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.