Advanced breeding technique - extremely low water

Scenario: you've got pair of bettas doing dancing and wrapping, trying their best at spawning.

Problem: they are very eager pair to spawn, but the male can't seem to wrap the female nor the female knows how to put herself for a complete successful wrap. They may wrap, then somewhat slip off, or the female got pushed aside and the male sank like a rock to the bottom of the tank.

Solution: read on ;)

The above problem is quite common when you're dealing with 2 conditions:

1. the female is equal or way too big for the boy to wrap
2. they're inexperience

You can do a number of things, but we'll discuss one approach that we applied ;)

1. you can switch the male/female with more experienced one - in order for this technique to work, you need to move the female to new male (rather than moving the new male to female's tank). We've done this a number of time with great success
2. continue with the original pair, fingers crossed they may learn the technique before any of them giving up or the female dropping eggs
3. continue with the original pair and "force" their environment to work better for their lacking in technique

We've applied the last technique for a pair of K.H.'s giants. The female is big (more than 2.5 inches) and the male is bigger (more than 3.2 inches). The problem is that the female has a very bulky/large body width, the male can't wrap that body with ease. They've been trying to wrap for more than 2 hours without success. The female was exhausted and she was dropping some eggs already....

Applying the last technique to the pair, we've seen successful wrappings at last!

What did we do? Quite simple really...we lowered the water with this formula: male's total length + 1 inch. So, basically we have them spawning in a barely 4 inches height of water! You can use airline tubing to suck out the water, just don't disturb the nest...

Now, you may say, well, that's pretty much a normal water height for spawning, isn't it? No, not really. We typically spawn bettas at about 5 inches of water if they're short fin. Long fin HM usually get about 5 to 6 inches, not much different really. However, these are giants and they're very big! Try to keep your giants in a 5 inches of water, they'll be going crazy. You can see how the male becomes difficult in moving about.

The good thing about this technique is that it forces the male and the female on that confine depth, hence remove the possibility for them to "slip off" during wraps. Basically, once the male wraps the female, the male sinks to the bottom of the tank and with him he carries the female! If the female is somewhat "slip off", at least she's still within very close distance from the male.

You need to watch out for a couple of things though:

1. don't lower the water too much, they can't even wrap if it's too low. As a guide, measure your male in a complete flare position, make sure he has at least 1 inch space to maneuver (e.g. bending his body to wrap the female)
2. don't worry if their movement destroys a bit of the bubble nest. if there are too much erratic movements, you better wait till they're really in "wrapping" mode to lower the water (not lowering the water when they're in "dancing" mode)
3. Obvious enough, you can't apply this technique if the male's nest is obstructed with plants or other things in the tank.

If you notice that either one of them is feeling uncomfortable with this technique, you better increase their water height until they're feeling happy. Sign of uncomfortable varies, so you better watch your fish closely :)

If you're game and want to try this technique (or you know you have failed pair that you want to give another try), you better contact us for a chat to make sure you are ready to apply this technique - time is of the essence during spawning!