fail due to her too-big size for the male to wrap. You may be successful if you manage to find a slightly bigger HM male - wrapping in this case would be challenging but you will get a small percentage of hatched eggs.

In the world of bettas, you will only have successful spawning when both male and female are ready and interested. Giant is no difference, but you do need a lot of interest from them above your typical standard bettas :)

Good luck on the spawn.

C7WJNM83KTXP

Shocking betta spawn size

From time to time we assist others to successfully spawn their pairs. This one is particularly amusing, since the owners still shocked from the fact that their pair successfully spawn, but also because what they were into when they see the outcome!

We helped JT and his friends to get starter male and had chosen one of our females to match the boy. The deal was simple: they paid all costs associated with the pair, we'll just give some advices on how to spawn them successfully (remotely through emails), and in exchange they'll give any number of the offspring that we like - not that we want many...

As with many new breeders, JT was more than anxious when the pair spawn. He practically took a Friday off in preparation for the spawn, despite we've told him that the pair was not going to spawn for another couple of days. We gave him a visit on Sunday to see how things went and surprise surprise we managed to wait a bit to see the first few wraps.

Here are the pictures of the spawning. Wrapping, wrapping, and pick those eggs.






The male is beautiful blue. 3 inches with nice overall form.


JT still couldn't believe his eyes and we thought you should share his amusement. Here are the pix of his spawn. Talking about over crowded! These fry pix were taken when they are 3 days old.





That was just one corner of the tank. There must be between 300-500 fry there. Good luck on raising them folks :)

The funny part was that he and his friends imported a couple of other giant males, and now they've seen what 1 single pair can produce, plans to spawn the others are stopped!

This is a fair warning to others that when we said we can help you spawn your bettas, expect large spawn! Be ready but don't get too nervous, they are extremely entertaining to raise...

BTW, for those of you who are looking for good giants, JT and his friends had indicated that they want to pass the pairs to the next person to try spawning. They have 1 HMPK pair (above), 2 copper red HM giant pairs (never spawned), and 1 pair of blue/green monkey-face giant HM pair (never spawned). We helped them choose these giants, and we thought they're just amazing. If you're game, don't let this opportunity pass. Let us know if you're interested, we'll pass JT et al detail.

As for our service, if you need our help on spawning them remotely, we'll be happy to do so, again we only want 1 or 2 pairs of our choice of their offspring in return. Give us a yell.

Giant females sale

For breeders out there having difficulties on getting absolute top-notch giant females, here's your chance to secure some.

We have breeder-quality giant females HM and HMPK lines, aged 3 months. A couple of their characteristics:

• guaranteed to produce giants of at least 2.5-3 inches in 3-4 months of age
• guaranteed at least 30% of their offspring to be giants.
• guaranteed to produce at least 80% HM/HMPK 180* spread in their offspring.

Of course the above guarantee will only work if you have equivalently good male, however the lines above produce very consistent outcome so far, hence you should not be far-behind if you cross them to good-enough males. Check out distribution of giant genes for reasoning why the above characteristics are important...

No males from these lines available, all of them sold.

The size of the males to be suggested to spawn with them will be at least 2.7 inches. Any smaller males may not be able to wrap them.

Here are a sample picture of the females with 1 standard-size HMPK female as comparison.



>> Update 29 July: added 1 more pix of the mustard/lace marble female, 4 or 8 rays.


>> this one shows comparison of the standard HMPK female swam semi-vertically, while the water barely covered half of the body of giant HMPK female. As you guessed it, pix taken during complete water change time :)


>> this one on-hold for SM, the longer fin copper female.


>> These 2 are just another MG marble, waiting for buyer to spawn them ;)


You are advised to get them now when they are considerably easier to spawn or they will grow much much larger at later stage.

Each female is available for special price of $100.
There are 3 outstanding HM females with 1+ inches of caudal tail available, each $150.

If you have purchased the males from the same lines above and considering to get the females as well, we will cover the guarantee for 3 months after date of purchase (assuming that would be sufficient time for you to breed and grow their offspring). Money-back guaranteed, less shipping cost!

Email us for any questions/clarifications - given limited time we've got online these days, serious buyers only please...

Youngster clearance sale

Time for us to clear the tanks, there are just too many of them to manage at this point in time. It's your opportunities to get good quality giant-geno to start your own line :)

Check out these batches and these batches for sample pictures.

10 random-coloured bettas for $100. You can mix and match giant-geno HM, giant-geno HMPK, standard betta, dwarf bettas, etc. We'll try to get you equal number of pairs when possible. Colour ranges from blue/green, mustard gas, multi-colour, copper variants, deep-sea blue, etc. All fish in the sampled pictures are included in this deal as well (if they're still avail). Shipping $25 or pickup meeting can be arranged.

The bettas you're getting aged between 2 to 3.5 months old. All giant-geno has thick and larger size than their counterpart standard bettas. Giant-geno HM line may show SD finnage but we'll try to get very-close-to-HM sent to you.

>> update 29 July:
Pictures of 2 SD males, taken yesterday. They're not the best looking form for an HM line, but they are fairly large in size, considering they're not even 2 months old yet. Some of the ray branching get to 8. Crossing them with any of the females will get you that some nice HM, if you're game on breeding them.

They're temporarily on-hold for WR, pending confirmation, but if you're interested, do let us know.





These 2 (white and copper) are temporarily on-hold for RD. Again, let us know if you want them and we'll pass them to you in case RD doesn't want them....





>> For those looking for very nice giant HM, this 3 months old serenade boy (a name coined by nicebetta) is available for $40, or pair for $70. He's been a bit neglected and the gunk affect a bit of his caudal, but he's still very young and full of potential. Thick rays, nice tie, and semi-masked platinum eyes.

Giant, bubblenest, confirm!

We were intrigue when seeing some recent auctions of giants HMPK which show some pictures of the males with bubblenest and in the image you'd see "bubble nest confirm!"

We thought we'd shoot the seller the question. What's the big deal about bubble nest and what does it confirm. Well, it boils down to very simple fact. He was just trying to say that he doesn't sell old aged giants which may not be able to spawn anymore. The bubble nest is a good confirmation that the giant he's selling is still very active and can be spawned. It makes you wonder, whatever happened to the giants that he's selling without the bubblenest pictured, does that mean they are old giants? ;)

We told him that most if not all of giants that we've bought and raised made bubble nest, so that's not really a good confirmation on anything :)

In a way, it was a statement that many if not most of the giants sold in the market are too old. This is understandable since most true giant HMPK will only reach 3 inches length when he's 8+ months. Sure you've got the exceptional ones, but majority will be around that age. Dont you ever trust that advertised aged written on auction sites. No way you can get a 3" giant aged 3, 4, or 5 months old, particularly if it looks like an old giant!

Old age is not so much big deal if you are experienced breeder. You only need one spawn to get to the next stage. However, you will need several tries if you are inexperience and that's when it matters in choosing appropriate breeder fish.

Surprisingly this is a well kept secret from buyers, but there you go, you know about it now ;) Think twice before you purchase that giant, check the picture in detail to see indication of old age. Get your fish from trusted sellers...

Top ten reasons you want to be a betta addict

10. There are lots of bettas greeting you at any time of the day when you come home.

9. They'll forget all the bad things that you've done to them once you give them a feed.

8. You get a very lively flaring show on every un-carding.

7. You will be the talk of the neighbourhood with your beautiful bettas.

6. You are not so scary to the kids anymore.

5. When you are strapped for cash to buy birthday present, there always be your bettas as gifts.

4. Your co-workers are eager to open your parcels, despite they are labeled "Live fish" or "Worms".

3. Monday is really your sickie day - you stayed up late night to show spawning techniques to your bettas.

2. Pretty girls (or boys) like you more when they see your bettas - now it's up to you to take that advantage!

1. You are god since the dictionary defines Betta-spawning: An activity of courting 2 bettas in an act of god-like pursuit by a human.

Top ten signs you MAY be a betta addict (but you didn't realize it)

10. You know every betta acronyms and use them in conversations.

9. You find faults on every betta that you see, even pointed out the 1-scale misalignment that nobody noticed.

8. You read all the spawning posts on the net and actively give spawning suggestions despite you never spawn your bettas.

7. You only have 3 bettas in your 10-chamber custom-built tank.

6. You meticulously measure water quality despite using aged water.

5. You buy 2 copies of a betta poster - 1 for bedroom and 1 for living room.

4. You have boxes of smelly microworm culture weeks before you started spawning your bettas.

3. You drove 3 hours to an LFS when you've heard they've got new imports despite you can't confirm if bettas are part of the imports.

2. You panic when the bbs doesn't hatch and started crying when you realize it takes 2 days to prepare new batch and by that time the fry will starve to death.

1. You have only 1 betta but fully prepared with all medicines mentioned in the forums.

Top ten signs that your partner is a betta addict

Change he, she, his, her, appropriately to the gender of your partner.

10. You only win an argument after a threat of doing harm to his betta.

9. Lots of discussions on dinner table revolve around his latest betta addition.

8. He skipped church complaining being tired only to find him in the fish room at a later time.

7. You shop guilt free after saying "You can buy that pair of bettas you've always wanted, dear...Can you pay this for me?"

6. He named his bettas, still remember their names after the bettas long gone, and yet he can't remember your friends' names.

5. You heard him mumbling "stupid fish" every time he comes out of the fish room - it must have been a failed spawning.

4. He boasts about his biggest fry in every tiny detail despite you can't tell which fry he was talking about.

3. You discovered one day that half of the items in freezer have "fish food" labels on them.

2. He insisted to get broadband "It's for the kids' school work", but half of the time you saw him online on betta forums.

1. He refused making love because he wants to witness his bettas spawning!

Dwarfy's dwarfs

Remember dwarfy? Well, we decided to play with the dwarf genes, and spawn them. It was a difficult spawn since their size was incredibly small. But to our surprise, it was a successful one.

Not particularly large spawn, about 20-30 or so of them. But they sure was entertaining. The size of the brood is consistently small. A small few are standard size HMPK, but majority is small. Note that we didn't do anything special with the spawn, no starving, or any tricks. They have ample of foods, just not growing any bigger :)

They are about 6 months old now, about 1 inch in size. Definitely a bit more difficult to distinguish male/female, but there are some clear winners there.













If you want to purchase them just email us. We do not encourage breeding dwarf bettas but at the end of the day it's your decision to make. On the bonus side, there is nothing physically or genetically wrong with any of these guys, so you know you're getting healthy bettas.

Beautiful youngsters

While we're extremely busy these days, breeding still continue, at least behind the scene and in a very much smaller scale.

Interesting that we now can control the number of offspring that we'd like to have in any single spawn. If we want small number, we simply spawn any of the available adults without much warming up. Large numbers can be attained by properly preparing the pair and carefully calculating when they need to spawn.

Anywho, enjoy the below pictures. Their size is slightly larger than your typical HMPK but you guess it right....they're giants. The key is knowing their age, then you can appreciate their size ;)





They are about....1.5 months old, hatched on 6/6/10. Always entertaining to see these youngsters grow. Looking at the picture, one would thought they're your typical HMPK/HM at much older 5-6 months. Always hungry, but at least with much great attitudes too.

Top ten signs you are a betta addict

10. Your method of falling asleep is by counting how many bettas you currently have in your tank.

9. You rush to betta section of your LFS, despite it has been displaying the exact same bettas for months.

8. You sit for hours watching your betta/fry swim as if their next moves will be the best performance that you don't want to miss.

7. You talk to your bettas and always believe that they understand what you are saying all along.

6. Your wallpaper is a betta despite constant criticisms that you should put the picture of your children/partner instead.

5. Your lounge room has only 3 furniture: sofa, coffee table, tv - with betta tanks on the coffee table and the TV on the floor.

4. You spend a good half an hour every day to decide what to feed your bettas.

3. You rushed to LFS to get medicine when your betta sneezes - or so you thought that he was sneezing.

2. Your entertainment room has been converted to bettas room and your partner is prohibited to enter it.

1. You pay your partner's shopping at the checkout and utter silently "that would have been X pairs of gorgeous bettas that I could have bought...".

Mid-year sale

For those interested in our bettas, we've posted some for-sale videos on youtube. Lighting isn't on its best, nor the cleanliness of the tanks. Furthermore, the fish were shocked when we put the light on top of their tanks, hence expect them to be a bit confused :) Fish in real life is a lot better than what's shown.

They are all giant-geno. Body thickness is very promising. About 2.5 months of age, being separated only 1 week ago. Females available as well.

Contact us on our email (see on the right-side link for email). There are more fish avail, just ask us. Shipping only within AU (sorry for folks from o'seas, but you know the drill - no o'seas shipping possible due to gov't restriction).

A quick run-down of the avail fish:

• Mustard HMPK and copper gold HM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhJmeCdhH4E
• CopperGold HMPK & Green BF HM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nf7Ct9yBr0
• CopperMustard HM & Green HMPK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNlFhQKMIOY
• Green SD & Red Maroon HMPK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjso0lNlfXs

Semi lame picture of one of the mustard boy:

Question: how to cure open-gill in bettas

> i have a male betta with one gill open, do you know how to cure this and why it happens.

This is considered a defect in bettas in our book. Most of the time your bettas will live a normal life, that open-gill wont bother them at all. Spawning-wise, if the open-gill is on one side, then it's ok too. They learn to spawn from the good side ;)

We believe there are 2 reasons why bettas get this problem:

1. genetics
   
2. environment

If your bettas have genetics abnormalities, then there is no way for you to cure it. It's there and inherited. Usually your fry will have a perfect gill when hatched till about 1 month old. Then you started to notice one or both of their gills to open up wide for a much lengthy period of time. Before you know it, you're too late, the gill got stuck and stays open forever. This category theoretically is not really "genetics" since it will only happen at about 1 month old. The gills are used to pass air bubble (if you watch your fry for some time, you'll notice how the air bubbles come out of the gill). Some bettas have weak gill muscles where the air bubble got stuck in the gill, forcing it to open for a much longer period of time. Long exposure of the gill seems to cause the muscle to tear and that injury shows up as your open-gill problem... Many people attributed this to simply bad water condition ;)

The second cause of open-gill problem is caused environmentally. For instance, we regularly use rough fishnet to scoop bettas. What we noticed in small and big bettas, if the gill got stuck on the fishnet and the bettas do not recover from the injury, they will end up with open-gill problem too. You can avoid the problem by changing the fishnet to a cloth-based one, for instance. On rare occasions we see adult bettas develop this problem by flaring for too long period of time. The gill is no more than a constructed muscles, tear happens...

Now, as for the cure, there is no real cure for it. Knowing the cause of the problems usually help you to devise a cure. For instance, we have cured a couple of adults that starting to develop open-gill problem by giving them a good rest after flaring exercises. This has to be done as early as possible, when you notice they're developing it ;)

Question: HM cross HMPK always result in HM

> will all my fry become HM if father HM and mother HMPK? all of them long fin?

Depends. Many people believe that halfmoon genetics involve multiple genes. So, if you cross 2 halfmoons (either HM or HMPK), theoretically you will get some halfmoons. Now, the percentage of halfmoons in your fry depend on the goodness of quality of their parent genes. These days, if you have good eyes in picking pairs, you most definitely can get around 80% halfmoons in the spawn. Note: some breeders only quote the percentage on their males, others include the females as well. We typically count both males and females.

Failing to choose good breeders will yield to....Super Deltas and Deltas. In fact, in the early days of halfmoon development, it is common to get SDs from any halfmoon pairings that you do, irrespective how wonderful the parent fish were! Over the time, the gene pool of halfmoons in bettas getting better and better thus increase in your chance of getting halfmoons as well. You will still get SDs fry if new gene pool is introduced to either of your parent fish (e.g. one of the parents being crossed to non-halfmoon line).

There are lots of ways to increase tail spread including crossing with DT, rosetail, feathertail, and of course a fish with lots of branching. Note that you can get a betta which is rosetail DT or a DT with lots of branching and yet not a rosetail nor feathertail.

As for the fin length. Yes, majority will have longer fins, longer than plakad if that's what you meant by long-fin. The length of the fin depends heavily on the parent's HMPK gene. If the HMPK were a cross from an HM, then you can expect a standard long-fin fry. However, if the female HMPK comes from a pure HMPK lines (assuming it has never been crossed to HM line), then your fry will have a medium long-fin. A medium long-fin is typically longer than your standard HMPK, but not-as-long compared to a full HM fin. Lots of people collapse this category as simply long-fin. We'd rather call them medium-fin for clarity (do you get offended when people refer to SD as HM?)

It is safer to assume that the fin length outcome is the result of permutation of the parents' fin. So, you get 25% HM, 50% medium-fin, and 25% HMPK. So, in majority (75%) you will get short-fin and those medium-fin fry which look very much like short-fin ;)

Question: why some fry bigger than others

Continuing question/answer time, here's another follow up.

> why are some of my fry is bigger than others, and some are too small.
> It seems the smallest fry wont grow at all.they also show slower growing rate.
> is there any related to the food?

If you've done spawning a number of times, you notice that the above problem seems to reoccur frequently. There are a number reasons for it, but it boils down to 2 things:

1. genetic - you never know what the history of your fish. This is hardly likely, since if it was genetic, you would expect most if not all of the fry to be small
2. environment - the most likely cause

Genetic can play a role in making stunt fish, however we dont have much knowledge in this field as yet to say anything conclusive. One thing that we notice though, many extreme feathertail/rosetail will have smaller body compared to their siblings. It seems that the gene that produces excessive branching on the rays also affect other cells on the body, making them slightly smaller.

Let's discuss the 2nd reasoning. Basically, your fry develop on slightly different pace. Assuming you always provide ample food for all of them, there will always be some slow learners in the pool. (note that if you don't provide enough food for the fry, it is pretty obvious that some of them will starve and grow slow).

Feeding experience is important to the fry. Getting them used to the competition of fighting for the food and eating vigorously will ensure that most of your fry develop fast and large. The negative effect of that would be some "shy" fry will be stunt when they see others being too aggressive. If this is continued for longer period, there is no way for you to help those stunt fry to grow any larger.

It is therefore important for you to monitor the fry and separate the big ones to another tank as soon as possible. Usually this happens on 3rd week or earlier (or otherwise you're too late!) Removal of the big ones from the rest of the brood will relieve the pressure for those possible-to-be-stunt fry. If you do this early, the rest of the normal-sized-not-so-big fry will grow and prevent/reduce the number of your possible stunt fry.

What we noticed is that stunt fry will result in a number of conditions:

• tank is too big, fry scattered everywhere, difficult to find food
• tank is too small, fry bumping to each other, some bumps harder than others
• wrong food for wrong stomach - vinegar eels or microworms are not as nutritious and can't be the regular food
• dirty/smelly tank full of gunk
• extreme tank temperature (too cold/hot) rendering your fry to be inactive

As you noted, once they are stunt, it is very difficult to get them un-stunt. You can feed them lots of food, they wont grow any bigger! In fact, we have been experimenting with some of these dwarf to see if there is genetic involved - similar to the theory of giant gene being unstable we suspect dwarf gene exists too and producing semi-random occurrences. We would like to see the outcome of crossing 2 stunt fish (provided we can identify if they are male or female to begin with!)

The rate of stunt-ness varies. Sometimes you get an extreme rate where majority of your fry to be small. Again, assuming genetic is not playing any role, we would suggest you change the way you feed your fry :) In our case, we have around 3 to 10 fry stunt in a 100+ fry, and this is totally acceptable in our dictionary anyway... Most of the time, you wont care about the stunts, just let them be :) So long they're happy...

Question: how to develop to any type of fin and colour

It's been awhile since we're posting, so let's start this with this question below.

> how can i develop some of my betta into any type of fin and colour that we
> desired for?
> for example i have a solid blue OHM males with female plakat with brown body
> and red fin..what will be the fry after i have spawn them?

Before we start the discussion, let's assume that the bettas in your hand support your goals (e.g. there is a chance for the line to achieve the goals). We're not talking about "how to produce super red fish if I only have melano pair" for instance. Despite this is still possible, it will take a much longer route to achieve (read more for background reasoning on this).

Those are 2 *different* types of development and typically very difficult if you want to focus on them on the same time. It is much easier to focus on 1 type first (e.g. the fin) and then continue the development to the 2nd type (e.g. the colour).

So, for instance, it is easier to focus your development to get the "perfect" fin that you are aiming for in, say, 4 generations. If your goal is to get straight nice fin of OHM in 80% of the spawn (e.g. 80% of fry will be OHM with nice fin), then you must develop this line by crossing OHM males with HM or OHM females. Most of the time, crossing it with plakad is not going to get the fin that you want! During this phase, you may need to buy suitable females from other breeders. Be patient, you don't want to waste your "line" by crossing the male with just any female. Each of your male (or female) is so valuable that you must make sure that when they spawn, they will bring you closer to your aim!

Now, say, you've achieved your first goal. It is time to improve the colour of your line by searching for other females that can deliver the colour that you want. You may get the females from one of your spawn, but chances are, you will need to buy suitable females. Note that when you introduce a new female, you never know what the genes this female has, so, on your next spawn, usually you will degrade your first goal (e.g. if you had consistently got 80% OHM in your spawn previously, when you cross any of your males with this new female, the outcome may result you to get only 30% OHM in your brood). This kind of "2 steps forward and 1 step backward" is very common when you introduce new genes. However, this time it is easier for you go to get back to your first goal (of getting 80% OHM in the spawn) - you only need to cross the F1 females of this new line with their "uncle". Remember, the "uncle" has the desired goal (80% OHM goal), hence crossing with them will guarantee that you maintain your first goal while pursuing the 2nd goal. You need to know the timing for when to cross out your bettas.

Short answer for your question. If you cross your OHM male x plakad brown/red female, you will get.....super deltas. if your female is HMPK, then you may get HM fry and of course HMPK (I'm assuming your OHM male also carry HMPK gene; most HM has been crossed to HMPK during its development). Colour-wise, you will get multi-colour. Usually in the form of blue with red-wash (e.g. blue red) and green red. Depending on the genes of the males and females, you may get mustard gas variation too. If any of the fish has marble gene (may not show on the current fish, but they can carry the gene), then you will get marbles thrown as well. Multi-colour is the best starting point for colour-related goal, since you will get a lot more chances of mix-and-match to see if your fry will end up with the good colouration that you're looking for. Consider yourself an artist, use your brush and start painting. You will need a lot of practice and experimentation and it may takes a long time to get the most gorgeous painting in your life, but you'll enjoy the process and the outcome :)

BTW, this has been discussed as well on "tips on achieving your betta goal". If you are focusing on giants, the discussion on distribution of giant genes may help you figure out whatever happened to your spawn :)

Comments welcome folks.

Collapsed fins on fry

This question comes up a number of times. Why, and what to do when, your fry has collapsed fins?

In our experience, there are a number of reasons for the collapsed fins, and if you treat it sooner, usually your fry will recover without any apparent damage.

The solutions depend on the reasons and could be any of these:

• water too cold - bettas are tropical fish, make sure you have water temperature around 20-25C at least.
• water too hot - don't boil your bettas. any water temperature above 28C is not good.
• overcrowded - your fry won't like it when you try to cramp too many fish in a single tank
• mixing with more active fish - if you mix your fry with other fish which are either larger or more active (e.g. move too fast), they'll get scared easily and tend to collapse their fins
• too much disturbance - did you turn that air pump too strong? slow it down or turn it off! Don't turn on the lights 24/7, fry need to sleep too, u know!
  

Hope we don't forget other things, but if we do, let us know so we can include it to the above.

Happy caring for your fry

Some females like them rough!

Spawning is one of the most exciting experience to watch, if you have the chance to. It can be pretty brutal where the male betta will chase and attempt to impress the female betta through a series of show offs.

The chases usually end with the male nipping bits and pieces of your gorgeous female's fins. Prime candidate would be caudal and anal fins, but dorsal gets the same treatment nonetheless.

In our experience, females will only be submissive when the males show that they are physically and genetically (at least felt by the females) superior and they are indeed deserving to be the father of the females' fry. Spawning and courting are just the proof of survival of the fittest concept as practiced by bettas.

What you don't see everyday is when the female has a little "doubt" on the males' suitability to father her offspring. Some females will challenge the males to see whether they are worthy of such crown. These challenges come in the form of a little bit teasing here and there, fighting back to the male during the courting, or simply giving the males that flare to entice him more. Usually the females are convinced on the males' capability when the males started to chase and nip the females.

These challenges occur very frequently when you try to spawn giants. The reason being, we believe, is because the giants have a much larger body size, hence the females are typically not afraid of the males. "You can fight and I can fight better!"

However, what if the females are still not convinced? You will see some brutality where the females would overcome the males, and sadly the males will run off. That's the end of spawning for most case.

When the two poles are in roughly equal strength, you will see some brutalities on both sides. Not only the female will be torn, the male has to enjoy the same :)

Aggressive females, in our opinion, are very desirable. We believe the offspring produced will be of high quality - active, beautiful, and strive to harsh environment (e.g. less sickness). This seems to be indicative of their mothers too, since we noticed that very few of the aggressive females were sick, despite the extent of their injuries. Sometimes we see quite extensive damage to their bodies (predominantly because the giant males delivered extreme blow to the females' bodies) and yet they recover well so that they can spawn again.

Enjoy this video, courtesy of KH (their owner). In it you'll see how the female challenged the male. Not only she challenged him, she even ate the torn pieces! At the end, she was convinced that the male is more than good to father her fry, so they had good spawning.

The 3 minutes movie (cut off from the original as it run well too long)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk7e3cjpHgM

PS. if you WTB (want to buy) these ex-breeders, contact us. KH has indicated that he's more than happy to sell them for the next person who'd like to spawn them. There are reasons why you'd like to purchase ex-breeders, as we posted previously. We highly recommend these bettas if you're dying to get your hands on very good quality giants (and breed them, of course). Sigh....if only we were not too busy, we'd snap them fast :( These bettas are for sale in a couple of days time - we suggested to KH to keep the males longer with the fry ;)

Envy what other people have

When you don't have bettas of your own (or can't afford to have them one way or another), then you can always admire and envy other people's bettas.

Here is a couple of beautiful pictures of KH's bettas... They're all giants and beautiful ! The things that really impressive about them are the fact that they're long fin giants with 32 rays splitting. You don't get that kind of bettas everyday ;)

PS pictures posted on their respective owners' permissions. Some of the photos were taken at our place when they're in transit, others were taken at KH's.

This one is a chunk of tail ripped from a female's caudal. There are 2 root-rays that came out when the male rip her beautiful caudal, your turn to do the counting on how many rays she has ;) This is from the green female...






These are pictures of the copper females. She is OHM with beautiful 32 rays. Next to her is a HM male (about 3 months) for comparison of their sizes ;) Check out her rays too....





This the pic of 1 of the males, HMPK. Thickness of his body is amazing! What's more, look at that dragon scaling ;)


We're still waiting for some more pic, fingers crossed, there should be more to come....

Spawning any of these guys will definitely a lot of fun in producing awesome giants. If you're game and interested in them, give KH a shout (contact us and we'll pass you to him).