More pics of the fry

Just want to record how fast these guys develop. 2nd day eating bbs and their size is amazing already. The whole tank is full of them, perhaps in a week time would be good time to split them up, too overcrowded....

Here are 2 pics coming from one corner of the tank....

long tail as ideal betta?

This has raised a lot of previous discussions, IBC, forums, etc also had discussed this. But what is our ideal bettas? In our case, we love to have bettas with the following characteristics (only for long fin):

• tail very long, the longer the better
• has to have desirable HM form, e.g. 180 degree, large dorsal (not bent!), large and squarish anal
• no DT gene (or not a direct carrier anyway -- how to know? cross it with an ST with DT carrier, if none of fry is DT then we're good)
• round circle connecting caudal, dorsal, and anal
• 8, 16, or 32 rays branching, as long the fin is fully expanded and show off beautifully
• little or none rosetail gene (misalignment of scales, fin ruggerized)

If possible, the caudal length is as long as the fish's body, if not longer.

Now, many would complain that the betta would look like "dragging" its tail....Well, no...majority would be, since that's not "good health" bettas. Good bettas would show off the tail very nicely and flare actively without much of dragging. Only old or weak bettas will drag their tail. Unfortunately, finding such a betta is very difficult, since you have to rely on your eyes to spot the right pictured one.

Due to the above weaknesses, many breeders have preferred a much shorter tail. Well, that's not something that we fancy. To put it simple, it's easy to produce shorter tail bettas, hence there is not much challenge in it. It's a lot more difficult to produce consistent long and strong tail bettas!

Long tail carries extra problems too...water needs to be extra clean, otherwise finrot will just crop up like bush fire. fry needs early separation as you definitely dont want that beautiful long tail torn to pieces.

We'll find more pictures on what the bettas would look like, but if you check our previous posts, you'll find some of them (copper pictures here and here for instance). They are very beautiful when flare and the way they move....

Here are examples (permission given by seller):




Note that there are more improvements for the above 2 pictures such as dorsal/anal areas, however the point of discussion at the moment is the caudal. Also, we don't know if any of these 2 fish "drag" their caudal or not, cause the static pics don't show that. However, given their apparent agressive outlook, we can assume that they're okay....

Here is another example of large tail, accompanied by large body. This fish seems old as well (and well fed ;). It is confirmed that this one carries DT as indicated by the volume of the tail. Not sure if the above 2 fish carry DT, but suspect they are.



Interestingly, the larger the finnage, the more chance of heavy branchings happening, hence the more chance of feathertail occuring. Nothing wrong with this, in fact it looks even nice as it indicates the beautiful branchings on their tail (we've start off with 1 or 2 branchings on typical bettas to 16 or 32 branches, even up to 64 branches). As long they don't form extreme rosetail, they just look nice, don't you agree?

Some possible nice dragon colours

Suppose there are some betta colours that you want, what would that be?

Today, it came to our mind that we'd like to see/produce some of these colours, perhaps much much later down the track:

• platinum blue -- full dragon white masking, over black body, but full royal blue tail (they manage to get nice red dragon, why can't we get blue dragon)
• black dragon -- combination of black orchid and full mask platinum/copper shading (better yet if someone can get superblack or melano dragon)
• orange dragon -- same as full platinum red, but we'll have orange as the base instead

Those are just some ideas for the dragons. When we say dragon, we don't refer to "slight" highlights on the body, no....we mean full masking with very strong white colouration where each scale is clearly marked. there are "cracks" between the scales, that's dragon!...tail and body colour need to be clearly defined... many fish labelled as dragon these days are no more than typical masking and most are even very much disappointing in it ! Those sellers should be shame on calling their fish dragons when they do not deserve the title....

There you are, some ideas for you, if you'd like to get some challenges in producing nice bettas :)

CSB = Community Supported Betta

Just got an idea after watching the "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" where he went through the full process of conversion of his farm to be CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). More references here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture.

Well, the idea is pretty much the same. We loved bettas, bred bettas for its enjoyment, but the associated cost of such hobby is pretty high. So, what if we have something similar to CSA whereby a bunch of enthusiasts pool some cash for a spawn?

It boils down to something very simple:

1. find a pair that everyone interested in
2. acquire the pair
3. "shareholders" pay for part of the cost
4. at the end of 2 or 2.5 months, all shareholders will get their share of the spawn

Deciding the cost is a bit difficult though, so let's run some numbers just for the sake of arguments:

1. buying fish $150 ($80 for a pair in AUD!, $50 for transhipping, $20 for local shipping)
2. electricity $100 (breeding tank, fry tank, growout tanks need to have heater at least for the first 1.5 month for consistent temp)
3. foods $50 x 4 ($50 per 2 weeks pro-rata, fry eat lots of black worms towards 1.5 to 2 months old)
4. breeder salary free (for now, assume it is free)
5. shipping to each shareholder $25 x N

So, the grand total of the cost would be about $450 excluding any shipping charges incurred.

Now, suppose we are looking at 5 people as shareholders, then you'll be looking at $90 for each shareholder to pay up. Of course, the greater the number of shareholders, the smaller the cost. Some cost reductions can be done as well, perhaps by purchasing cheaper parent fish (but remember, shareholders may want to stick with "good quality" fish, hence not sacrificing too much on this). Similarly, foods also fluctuate based on the number of fry etc (and whether it was agreed to use pellets for instance -- though most of our spawns use live worms). Electricity maybe reduced, depending how well summer coming in....

But then you'd think...hold on....isn't that pretty much equivalent (more or less) the cost of buying 1 pair of bettas for myself? Well, yes, but then what you get at the end of CSB would be LOTS of fry to be spread to shareholders. Assume that each spawn yields between 25 to 300 fry, then the bare minimum number of fish each shareholder receives would be 5 ! The breeder may want to keep a couple of fry for himself as well, but you get the idea....

The quality of the fry is usually pretty high, but this depends heavily on the initial seed. Hence choosing good parents would be one of the fun thing for everyone to decide on :)

Let us know what you think of above. If you're interested, we're more than happy to try it out on a single spawn. Perhaps with this approach, we can share good betta genetics much faster in the community, rather than individuals trying on their own.

New breeding season!

Some of our guyz got their act and produce young and healthy fry. Here are some pics of them (still need to work on the skills, zoom and focus pretty much challenging)







Can't seem to zoom in properly, but anyway, that's good enough.

So small...they are actually giants, but definitely can't tell the difference when they are so small.

Comparing our boys

Sometimes it is fairly hard to visualize what a giant looks like, particularly if you never seen one or when you only see one individually on picture.

Here is the comparison images that we took, not the greatest ones, but sufficient for you to compare what they really look like.

On these pictures, you see normal HM boy and giant boy. Both of them are nearly 3 months old. Don't be fooled to see that the normal HM is "shorter" on the tail, no he's in fact has pretty darn beautiful tail, it's just that once he's put together with the gigantic boy, his tail does look shorter :)







They manage to flare for sometime before the normal HM boy decided to run off. The giant is just too big for him :) Time to condition the giant for breeding, crossing him to his half-sister.....

Breeding experience, free fish!

A recent request just reminded us on how precious sometimes to gain the "experience" to spawn bettas. We've taken spawning as granted and forgot how difficult it was to do a successful one (or even a failed one). Still remembered a long time ago when a group of us had to travel back and forth to aquariums every single week (for months!!!) for a wish that we find the "right" fish. Heck, back then, any HM line was seen as gold. In fact, these days, it is still the same!!! Try to
go to LFS and hope to find an HM line male or female, tough luck....Chances, if you ever see the female, it would either be plakad, veiltail, or some sort that you never know.

Nostalgia....Still remembered how we hold our breadth when they wrap, how we waited those long hours just to see the eggs falling, and agitated we were when the male didn't pick the eggs at all, or frustruated we were when the bubble kept bursting despite the best effort that we did with all the heater and tank preparation....ahh, those were the good times :)

Anyway, here's the offer. If you would like to experience spawnings, we are offering our fish for FREE! Each person is limited to get up to 2 pairs. They won't be the greatest fish you'll ever seen, but they carry good genes (heck, otherwise there won't be a point for us to spawn their parents to begin with!). Most of the times the males would be torn-fin because they fight, but that shouldn't deter you in spawning them, would it??? Long fin males most probably be Super Delta (SD). Females usually quite okay, may not be perfect either with little torn here and there. Of course you will never get deformed fish, that's out of the questions. All fish would be either HM or HMPK lines (your call which ones you like -- as long we have stock). You would be very surprised on the offspring later cause they actually carry very good genes (but we won't spoil your fun, find and discover it for yourself)....Lots of colours available, but we either pick them
randomly for you or you specifically say what your favourite colour and we see if we have them in stock :)

We don't want anything back from you. They are given to you as FREE. Perhaps we are hoping that you'd support us in the future by buying our stock (that helps reducing the cost of providing these great bettas to others), or better yet, perhaps we hope that you also do the same deed to others.

However, most of our fish are very young at this point in time, so chances you will need to keep them for at least 2 weeks to 4 weeks before you can spawn them. The ones avail for sale are quite big and ready to spawn, that's provided you'd prefer the "better" ones.

If you are interested, contact us on email. If for some reasons you were unlucky with your given pairs and would like to keep trying, give us an email and we'll arrange something (happy to sell some pairs for very reasonable price).

How do you get them? We're in Sydney, so if you're in sydney too, meeting could be arranged (though very much difficult on timings, give your phone #). Shipping can be done as well if you live in other cities, cost $25 to eastern coasts.

Spawning experience is one of the reasons why we've been in bettas for awhile. The excitement, the disappointment, the success, and the failure. Hope we can share that experience with you too.

PS. We still encourage you to support fellow breeders (including us) who are offering their stock for sale. Consider this offer as supplement to those with cash-strapped pocket, hopefully the offer takes a bit off of your stress or allow you to experience breedings :)

Good luck and happy breeding.

Giant gene to enhance bettas

Some have asked whether this is true. Well, yes. Giant bettas, if you choose good ones, will enhance your typical bettas gene.

See, the trick is in the sheer size of the body. This will improve the size of your bettas and increase their form as well.

Of a particular experiement, we've found that normal bettas will increase in size once bred to a giant and this will stabilize on at least 2 generations, e.g. F1 will give you lots of 50% giant with improved genes already, F2 will get back to majority of "normal" bettas, but with slightly larger size. Robustness of the bettas also improve.

Interestingly though, if any of the fry carry (and reflect) heavy rosetail trait, then their size is no difference than normal bettas. This is perhaps the effect of extreme rosetail. Furthermore, while "normal" rosetail will have detrimental effect on bettas' size and health, a giant that carries rosetail is in fact seems much healthier and active (though this could be just a particular spawn that we have -- we need to monitor and do lots more experiementations to see this).

Another interesting observation is on the thickness of their finnage, or rays. Normal bettas with very weak rays can be improved by crossing it to a giant. It improves the strength of the rays.

As with any spawnings, you need to choose your breeders carefully ! After all, the spawns will inherit the good and bad traits from the parents.

beaten HM

just one of those days, when 1 of our giant HM male is beaten by a female....failed in spawning, of course.
he's still flaring, looks to be still okay, but isn't really in any good shape to continue the spawning attempt. well, that's the outcome of getting one of our 2.8 inches female to be crossed to long fin 3.7 inches male, a big failure. instead, we have the female happily snapping bits and pieces of that beautiful long finnage of the male :)

resting time for this male, just for another try, perhaps with much smaller female

copper red and reverse BF boyz

The copper red boy doesn't have that white patch on his body (that was just the unclean tank). We may want to keep the copper red boy and sell the reverse BF boy....still not sure as yet. that reverse BF boy forms a very nice triband already. A bit of growing, hopefully he will turn out great :)

Quite exciting to see their progress later. They are barely 9 weeks old and their size already equivalent to standard HM betta of 3.5 or 4 months old. Notice also that they're very naughty boyz, lots of nippings already! In fact, they started doing the nippings when they're about 6 or 7 weeks old, we ran out of dividers, so they're just left in the growout tanks for awhile.

Branchings seems to be good too. Started on 8 rays, but hopefully will get to at least 16 rays.

These guys are only available on very limited number. There are only 4 pairs of them on each spawn. Well, there were only that few hatched to begin with, due to the extreme size of their mother and father. Their mom was the 3.5 inches HM giant and the dad was 4.2 inches in length. We will keep at least 2 pairs, and may offer the others for sale. Offer us the right price, their siblings could be yours ;)

Edited: sorry, the images didn't show up before, fixed now (we think...testing with FF). server host doesn't allow hotlinking, oh well...posting the images somewhere else then ;)

dilemma dilemma

being able to get giants, very large size ones, is difficult enough.
spawning them is pretty much impossible. knowing that the larger the
giants, the chances of them being old is also greater. most giants
offerred barely makes 3 inches even for HM. 3 inches!!! in case you're
not aware, a true king giant betta of HMPK should reach 2.5 inches at
the age of 2.5 to 3 months easily. they typically get 3 inches in 4 or
5 months time. so, having long fin HM giant to only get to 3 inches
including tail at, say, 4 months time is very disappointing.

there are some giants on offer for quite reasonable price (well,
they're still expensive, but at least not one of those exaggerated
price of 300 bucks), however if you notice it carefully, they are
"old" giants. i wont be surprise if these giants are at least 8 to 9
months, if not 1 year old. sure, someone maintain their water well
(you can see this by the beautiful finnage that they're still having,
despite such "old" age). these giants typically 3.5 inches in length
including tail, but what you gonna do??? that's the "best" on offer.

we're lucky enough from time to time to get some good connection with
breeders. they're quite willing to sell us much larger giants, say 4+
inches. these giants, again, won't be surprised if they are 1 year
old, but at least they HAVE large size.

now, all of the above are males. what about females? well, females are
much smaller in size. this is in contrary to what we experience in our
breedings for short fins giants. our hmpk giants have large size
females compared to males. maybe because we feed them very well, with
all the live food and all. getting back to long fin giant, you will be
lucky to find anything closer to 2.8 inches. but hey, you may wonder,
isn't 2.8 inches female giants hmpk are pretty easy to find??? YES!!
that's the disappointing part. we have produced many 2.8 inches female
hmpk, so that size isn't so much special for us at all anymore. we
would expect HM giant female to reach at least 3.5 inches. indeed we
found some of this size. how old are they? again, perhaps 1 year old.
they certainly seem and behave "old". how do we tell? well, the older
fish has less desire to flare, specially gaints. they're so big, they
won't even bother to flare to smaller fish (i wouldn't bully smaller
fish myself, if i were giant, just a waste of energy). they flare okay
with larger males though, in fact not only they flare, they fight them
off!!

this is the problem with us now. getting very large giant female will
mean we are on the quest to find suitable male. none of those males on
offer is suitable for these females (same experience that we've got
with our 2.8 inches hmpk females -- would be lucky to find any males
who can wrap them up). the problem is, most giant genes aren't
"settled" yet. spawning 2 giants won't mean you get all giants. mostly
you've got big fish, but there would only be about 30% pure giants,
the rest are larger fish (the so-called 50% and 75% giants). so,
spawning the largest giants you can find on earth would mean, if
you're successful in spawning them, you are producing a much bigger
chance of producing "pure blood" giants. this is particularly one of
the biggest challenge that we find with HM giants. in fact, this is
the same problem faced by the thai people as well...do you notice any
surprisingly large and beautiful HM giant? if you keep your eyes
peeled, you'd notice "no"! so, at least we are on the same position as
the thai on this problem. inability to produce very large giants. one
of the dreams of ours is to produce the infamous 7 inches giant!! full
hm with good forms, of course.

we find that breeding hmpk giants are easy now, it isn't much of a
challenge anymore. sure, too large females mean difficult spawning,
but at least we can produce consistently large giants in our spawns,
and that's very much good for us already. their forms are very nice
already, colour may need improvement, but then we aren't focusing on
color sometimes either.

breeding largest HM giants, with very good (if not the best) form, is
the biggest challenge now. we only see 1 giant over this couple of
years being produced in very perfect form, but that was a "one-off"
spawn. the breeder is no longer able to produce that kind of giant
anymore. this giant had the size of nearly 2x standard long fin HM.
now, that's about 4.5 or 5 inches, for those who are wondering.

oh, did we mention that the "older" the bettas, the more difficult
they are to spawn? they are no longer active, their eggs got older
too, and the males typically got tired very easily (what do you
expect? he has to drag that large tail of his everywhere!).

but rest assured, we're still determined to get, first of all,
successful spawn of large giant HM, followed by raising their fry to
extremely large size!!!

if you're asking, how much would be the price for the fry, we would
say EXPENSIVE!!! it's the difficulty on getting the spawn to begin
with. for every successful spawn that we've got with this large
giants, there are usually at least 3 to 5 unsuccessful ones. these
unsuccessful ones typically involve different pairs!!! now, try to
figure out how much money involved to get them imported etc, only to
find them wasted cause they fail in spawning....happy if you'd like to
buy the failure ones from us ;) ;) ;)

right, enough chatting...better get to watching the fish. figuring out
how to successfully spawn them.

Summer is coming, but that's not easier for breedings

In the hope that warmer temperature will stimulate (better) breeding for the giants, we tried out 2 giant pairs in the tanks. They're more than eager, but typical difficulties with giants still exist. Either the female is too large for the male to wrap, or she's not interested in the awesomeness of the male.

It would be easier if we had chosen smaller females. But this time, we really wanted to try our breeding skills against much larger female. The two females in the tank are both 2.8 inches and 3 inches. They are massive for such young age (3.5 months now). In fact, they look like the "big momma" (Lawrence) movie, but in a much bigger scale compared to their standard bettas counterpart. These females are paired against their sibling brothers, each of 3 inches long as well. The males are more "skinny" on the tummy, whereas the females are at least double the size on their "waistline".

Unfortunately, this is day 3 already, lots of nipping of female's tail, but no eggs. They are still dancing and flaring continuously. If they were the typical bettas, we would expect them to successfully spawn by now. Oh well, perhaps just another wait and see.

It is still interesting to discover that we are just as newbie in giant spawnings. They are challenging beasts. Pick them too young to spawn, they ended up being very aggressive (though usually successful spawning), but we dont know if we've picked the largest-eventual-giant from the pool. Pick large ones to spawn on much later time, in the hope of producing yet-much-larger giants, usually yield in disappointment cause the darn thing won't spawn at all !!!

Usually the males are to blame though. Their body is not big enough to handle the body of the female. Dying to hear back from the experts out there as to how to spawn giants the "easy" way. Let us know if you know a trick or two.

youngsters for sale

check out our stock sample at http://mybettas.110mb.com. There are some new stock uploaded. These guys are very young, 2 months old, but has been quite a headache to keep, as most of them are very agressive. lots of nippings already happening. both males and females flare very frequently.

if you're interested, they are available for $100 for a bulk of 10 (5 pairs), random. You will get a mix of long fin and short fin, various colours. nippings exist but not very extensive, most nippings will heal in short amount of time. they are HM and HMPK. Some come from giant gene line as well, hence expect their size to grow much larger.

Shipping to east coast is $25, otherwise please contact us to see if some meeting time can be arranged (shipping is still preferred).

Email at mybettas at gmail dot com

giant long fin, why not larger than it should be?

we've been wondering how large the long fin giants can really get. some reported size is about max of 7", now that's really really large!

largest giant so far that we've seen is about 4.5 inches, and it was a short fin giant. if we consider that typical short fin giant merely get maxed out to 3.5 inches, you can see why we were wondering on this frequently....reported largest short fin is about 5 inches and its exaggerated size of 6 inches is still no way to be seen. considering we've seen a 4.5 inches, it is very much possible that such 6 inches exist, just dont know how old or how big he really is...

anyway, working from the fact that 4.5 inches giant hmpk existed, then wondering its equivalent long fin shouldn't be too hard, wouldn't it? :)

longest long fin giant hm we've seen is owned by our QLD mate DC, and that's 5 inches in length. working out backward, perhaps it is possible to have 6 or 7 inches giants. female hm giant is another different thing altogether though....largest that we've seen is 3.5 inches and DC has kept the record for 4 inches female. even with 4 inches female it is still nightmare to try to spawn them (well, we successfully spawned 3.5 inches with only 10 fertilized eggs!! and DC is still trying his heart out for the pair).

if you know much larger giants, or have pictures of them, do let us know. quite intrique on this.

simplified sale costing

too much problem with individual costs for the fish. If you'd like to order the fish, just consider this cost:

per pair: $40
per individual: $30

shipping: $25 to east coast

order more than 2 pairs include either free shipping or free 1 fish.

order more than 4 pairs include the above bonus (from 2+ pairs), plus another fish.

we'll update what's available and what's taken from the sale page, later. send us email to see if the fish of your interest still available

btw, all of your fish ordered are guaranteed for:
* DOA - full replacement or money back on the value of dead fish
* fish arrived sick - same as DOA (if fish sick much later after arrival, that's your responsibility)

other (troublesome) condition, if happened to your fish, please let us know asap and we'll arrange something.

Stock updated, special delivery option for some states

OK, just got the time to update the stock today. Apologies. just too much things going on and really busy days.

Anyway, please check stock at http://mybettas.110mb.com.

Apart from standard deals such as below, some hobbyists from some states can also get special delivery!!!
buy 2+ fish: 10% off
buy 4+ fish: free shipping or 15% off
buy 8+ fish: 1 free fish

Our friend will be able to help in delivering your fish for FREE (meeting somewhere at your state) on the following date:
* Perth: 26, 27 or 28 October
* Adelaide: 2 or 3 Nov
* Melbourne: 12 or 13 Nov

Definitely got in contact with us if you'd like to buy our fish and require meeting for the fish delivery at the above location. Alternatively, shipping still costs you $25 to east coast

Update
-------
Additional state delivery by another friend (still not fully confirmed yet; can only confirm in couple of days time):
* Brissy: 30 & 31 October.
* Cairns: 8 Nov

Note, all monies need to be paid before fish delivery (our friends only want to help deliver the fish; don't want to handle exchange of monies etc). So, contact us asap and get payments sorted, otherwise our apologies that shipping will be the only option.

Looking forward to some nice looking giants long fin

Well, here's a sample of early riser of copper giant.
He's slightly above average compared to standard giant....well, he's not 1.5 months as yet, but looking good already.

Finnage is a bit odd, but then we won't complain cause by the look of it, he'll make it to be OHM soon...if we push him with some exercises :)

His video action below can be seen in YouTube at MyBettas YouTube

Check out our limited new stock!

We've got some of our offspring from last spawns, thanks heaps to AB
for this lot.

Anyhow, go to stock link at our new homepage http://mybettas.110mb.com

Some limited giants HMPK and HM are available. They are young but have
large size already (2+ inches).
Some of the females will definitely give you LOTS of fry !!!

Discounts:
buy 2+ fish: 10% off
buy 4+ fish: free shipping or 15% off
buy 8+ fish: 1 free fish (cheapest free)

Contact us on mybettas@gmail.com if you're interested.

challengers wanted

part of our prized possessions of bettas, we have some rather too-large giant HMPK females. these females got to the size that they are so large that we doubt any of our males would be able to spawn them.

the females are on average 2.5-2.8 inches long for hmpk, 3.3-3.6 inches for hm. But the length isn't much of the bigger deal, well it's usually not the main problem. the width that scares the hell of most males. their body width (heigth) is about 1 inch (1+cm for body, 2+cm for total width) with thickness of more than 0.5 inch (1+ cm). the long fin female has total width of 2 inches or so and we are certain that none of our males would be able to court them....

so, the challenge is to find a good suitable males for them. preferably either hmpk or hm of giant traits. if you have such males, contact us and we'll send the females down your way.

requirements for the males: minimum length of 3 inches for hmpk, 4 - 4.5 inches for hm. if you can't satisfy this requirement, there is no point on sending the females to you. your male has to be strong HM or HMPK spread (we don't want to develop SD giants), send us pictures and we will decide whether the male is accepted or not.

what do we want out of this? your promise that you'll send the largest 10 offspring from their spawns (5 pairs) when the offspring are at the age of 2 - 2.5 months. alternatively, when they are at the age of 1.5, you can send 20 of them to us (hey, summer is coming, so no need for heatpack, but still they may die on the trip). we want the largest of the spawn without apparent genetic fault (if there is such genetic fault). we pay for the shipping of these offspring (or pick them up, if you're in Sydney).

what do you get? you get the females sent to you (at your cost, or pick them up if you're in Sydney). the females are free! your priority is to spawn the female with the promised giant male first. once they're spawned, you are free to make use of the female for other pairings. then you contact us in 2 months time or so to arrange shipment of the offspring.

alternatively, if you are not confident on spawning, please send us pictures of your males and we see if there are ways for us to get them spawned at surrogate place (there are other people who are happy to lend a hand for a fee or barter -- offer of offspring?). in this case, the deal is swapped (you send your male, we pay shipping for the male, and you may ask for the male back when they are done -- no point for us to keep the male with us, so you might as well get back the male if you'd like to).

another yet alternative is for us to swap either male or female, if you insist that you'd like to have something of your own to spawn (or for whatever reasons there might be). we're interested in getting large females or males of either hmpk or hm traits. you can swap with our females or males, please do contact us....

note that while the females or males involved are quite expensive monetary-wise, we are more interested in being able to produce the largest giants lines with decent form. hence, we hope that you have the same view as us in appreciating the delicacy of this deal.

contact us on our email mybettas {at} gmail [dot] com. hope you're intrigued with this idea...

spawning service is postponed

one of our buyers asked whether we can help him on spawning his pair. in normal circumstances, we would have been happy to do so. in fact we have spawning service where we spawn your pair and raise them to the age of 1.5-2 months and hand them over to you. minimal 50-100 fry guaranteed. however, these days, we have been very busy and didn't have much of the time available, hence unfortunately we have to say no.

it is sad to hear that those gorgeous pairs that you've bought couldn't be spawned. they typically only need good condition to spawn. perhaps you can read our spawning 101 post. hopefully that helps you.

there are other challenges in spawning giants. this makes this hobby so much fun. while it is true that spawning typical bettas is trivial, giants are a lot more difficult to do. so much more for long fin giants, particularly if their size is gigantic (smaller size seems to be comparable to typical long fin spawning).

perhaps in a couple of months time, we will be offering our spawning service again. until that time, please read our previous posts and consult the various bettas forums. there will be plenty of resources available for you.

giant video spawn

we've got the permission to upload this video and picture from the owner. we're pretty happy to see the success of this spawning, cause the pair is just awesome.

we helped in importing the male. he's copper giant long fin, about 4+ inches (4.2 -4.3 inches, or 10+ cm). forget about the typical 3 inches (7.5 cm) that are being sold as giants, these coppers are huge! they have such gorgeous tail, long wavy tail on all finnage. very high and large dorsal, very long caudal, and anal is just dead drop wide.

here's what the male looks like (photo courtesy of seller).


the female is one of our long fin 8 rays giant HM line. she is very young, about 3.5 months, and about 2.8 inches. she comes from copper x plat red.

in this movie (you need flash player), you can see how the male managed to fully wrapped and hide the female.... just awesome!

here's the video

pecking order

is it always that the largest female be the winner? does a male in the community tank (of females) play any role? how do they establish that pecking order that everyone has been mentioning so much about?

well, most larger female is the leader of the group. this can be seen as when bigger female moves about, you'll see other females won't dare to stay on her path....but what also interesting is that there are times when you see a smaller female is the leader. this is not too uncommon. for instance, we had occasions when smaller female started to chase every other females away, even managed to nip a few tails. she even chased males. in short, she's just bored :)... She wants to be the leader and until such time no other females or males able to challenge her, she'll be the leader.

there are times when pecking order is very much apparent. you can easily notice them when:

• when new fish is added to the tank (doesn't matter whether that's male or female)
• during or after feeding time

it's kinda cute to see females sorting out their pecking order. sometimes you see blood is shed (well, nipping that is).

males have their order too, but you should only observe this when they are smaller (e.g. when they haven't really doing the full fight). sometimes they chase each other or flare for awhile, sometimes you see fin is nipped a little here and there, but there is no harm on that. it's a good indication that you need to separate them soon though, cause if you're late on doing that, you'll regret it....in our experience, this is approx when the males are about 2 to 2.5 months old. anything older than that would mean they are more than ready to fight for their lives, so if you haven't separate them, you're way too late lol.

getting back to pecking order....sometimes you see females (or males) fight very aggressively just to sort out this pecking order. well, that's the ritual. they need to know who's stronger and who should get the big share of the food (or who gets the chance to mate that gorgeous male, if you have a male in the tank).

if you are weak-hearted, you can ease up their aggression by a number of ways:

• introduce lots of fish on the same time (the more populated the tank, the more confused they are)
• keep disturbing the tank (add pump, filter, lights, anything)
• put other fish in the tank
• feed them on frequent intervals (they'll be distracted on getting the food). the opposite of this is true too...if you feed them on more regular and less-frequent intervals, you'll notice your fish getting aggressive, cause they're hungry and will fight for food
• keep your tank dark (if you can't distract them, make them think it's night, so they can't see each other flaring)
• depending on size of your tank, introduce at least 1 male. the male will be the boss and he'll chase the females away (the male usually doesn't nip females' fin). old male is a good candidate. young male is full of testosterone, so he may ended up chasing the female for courting, LMAO
  
• give enough hiding places. unfortunately, hiding place also serves as point of contention. whoever claims the spot usually is very aggressive in defending it, so you'll see nipping there
  

so, there you go, sort out your pecking order in the tank. don't hesitate to add more fish to the tank (some is so scared to 'disturb' the established pecking order). adding more fish makes the tank more lively, not the old dull folks ;) ;)

we used to have a couple of "show" tanks where we put about 20 or so females and 1 or 2 males. they live very happily there. but one thing that we've learnt is that we need to "rotate" some females from time to time, from one tank to another. This rotation introduces new mixed of fish into the tanks and make the whole thing lively again.

david and goliath

today we saw some interesting stuff. The Thai has managed to develop "micro" HM! The size of those fish are only 4cm, but yet they have full HM or OHM spread etc. Just amazing....

OK...we're not encouraging things, but you must admit that this is amazing. For those out there who have ever spawned anything, you know what we meant. It takes diligent and a lot of generations to be able to develop this micro HMs. Most micro hm you've seen are just deformed fish, but no...this one is FULL normal functional fish. And what's more?? There are a number of them, so it's pretty certain that the gene has settled down.

OK, perhaps this is not really such a big deal, cause you can always try to cross your fish with the smallest bettas found, but having said this, it's still interesting that they've managed to get a full OHM with very nice form and ray splitting!!!

If you see the picture, they're no more different that your typical fancy OHM, colour-wise, they're the same too. The ones we saw were copper variant (copper red, copper gold, etc), so that's "new" colour, not your typical blues or reds.

Now, further to that, try to compare this micro HM to giant HM!! You would then be able to appreciate both of them a lot more ;)

On one side you have a fish that is barely 4cm. Next to it is another with the size of 10+cm. Talking about a full 3x size difference. A single wrap of the giant HM male will completely swallow the tiny micro HM male :)

That's david and goliath for you!! We'll see if we can post pictures later (pending approval), but that's sufficient for you to imagine for now :)

Enjoy.

Here's the snap of the image, with permission from seller...







Not surprising that they've got DT on the gene, otherwise they won't look as good ;)

spawning 101

just quickly sharing some spawning techniques. you can choose what to experiment with your pair, but knowing this ahead of time usually helps :)

generally, there are 2 ways of spawning (rough and gentle) and both requires some preparation. So let's get to it then...

Preparation:

• always feed more to your male and female, they need it...if possible, give nutritious food such as live food
• let the male build bubblenest, if he can't make the nest, then he's not ready!
• if your male tries hard to build the nest but it kept bursting, you don't have a good conditioning tank, so fix your tank (temp, water parameter, etc)!
• small 12-15" tank is better than large 2' tank
• plants etc optional, preferable not to have them (just disturbing female's view of male's nice nest)
• put something floating so male can make nice nest

Once you've prepared the above, then it's a game to introduce the female. Some would like to float the female or cage her in a transparent chamber. It's your choice, as long you don't disturb male's nest too much. If you release the female too soon (e.g. 1 or 2 days after introduction), then you are doomed to have rough spawning. This is because the male is still very much high on testosterone, he'll beat the crap out of the female. Similarly, the female is also quite high chemically, she's not having her eggs "matured" yet (hey, she just saw that good looking male for 2 days, what do you expect? the eggs are not ready to be handed on silver platter yet!)

Some people will further put temptation on both male and female, such as letting them see each other 10x a day, each for 10 mins window. This could last for 1 full week or up to 10 days. If you play this nicely, you'll have a very nice gentle spawning and be aware!!! you are going to end up raising 500-800 fry!!! You'll notice the female gets bouncy and bouncy on her tummy every day. Do not try this unless you know what you're doing, cause you may ended up with the female dropping her eggs (she just can't hold so many eggs for too long!!! after all, the gorgeous guy usually waiting next to her)

Last variation, which we have been doing for as long as we can remember, is to introduce the female for 2 days, then releasing her for half hour. This will cause the male to chase her up like crazy, the first couple of minutes she's going to entertain him by flaring etc, but then you'll notice that she's trying to get away as far as possible from the agressive male. Once you noticed that, cage her again for 2 more days. She'll grow appreciation of the handsomeness of the male ;)....Once you think she's no longer afraid of the male (and in fact the male doesn't even bother to try to kill her), you can release her again. Usually, in a matter of couple of hours, you'll see them spawning nicely. You may not get that 800 fry from them, but you get enough to keep you busy raising the raskals for months and months :)....and the bonus?? you have very gentle spawning.

Different situation warrants different styles. For instance, if you have very strong female (she's agressive and demand a lot from her male), then you have to use rough spawning technique. Why? cause she wants to make sure the gorgeous male is up to her standard! So, you don't have much of a choice. If you mistakenly use "gentle" approach on spawning, what you will ended up is usually 2 things: either one of them gets bored and not interested, or the female will beat the hell out of the male and your gorgeous male will become 'retarded' (e.g. shock of the spawning and unable to perform future spawning attempts). Hence, that's why spawning is always an "art" in betta keeping. Choosing your best male and female is just the first step on the grande planning to produce your dream goal. Making sure they really spawn usually poses more challenges. Oh, but wait....you haven't experienced how to raise the youngsters yet! Making sure they are on tip top condition so that you can be proud of them. As Homer Simpsons said after building his BBQ pit "Why doesn't mine look like that?!" Your youngster may not even ended up similar to their parents!!! :D :D

That's why some people even had to "take exercises" on mastering the technique. They choose multiple pairs, experiment on them to gain the experience....What do we think of all of these?? Well, some people can learn how to swim by reading books, others actually have to get to the pool and experiment spot on.....So you need to know your strength and weaknesses. OK, from time to time you get one or two people bragging about their spawning techniques....hey, sometimes they strike luck on their first spawning -- so they thought they deserve to brag ;) ;)....Perhaps it's not really bragging, it's more like "sharing your happiness"......Anyway, we advice you to go quietly to your fish room and experiment more. observe your fish, get to know their behaviour, see what they dis/like, and once you're in touch with them, you know when to spawn them ;).....every fish is different, other people can give you opinion, but you are the ones who'd know better, cause you can SEE your fish and observe them (others can only guesstimate what they look like)

Good luck on your spawning. If there are things that we can help to point you to the right direction, feel free to contact us (if we have time, we'll reply....otherwise, go and observe your fish more)

RSS and ATOM links above

Just quickly letting you know. If you'd like to get posted on what we've written here, then there is RSS and ATOM links for this blog made available above.

or alternatively you can always refer to it manually http://breedingsmybettas.blogspot.com/rss.xml and http://breedingsmybettas.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Read the post from any of your favourite readers :)

sample pic

some have been asking whether we can take some samples of what's still avail.

here they are. only 2 samples, sorry, just not having a "good" setup for taking any samples at all (notice how dirty they are, with all the gunks).





Here's avail stock list (each entry is 1 LOT):
* 10-15 long fin HM/SD, pastel mix red, black lace, green mask
* 10-15 short fin large giant cambo red HMPK
* couple of lots (20-25 each lot) of short fin HMPK cambo red, medium size
* 5 breeder quality females, short and long fin traits

If you are interested on any of the above, contact us on mybettas at gmail dot com.
each lot $100, shipping $25 (more or less, depending which shipping method chosen)


edit: strike-through lot is accounted for

the joy of courier

recently we've been having difficulties to acquire FW courier. Either the guy doesn't show up, or he refused to come due to urgent meetings etc. Maybe a simple complaint to FW is sufficient to get him sacked, but that wasn't nice at all.

Anyway, all in all we've dealt with very interesting set of couriers company. Some are more than happy to do business with individual like us, others are turning their cheeks away when they've heard it's "individual".

Most of these couriers have very simple rules, if they agree to deliver your goods, you better NOT let them know that you're shipping live fish. They get so edgy and would rather deny your business than risking compliances with "Aus shipping livestock law". But, if you assure them that the only requirements are to ensure your parcel delivered "on time" and treated as "fragile", most of them are more than happy to deliver them! Of course you lose the advantage of not being able to buy insurance etc, but then they won't be able to insure the kind of things that you're sending anyway ;)

So far, we've found that many local and interstate couriers can do the job for you. but sometimes the price difference is just way too much. FW requires you to buy labels, if you're small shipper, then buying bulk label will last you for years! A very unnecessary upfront investment. However, if you ship regularly, FW is in fact pretty reasonably cheap. Sure, half of the time they are unreliable. How many times the parcel went to another state? lost for a day or two? or you have to call them 10 times just to find out the fact the parcel never left your closest depot? Well, that's FW ! But when they do deliver, they're not so bad at all.... They charge per weight and different locations require different labels, try to keep track of that if you can ! Oh yes, they've got parcel tracking capability, but heck, no one knows how to use it, not even their own employees (try to call them up and ask where your parcel is, their answer will usually "on the way" or "with the driver"). They can't even monitor where their drivers are, so you're left waiting at home for no good reason.

Another alternative, if you're sending to big cities, AP isn't that bad. They've got network everywhere and you can just find nearest office to send your goods ;) They charge per weight and dimension, so you ended up paying different price for different size of order. The weakness is that some people has been reporting lost parcel. We never experienced this, but sure, it happens. You can't track where the parcel is, unless you're willing to pay heaps more. The bad thing for AP is that sometimes some remote locations will take a good 2 or 3 days to get there, whereas other couriers can make sure they arrive in 1 day.

Recently we've been sending some parcels with P&S. They're reliable. They take care of your parcel very nicely. But they charge per volume/dimension and suffice to say "very expensive"! Definitely can't use them on regular basis, though they have been trying to get eBayers' market. They're quite reasonable if you simply want to send your parcels without urgency. Most of our parcels need to get there in 1 day time, so they charge special prices for this urgency. Nevertheless, they're very reliable and ready to send anything you're throwing at them. So you can consider them as nice backup plans, particularly when none of the above options available to you and you need to send the parcel asap.

Other smaller (or bigger) courier companies work in very much same way. If you're lucky, you can even piggy-back your company's courier ;) This way, you can open account with any of the big courier companies and they'll deliver your goods pronto!! If you do have this option and willing to share it with us, do contact us asap. We're more than happy to pay for the shipping (reasonable cost of course) and while we're doing that, you can get some free fish yourselves! (on condition if we still have fish!)

local pickup or delivery beats all of the above. if we have time (which we never had), then we would be able to do it. Otherwise, some people had been very much accommodating us....they're willing to visit us on very awkward time!!

failed spawn, why?

there are a couple of reasons why some spawns failed. here are some reasons and story about them (we thought we better post this to answer some of most-common questions we've got!)

first of all, let's assume nothing wrong with the male nor female genetically. if you try to spawn a pure black melano female, then you're out of luck. you better spend your time and effort watching the grass grows, at least you'll see result that way :)

so let's start....failure could simply be because they are just not compatible. you've heard funny story as "they just be good friends there" when the male and female seemed to be quite happy together and not knowing that they are supposed to do something (or at least pretended to do something when a pair of human eyes keep watching them). this simply means the male and female are not ready. perhaps because they're too young, or they are just not attracted to one another. bettas are like human too you know....if the opponent is considered ugly, they're not doing it (but some bettas are more than willing to spawn with anything!). if you discovered that your betta is a let's-be-friend, then your best course of action is to call off the wedding, cause there won't be any! find another partner that is more suitable. how do you know if they're suitable? try to put the female in a tank with lots of males (caged), see which male that the female has "chosen". she'll flare her heart out to the most attractive male ;).... do the reverse to the male, if you'd like to choose bride for him

some have complained that their bettas are spawning, but none of the eggs hatched. sometimes the male even ended up eating all eggs, or he's just going to leave the eggs falling on the floor without bothering to pick them up anymore. sometimes you know the reason why the spawn failed - maybe they never wrapped after all, the female kept dropping her eggs. egg dropper is simpler to answer, it means either the male or the female has no experience in spawning. it could be that they are to be blamed, but most commonly it is YOU who needs to be blamed. they are inexperienced because they are too young....we have some buyers reporting this to us despite we've been telling them "big body doesn't mean they're ready to spawn". funny sometimes that people associate betta's size with their age. it maybe true for 'standard' bettas, but when they are dealing with giants, it's all different story!

anyway, what would you do with failed spawning due to egg dropping? you've got 2 choices: either you wait till they are mature enough and let them try it out again, or you find a much more experienced partner for them, so they can learn from the best ;).... unfortunately, sometimes fish can pick up "bad" habbit too...particularly the egg dropper female. she hasn't learned how to control her egg-release-valve (doh! what a term!) so that the next time she tries spawning, she may just conviniently drop eggs again. if you notice this, then you really have to get an expert male to teach her spawning lesson.

sometimes, the male and female are very much attracted to each other, but a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks passed and still nada....this could be, usually, because they are equivalent strength. the male needs to show to the female that he's the "boss", more macho, stronger, and more than capable to take care of her babies. a sissy male will not be respected by a strong female, hence no spawning. if you have a gentle female, then sissy male perhaps sufficient. but if you have strong female (and many giant females are super strong!!), then you need stronger male. that's why in most spawning you see female's fins got torn, not because they enjoy the nipping, it's because it is a ritual for them - to show that the male is capable. if you're of weak heart seeing how the male chased and torn female's fin, then hopefully knowing the above helps you in appreciating their ritual - otherwise you really shouldn't spawn bettas!

sometimes you notice that they won't spawn cause there is no bubblenest in the tank. if this is the case, then you haven't provided the best place for them to spawn! is your tank too humid? too windy? is the water temperature is too low or too high? make sure you've got a perfect tank before attempting spawning, otherwise you're wasting everyone's time (and the poor male could be trying to blow his mouth without any result!). if you ignore this condition, you will end up with male "giving up" and learn that there is no point to blow the bubble anymore. this could have very bad influence on him on future spawning.

another reason for fail spawn, though happens infrequently, is due to the bugger's age...your bettas maybe too old!! they may wrap, they may have eggs, but most eggs could go fungus fairly quick. unfortunately, nothing you could do about this. though, you can try to find another partner for them and keep trying, perhaps you get some success....

so, what do we think of the best age to spawn bettas? in our experience, the best age would be around 5 or 6 months old, upto about 8 months....young bettas, if they are very active, can be spawned as early as 2 to 2.5 months (we did this and others have also done this). oldest bettas that we've spawned were around 1 year 3 month to 1 year 4 months old. again, this heavily depend on the type of bettas you've got, their body and agressiveness, etc.

choosing good male and female is crucial on any spawning. the male has to be larger or more agressive than the female. we've spawned smaller male to female ratio successfully, so we know that can be done, but this is a tough job for the male, cause he has to know the good technique to properly wrapped the female - and most males sux on knowing this! hence, it is much easier to find a larger male to ensure you've got successful spawning ;)........

as for giant short fin, spawning can be totally different game. some fish will be smooth and you aint see any difference between them and your traditional short fin. but for most giant short fin, spawning is a difficult task (go and ask other experts, they'll tell you the same!). the reason is because their body size (or rather their thickness) makes them very difficult to be wrapped. Most giant males can't wrap big-momma female. that's why if you try to buy giants from overseas, they will send you a much smaller female (well, there are many reasons why they send you smaller female, and this is one of the reasons). smaller female ensures that your male can always wrap her!

hope this helps you address your fish spawning difficulties. if you have some other peculiar cases, let us know, happy to add more stories to this blog.

nice surprise: fry under the hood

one of the breeding pairs, soon going to J&BC, had some fry in the tank!!!

we didn't notice this cause we had the tank all closed and we were so busy these couple of weeks. another reason why we didn't notice it is because we always give enough live worms for all of our fish, particularly the invidual tank ones. so there are times that we don't have to check them out for couple of weeks and we know they're still ok there.

anyway, the fry seemed to be of large size already, perhaps about 2 weeks time (where did the time go !). what surprised us is that they survived that long, without us feeding them anything, not even bbs....ok, perhaps it's not really that surprising, but the tank is full of plants :) there are all sorts of small animals there, so perhaps the fry have them as meals.

we were trying to breed the parent but then decided to let them 'stay' there without much paying attention to them. this is their first spawn and they had been chasing back and forth for awhile last time we check. we didn't think they'd spawn, cause the female was very agressive too (or at least she managed to torn male's fin on first round). so somehow the male must have tamed her (without visible torn on the fin too!).

anywho, the parents will go to J&BC whereas the fry will go to CR. There are only about 20 or so that we counted there, but counting is difficult task cause the darkness of the tank and how the plants pretty much took over the whole area. Chances there would be a lot more there, but we shall see later.

what's coming and going

most of our fish went to nice homes, including more than half of our breeders. some will go very soon next week. too bad we didn't have much of the time to take any of their pictures though, cause otherwise it would be nice memory to remind us of them. perhaps we get to see them in a couple of months time.

just news from AK, his share of the small fry had grown to very nice size of nearly 2 cm. not bad for a month old fry. he kindly offered some of them back, which of course we have to reject - cause we don't have the time nor the place to grow them. well, perhaps in the future.

CR is getting new fish imported as well as some of our breeders. Thanks for the offer of giving us the chance to spawn them, CR, we definitely will consider them in couple of months time. just keep them alive long enough waiting for us...

Finally, quickly listing what stock that we still have on us.
Breeder's quality fish:

• 10 HM giant female assorted colour, 3-3.5 months old, 2.5 inches (?)
  
• 5 HMPK giant female red cambo, 2.3-2.5 inches
  
• 2 giant HMPK female intense yellow, 2.4 inches

Standard quality (age 3.5-4.5 months):

• 10 large HMPK males (2.5-2.8 inches), cambo red mix (plat red, red marble, etc)
  
• 10 medium HMPK males (2.3 inches), same colour above
• 15 large HMPK females (2.2-2.5 inches), same colour
  
• 10 medium HMPK females, same colour

Reject quality (age 2.5 months):

• 5 HM giant, damage fin, no genetic fault, flare and fight all the time despite being separated
• some loosely placed bettas

Contact us if you're interested in any of the above, offer reasonable price. Shipping strictly via fastway courier with heatpack, $25. Shipping can be done only on Monday - Wednesday. Pickup can be arranged though shipping is much more preferred.

DOA policy (just in case someone asks), we'll send you replacement or your money back.

fry transportation

we have been so flat out, we barely had time to reply to all your messages/emails. Our sincere apologies.

Anyway, getting to the news.....it has been proven very challenging to transport small (2 weeks old) fry. AM just told us that more than 1/3 of his portion of the fry died by the time he got home :( And he was just living 10 mins away driving! We gather it could have been the bumps along the way, cause these fry couldn't take such shaking. He and us did consider that perhaps walk "slowly" with the container (tank) would help the survival but slow walk would easily take a good half hour...anyway, at least there are a good number of them survived, so that's the good news.

Tomorrow DZ will come and pick the rest of the fry (we split the tank into 2 takers). So hopefully she'll take the challenge on walking slowly with the container :) Though she lives further than AM, so she may not want to do that....hmmmm maybe she just has to drive very slowly, weekend isn't so bad for driving slower :)

fish updates

Quick updates on things. We've been very busy these couple of days going back/forth to hospital (our dearest mom is hospitalized), so our apologies to any delays of getting back to some of you.

Anyway, 2 tanks of fry already had home since couple of days ago. Thanks to AK, JD, RM. They should be around good 300-400 of fry there, enjoy them guys....

1 tank left, about 150-200 fry, current interest came from DZ, AM, SG, EI, D?, and MT (sorry not replying to you guys yet on this). Unfortunately, about half of this fry went dead this morning. Council had turned off electricity for road work the day before for nearly half a day at night and we didn't realize this till we got back from hospital (been staying there for 2 days). The timing had never came so perfect.....when the temperature dropped closer to 5C at night! Anyway, we're checking them out now and will keep them temporarily at our place till Friday. Guys, chances we will be only able to contact you on the weekend for this (time permitting).

Another bad news, one of the shipments to LH went all dead cause of freezing temperature (and our mistake of not putting 2 or 3 heatpacks -- we were running out of them and forgot about it till last minute due to hectic before we rushed off mom). This shipment took 2 days (we think???) rather than 1 day that we expected....Lucky other shipments weren't affected.....

This won't happen again (not sure if LH was anywhere happy about this, but hopefully she can forgive us for giving her such bad experience). It never happened before, but things are doomed to happen at least once.

Timing has always prevented us to be able to ship fish through courier, particularly FW courier (plus they had been so irregular to get to us that there are times when we waited for 2 darn days to get the goods picked up, or how frequently the missed our shipments making a 1 day delivery becoming 2 or 3 days!). We found that it is alot simpler to send them through AP though it has been mentioned to us recently as "illegal" to send live fish with them (not quite sure about this, but we've been doing that couple of times and the guy at the counter was ok about it). Anyway, perhaps we need to be clear about this to you....if you help us buying our fish, then we find whatever ways to get our fish to you, which may involve getting them through AP or if you're lucky through FW (we never tried AAE but currently there wasn't much of the time available on our side to deal with this atm).

Anywya, we still have 2 large tanks of giant HMPK for those who are interested ($100 for lot of 20-25 fish). A couple smaller tanks here and there, not having time to clean them up yet, but they have some fish too.....We've got lots of heatpacks now (was wondering if we ever consume them all, but we'll deal with this later, same way we need to deal with left over FW coupons later)....This week will be very very busy for us, so we may not able to reply to you at all, but next week we should have a day or 2 available to send the fish.

Some people have been asking for pictures of the fish, again as we said, we can't really take pictures but we will try again to do that later on the weekend (time permitting!!!).

There are currently quite a number (20 pairs??) of very large HMPK that would be ashame to go to pet shop (hmmm....haven't contacted them, but they should be quite happy to get our fish.....). Anyway, they are about 2.5 inches (both males and females) for 3-4 months ones. The younger ones about 2-2.3 inches for 2.5-3 months.

Also, we just noticed that there are very nice long fin females, particularly yellow corn, platinum red, cambo red, and copper females. We didn't notice them before cause we thought they were one of the males (with shorter fins) and they're hiding on the last-row tanks (pretty dark tanks too). This was a surprised cause their size is quite large for 2 month old, so definitely ones of those breeder-quality ones. Oh well, they won't get used by us for a couple of months time, so for those of you out there who'd like to start breeding them, let us know and we'll send them as part of your purchase (but you may still have to grow them till they're 3 or 4 months old before breeding....remember, they are large in body but small mentally!)

Hope the above clear things for some of you who have contacted us (yes, we'll get through the emails soon...please be patience)

passing of a giant betta

Last night, one of our largest giants passed away. The large 3.2 inches HMPK female...our own bred...She was so beautiful.....8 rays splitting....platinum red BF....

We had been having trouble in spawning this female for a long time and recently we simply gave up. It's not because the female was not interested to any males that we gave her, she's more than interested. It's just that none of the males is capable to tame her. Along the way, she managed to kill two of the most gorgeous males too :)

She's very aggressive and large. We tried her with our largest male (imported), but this failed too. the male was 3.3 inches long, no way to compare the male to the female.

Too bad her gill was infected badly (maybe spread from previous imported male -- he was infected initially) and despite the meds given to her, she just didn't last as long as we wanted her to be....

She died at age of 8-9 months. Making her the largest (and fastest growing) female we have ever had. We certainly are gonna miss her.....

This is the problem with giants, particularly females. Once their size gets too big, there is no male that can spawn them. The only ones that can spawn them would be long fin males, preferably long fin giants! But it's very rare to acquire good long fin giants. The ones available are typically 3-3.5 inches long, which is not even sufficient length to wrap these females (provided they're not beaten to death by the female first).

Her passing makes the number of bettas that we kept reduced to only 40. This is considerably easier to manage at the moment cause we have so many to start with. We still have to transfer about 200 of their siblings (and don't forget 3 tanks for fry!!!) to people out there who'd like to get their hands on the fish.....So people, if you'd like to buy good giants, just give us an email asap (read our previous post on costs etc).

any takers for small bettas?

We have 3 tanks of small bettas, age about 1 week to 3 weeks (some of them have parents still "doing" the job). We barely can take care of them at the moment though they don't need much apart from regular bbs feedings. All of them from giants (2 short fin HMPK lines, 1 long fin HM line).

If you're in sydney and can spare hands to raise them, you can have some or whole tanks. We only ask a couple of pairs of the fry when they are adult. Not sure how we can transport them though, cause some of them are still very tiny...but transporting the larger ones would be straight forward (hopefully). Shipping is a no-no for these guys, they're just too small, don't think they will survive the travel....

Contact us direct if you're interested.

remaining giant bettas sales + bonus

There are still some giant bettas available, for those interested. Also we have some original imports and other breeder-quality bettas that we don't use any more, we'll give bonus when you buy 1 or 2 lots of bettas. first come first served basis, till stock last.

basically, for each lot sold, we'll include 1 (and only 1) fish of the bonus. We choose randomly which one to be sent to you . they have different colours and qualities.... all in all, we have about 20 or so of these breeder-quality fish....Of course we always give you more fish than what you've ordered, but the bonus specifically mentioned here are the breeder-quality ones.

some info about the bonus:

• import fish with size around 3 to 3.3 inches for male and 2.5 to 2.8 inches for female (all HMPK). age unknown.
• our local bred fish with size around 2.3 to 2.5 inches for HMPK or females and 3.5 to 4 inches for long fin HM. age 3 to 3.5 months
  

We also have very limited 8 rays HMPK males/females (usually HMPK but some are OHMPK) age 2 months old. These are also going to be given away as above.

The deal is:

• you purchase fish (20-25 fish in each lot) for $100 per lot. age ranges from 3 to 4 months old. colour: variety of reds, intense yellow, metallics (green, copper, etc). All randoms sent to you.
  
• we'll include 1 or 2 of the bonus for you
• shipping preferred at $25 (if this is too much for you, we'll give more fish to compensate!)
  

Also let us know if you'd like to receive the "rejects" fish for free. These rejects fish are very good fish genetically but have damage fins due to living in community tanks (they're fighters, so we can't complain too much, can we?). No sale is required if you're interested for the reject fish (but you still have to pay shipping)

Oh, in case you're interested on what they look like, some pictures at http://s201.photobucket.com/albums/aa201/breedingsmybettas/

In case we forgot to mention, they're all giants, so they're expected to grow much larger (with exception perhaps the import fish, cause they're full adults by now)

Contact us at mybettas@gmail.com (apology in advanced if we reply late, too much things going on at the moment).

branching in pectoral fin

been wanting to write this up, but kept forgetting about it...

anyway, having so many giants in our possession, we just realized that some giants are so huge that we can easily see the beauty of their pectoral fins. typically, pectoral fins are not clear whether they even have any branchings....well, now it's confirmed...they have branchings just as any other fins.

some of our large giants have clear branchings on their pectoral fins, we can even count the number of branchings....take a guess....some branches at 4 rays, 2 of our giants are branching at 8 rays and another one is branching at 16 rays.

it seems, pectoral fins branching follows caudal branchings. if you have 8 rays caudal, then chances you'll get 4 rays or 8 rays pectoral fins branching too. it's amazing to find this out, just to say how clearly visible they are, due to the sheer size of the giants

we wondered how many pectoral branching you can get on a 16 or 32 rays caudal branching? that would be interesting to find out...

stopping all breedings

Sadly that we have to stop all breedings/caring activities for all of our bettas. The time required to take care of them exceeds what we can offer them for the time being. We have a family member to take care of 24/7 due to health issue. Maybe we'll keep a few pairs for future breeding, but at this point in time, we have to let them go.

We have juveniles and soon-to-be adult bettas available. If you're interested to acquire them, by all means, please contact us direct.

There are quite a number of varieties available, but most of them carry giant genes (well, they all come from giant parents, about 3 inches long for HMPK and 4 inches for HM). For the sample pictures of what you're getting, check all of our previous posts (particularly in May). They're related to them one way or another...

You get about 20-25 mixed fish, male, female, HMPK, HM. Cost $100. That's about $4 per fish! Their sizes range from 2.5 cm to 5cm, some are larger. Age between 2 months to 3.5 months. Note that they have giant genes, so expect them to grow very nicely.

Sale period...all fish has to go out by end of June, otherwise some pet stores were quite happy to accept them (though hobbyists such as yourselves are preferred candidate for their homing).

Shipping $25 for any number of fish that you order. Shipping is preferred, though meeting for pick up can be arranged but given the timing, it would be very difficult but we can try (contact us on email). This sale is for AU only (sorry to RD and XN. perhaps next time...)

Bare with us if we reply to your emails late. We have been very busy lately.

We would be very appreciative if you update us on the development of these fish in the future. We definitely would like to get a couple of pairs (or any of their offspring) back if it is possible.

email mybettas at gmail.com if interested.

what gets us up and happy every day

funny how we were always looking forward to every feedings of the fish....it's not because there are lots of them, but rather because there are many unique ones. so cute and looking forward when they grow big.

this morning, we just separate 3 of our 5 weeks old bettas and were very excited to see how they flare and how big their sizes are.....many more will need to be separated, of course, but unfortunately many will just have to share the community tank (and got fin nip here and there) for now. These 3 are long finned giant line, nice size and the spread will make HM in a few days time... Their uncles are full HM giant at age 2 months, so they're not far off...

anyway, there are also some new pairs being separated as they're very AWESOME!! 2 months old, 8 rays branching, full giant size (size of adult HMPK at the moment). We just wonder whether they'll grow to the expected giant 3" size in a couple of months time, fingers crossed.

so, that's a very nice reward of feeding them :)

Breeders' help wanted!!!

We have reserved some pairs for breeding, however there are not sufficient spawning tanks for us to spawn them all. So, we are offering the pairs to you to spawn with the following conditions:

1. we provide 1 pair to you
2. you pay bond money to us for the pair
3. you spawn the pair
4. you get to keep the pair and its offspring
5. at all time, you feed the pair and its offspring sufficient (if not abundance) live food (e.g. live worms or equivalent live food for adults and any fry > 1.5 months)
6. we get the first choice of picking up to 5 pairs free-of-charge from its offsprings at age of 2-3 months old, at which time we will return your money
7. in the event of any fish died or prolonged unsuccessful spawning (e.g. more than 3 months), we keep the money
8. if you decided to cancel this contract then we keep the money but you're still obligated to give us chance to keep up to 5 pairs of its offspring if you were successful in spawning them.
9. you can only use any of the fish to pair it with other fish *after* you've successfully spawn the initial pair (otherwise this contract is considered "canceled" and we keep the bond).
   

The priority is to get the initial pair given to you to be spawned. Once they're successfully spawned, the original pair is yours to keep (feel free to out cross them to any other pairs you have). Please keep the fry from initial spawn separated and recorded such that at the age of 2-3
months we would be able to choose a couple of pairs from them for us to keep.

If you decide not to use the initial pair anymore (whether the spawning was successful or not), give us the first chance to decide whether we'd like to get the fish back without charge.

You may notice that we require you to feed the pairs live food. As much as we like to give you the freedom in keeping and spawning them, we'd like to ensure that the pair and its offspring to be in top condition at all times. If you cannot satisfy this requirement, sorry, you won't be able to participate on this effort.

Bond amount per pair:

• $20 per pair for experienced breeder
• $40 per pair for inexperienced breeder
  

Experience breeder = if you have successfully spawn at least once with 50+ offspring raised to the age of 3 months old on one single spawn.

Inexperience breeder = if you have successfully spawn at least once with 25-50 offspring survived to the age of 3 months on one single spawn.

There are a number of pairs available, we decide the pairing. Contact us if you're interested and we can let you know some combinations of pairings that may interest you and us. If you can help us out in spawning more pairs, then we're more than happy to supply the fish. Let us know your background in breeding to aid in our decision.

Some info about the fish:

• mainly coming from cross of giants
• either HM, HMPK, or the mixture of both (no PK)
• age of 2-3 months now
• may have nip/torn on fins
• colours combination of cambodian red, copper gold, gold, green, intense yellow, and any of their combination/mix
  

As the fish involved at the moment is very young (2-3 months old), you may need to keep them for another 1 or 2 months before you spawn them. We can't keep them in our tanks simply because we don't have enough tanks to keep them all.

There are a number of goals of spawning these pairs including but not limited to:

• large size giant (HM and HMPK lines)
• new/different colour
• heavy branching giant
  

Note that the fish involved here are all breeder-quality fish, therefore only consider this opportunity if you are serious in breeding. If you "just want to start on breeding" or experimenting or could not satisfy the definition of "in/experienced breeder" above, then we suggest you to simply buy the pair. They are available for special price of $60 per pair.

This whole description here is the "contract", if you choose to participate.We're not lawyer, so don't bother to argue on interpretations of the description here, our interpretation is the correct one. Please contact us direct on mybettas at gmail dot com, if any of the description here is unclear to you.

Fish handover for Sydney people can be arranged at very limited locations, otherwise we recommend shipping at cost $20.

complicated importation dealings

Funny how we always think that business dealings, such as buying bettas, would be pretty much straightforward. Well, it's not. The difficulties seem to lie in the fact that there are 3 or more parties involved.

At the very least, there will be seller, buyer, and dont forget transhipper. Then there would also be shippers along the way. For instance, there typically a shipper on the source export country (such as thailand), an intermediate shipper in other countries such as malaysia or singapore, etc. Most of these shippers are working behind scenes without buyer knowing their existence. But there would be times when you aint getting your fish and when you carefully track it down, then all of a sudden they matters.

For example, when the shippers are misinformed, there would be big chances your fish will be stranded on the airport somewhere ;) Or, when your transhipper who kindly manages the wellbeing of your fish during the transit forgets to notify one of the shippers about date changes, whoala, a bunch of your fish will be staying put and you may say hi to them in due course (typically waiting till next shipment).

The dynamicity and complexity of export import relies on a very simple premise. If everyone is well informed ahead of time, then they can prepare to the best of their knowledge, otherwise "accidents" bound to happen. The very unfortunate facts about import export, particularly of live fish, are the uncertainty of the process becomes critical importance since those live fish can't wait around too much. Once they're delayed for 1 day for instance, then chances you'll see half of your shipment drop dead in their nice little plastic wrappers.

However, this doesn't mean that live fish is very difficult to be shipped. No, on the contrary, there are many companies managed to master the skill of export import. These companies do things "in the large", they usually don't deal with you (for shipping 1-10 bettas) :D. Suffice to say that they're very professional. OK, your fish is small potatoes for them, hence you still have to pest them to "can i see it when you get your import in?", but their dealings with you are very simple too. They import your fish, you tell them "oh, by the way, they are bettas, so you can just put them in small container", which then they would easily do, they take care of all paperworks amongst all the big fish they've imported, you'll ask them when you can get your bettas after quarantine, then presto, you've got your bettas. How much they charged? Very miniscule fee, cause bettas are very much small potatoes for them. Most of the time if you know those companies well, they would do the importation for you for free (dude, it's not like they'll charge you per fish, they have 1000s of fish per import!!). So, the less you pest them, the better.

Anyway, that's provided if you're lucky enough to find these importers. Remember, they dont want to deal with you cause you're small potatoes. But many "big" aquarium have licenses to import fish, so it's the matter of your skills to know them and "tag along" their imports. If you're not lucky enough, then there are other kind souls out there that would help you import the fish for you, for a fee of course. Now, this may not sound promising if you import regularly, but that's the service and you're more than welcome to use it !

The very unfortunate fact on dealing with bettas is the price that you scoop for the fish and the price that you pay in total. This reminds you of something isn't it? Yes, the petrol price! Though bettas is even crazier than petrol.

Let's analyze the situation....Cost of a betta is about a few dollars (give or take). This is the "clean price". Some "designer" bettas costs up to 100 times more than that. We'll discuss "designer" very shortly. Anyway, that's just the cost of the fish. Next you need to add the cost of the importation and shipping. In terms of bettas, this usually is even more expensive than your fish!! So, how crazy is that? Let's say you buy $2 Crowntail, add it up with shipping/import fees, you may ended up paying upto $50 in total. While you can combine shipping cost with other folks, importation fee is where you're stuck. If you're lucky to find nice fella doing the importation, then your overall cost isn't a big deal. Otherwise, you may just as well kiss your hobby goodbye, cause it's just too darn expensive to keep it.

Now, this discussion is not against any transhippers/importers! They justify their cost accordingly. Hey, it's predatorial world that we live in ;) Someone has to feed somebody else's tummy, otherwise nothing will get done. There may be people who attached themselves to the goodness of others, but that's very rare. Does this remind you of something? I bet so, remember how the big supermarket giants such as Coles and Woollies charge exorbitant prices for their "fresh foods" when you know the farmers aint getting anything much for it? Well, giant supermarket always say that they only take very small profit from it. Do you ever believe them? So, whenever you heard "advancing Australia bettas' quality" coming out of someone's mouth, you ought to question if that's just bull of crap or coming from their hearts.

I think everyone pretty much understands the dynamic of this delicate relationship between buyer, seller, shippers, and transhippers. Buyer is afraid to insult transhipper, seller is afraid to insult both buyer and transhipper, and transhipper only afraid when there are too much competition around, otherwise they're pretty much the boss around the house. Also, most buyers are typically happy for transhippers to charge them for their service, provided the charges are reasonable. But once the balance of fees getting to the point where one side looses his standing, then you'll see the dying of bettas as a hobby. In fact, bettas never did took off in Australia. It was initiated a number of times, many hobbists start the process, but then it just die off. Why you must ask? Well, one of the factors is cost. The other is remoteness of our location from each other. But we believe, cost is the main driving force. If we ever want to make bettas as an ever-growing hobby, we need to start with all the support infrastructure. This includes:

• forums (plenty of this)
• transhippers (if they charge reasonably)
• reasonable costs of bettas (which relies on transhippers above for imported bettas)
• sharing ideas/skills (plenty of hobbyists to do this)
• place to show off what you've got (and sell them to other hobbyists)
  

Anyway, let's discuss what designer fish really refer to here. There are 2 types of "designer" bettas: one that is sold by eccentric guy, hence you thought he was very much a "designer", and second one is the fish itself has gone through lengthy processes (god knows what) such that it can be labelled as "designer" fish.

The first category is similar to buying branded goods (Dior, Armani, etc). Yes, the quality is reflected on the price you pay for it. But have you bought "cheap-quality-but-expensive-price" clothes such as Guess or any other labelled goods? You are not buying the goods (cause it really is crappy quality) but you buy the "brand" !! So, with bettas you really have to be careful to identify whether you're buying the brand or you're getting the goods (and the brand) that you so rightly deserved that come with the price tag.

The second category is similar to finding treasure in the supermarket. In the supermarket, everyone is pretty much selling "the same quality" stuff, but from time to time, you see the good quality ones that catch your eye. These "better" quality fish typically offerred for higher prices compared to other lower quality ones, and may escalate their status as "designer" fish.

Of course there is a third category that we have not discussed much yet. That is when everyone is selling crappy fish as "designer" fish. This is very much reflected in the market too. Have you ever wonder how on earth a crappy T-Shirt costs $12 at Paddy's when you know that they cost only a tenth of that in their originating country? OK, you may try to fool yourself by saying "there are importation costs etc involve", well, let me tell you, that's just another bull of crap. Put it very simple, importers make tons of money, otherwise they won't be in the business. It boils down to how much demand out there for their goods. Back in the old days when there are not that many importers around, then you see the $10 T-Shirt as high demand (they are the cheapest with "reasonable quality" compared to your usual $20 T-Shirt). Now that there are many importers importing the T-Shirt, the law of demand/supply should dictate that the price is lower. Well, that's where you're wrong again. The importers or the sellers get their act together such that they FIX the price!

Well, you may then ask, how is this applied to bettas? Pretty much the same way....The more demands on the market, the more people import fish, the cheaper it should be for the price of importation -- provided there are heaps of competition, otherwise you see the price not changing much or even rising. We are starting to see the price of bettas going down recently on bidding places. This is when the demands slow down. But unfortunately it rises soon after that, cause when there are demands, there are also more supply, and it's dead easy for anyone to jack up the price. Then you see how everyone selling standard quality for the price that designer fish being charged. Now, of course you can always defend big supermarket giants by saying "well, you need to know what you buy and your limit in buying", but that's just crap. If anyone has decency to other hobbyists, then they ought to consider their pricing very carefully.

For instance, there are a number of very decent sellers who are more than happy to offer you very reasonable prices for their fish. Not because they can't jack you up with higher prices, but because they understand the hobby and try to support it. They understand how much that you as a buyer have been ripped off by the "system", hence they try to supply with very reasonable prices, in the hope that you will come back to them and buy more. These kind of sellers are more than recommended cause they're not in the business of ripping you off. They've been in the business for a number of years and understand the fluid of bettas hobby....

Anyway, this post is getting way too long. Hopefully it's a good food for thought for other hobbyists out there. As usual, feel free to contact us for comment (if you prefer not to comment on the blog itself).

rainbow sale

There are a bunch of fish for bulk sale. Their age from 2-3 months old. all from giant lines of HMPK and HM.

this sale is called rainbow sale cause you get mixed of colours on a sale, mix of everything that we have. all fish properly labelled. if you're interested to know the history of your fish, let us know on the order.

condition of sale still the same as our charity ones: you either donate the money to charity and send us shipping cost, or you pay us up for the fish cost + shipping cost.

Lots available:

• Lot 1 -- 10 fish (5 pairs) for $150
  
• Lot 2 -- 10 fish (5 pairs) for $100
• Lot 3 -- 10 fish (5 pairs) for $75

Detail for each option:
Lot 1: top quality (best of the lines), very little to no torn on tail
Lot 2: medium quality, some torn on tail (usually just one torn on anal fin; without the torn, they would make one of the best ones).
Lot 3: medium quality, some torn

None of the fish has any genetic problems. All damages on tail (torn) are recoverable very fast and easily, however they're very difficult to be recovered on our tanks cause they bound to "fight" with other fish on our grow up tanks.

If you're interested to get the complete colours of all lines, we recommend for you to get 2 lots.
We will give a surprise gift with each purchase.

Shipment $20, pick up can be arranged though shipping is the recommended way. Contact us on mybettas at gmail dot com.

Thanks.