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 ;)