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!