Dwarf bettas experiment

Early experimentation to produce dwarf bettas, or rather the mini bettas, has shown that this can easily be done by the following technique:

• very irregular feeding, sometimes feeding only once or twice a week
• start irregular feeding early in the life of the betta, they'll go skinny (but seems healthy)
• once they reach 3 or 4 months old, you can feed as much as you'd like, their size won't grow bigger
• overcrowded tank helps, though not necessarily required
• lower temperature, turning the heater on timer for every 3 or 4 hours at night seems to consistently produce dwarf ones

We don't want to advocate dwarf bettas, but if you're into it, hope the above can help you produce nice ones. Of course, since the above is heavily environment-controlled traits, the offspring will not be dwarf. Until someone can confirm that there is such thing as dwarf betta genetic (just like there is giant-gene), then the above is the closest you can get.

The finnage doesn't seem to be affected, it'll be proportional of the betta size. If you've got HM line, then the outcome will still be HM ;)

Males are easier to get into dwarfness, than females. This is because the females are usually easier-going, they'll eat anything thrown at them.

Watchout for malnutrient though, you don't want your bettas to either get sick or unhealthy. Also, make sure your females are still having sufficient egg deposit. Starvation, in any rate, will reduce the amount of fat and eggs stored, you don't want that ! ;)

We'll take some pictures later for samples.

>>> Update 5 April
Here is a short of standard green MG (for those interested, he's avail with female for $25 !).


Here's a "dwarf" HMPK boy, marble, 4 or 8 rays splitting, slightly OHMPK.


Now here's the comparison of the two. On the comparison, the "standard" MG boy is on the other side, side by side comparison would show that the "dwarf" is about half or slightly bigger of the size of standard boy.


Again, slightly blurry.

Bettas terminology

If you're still confused with a bunch of bettas terminology, and searching the net doesn't really help you, here are some of them. The definition and meaning of these terms are not precise. These abbreviation, either invented, or stand for something that may have been used initially for different purposes, either way, they're commonly found in discussions about bettas.

HM = Halfmoon, D-shape tail long tail, 180 degree spread on caudal of your betta

VT = Veiltail, V-shape tail long tail, rounded with end of tail dropping down

CT = Crowntail, crown-like tail medium tail, with lots of spike and very uniform, all fins are spikey

HMCT = CT that has 180 degree spread

PK = Plakad, short-tail, rounded or spade-like shape sometimes

HMPK = Plakad with 180 degree spread

CTPK = mixed of PK and CT, spikes show up but usually not uniform on fins

SD = super delta, about 160 degree tail spread

D = delta, less than super delta spread

HMx = HM-geno, genotype from HM, but most will show up as SD or D, parentage has HM gene

HMF = female of HM, usually doesn't spread till 180 degree caudal, but this is considered acceptable for females

HMM = male of HM, has to spread to 180 degree minimum

BF = butterfly, edges part of the tail are transparant or have different colouration, usually uniformly white, transparant, or black.

reverse-BF = transparancy happens on the inner-part of the tail, the edges have standard colour
triband = multi-coloured betta, involving at least 3-bands of colours. the 3 colours form layers similar to rainbow.

bi-colour = betta with 2 colours where both colours share the majority, sometimes the colour mixed on the body too

multi = simply multiple colours in the fish, randomized. if there are only 2 colours, the fish can be called bi-colour

Some combinations of the above are very commonly found, for instance, you see people discussing CTF, female of CT. Other terms are more like "fancy" terms, invented from the twisted minds of some hobbyists, in association with anything they can imagine :) For instance, "apache", "thai flag", "skyhawk", "tiger". They are not official terms, nor they are agreed by other hobbyists, hence you'll notice these terms disappear as soon as they were introduced. Different combinations of colours can produce lots of terms, again these terms are not official nor easily remembered.

If you have more questions, shoot us email and we'll add to the above definitions. If you've got pictures, that would be better, nothing clearer than a picture !

Tips for new breeders

Lots of people have been asking, what tips can you give for breeding bettas. Though we don't want to say that we're expert, there are things that we learn that may help you a bit, so here they are, in no particular order...

1. Always have more than 1 male and 1 female in your stock. You will need the "spare" ones in rainy days! Either as speed dating replacement, replacement for sickness, moodiness, etc, you're going to need it ! We always keep at least 3 pairs for ourselves, no matter what. Spawning itself is very difficult to be successful, sometimes you're lucky with your chosen pair, but many have just failed. Without spare ones, you'll just grew distress. This makes the hobby very frustruating journey for some, so, by all means, get your backups! Back in the old days, we always had backups for our fish. They were (and still are) very expensive when each pair would either need to be imported or bought from the very few individuals. It could cost from $20 to $150 per fish, many of which won't even had pictures or arrived in state that you can't differentiate from VT of your local petstore :) Some aquariums or your transhippers would help you import for around $25-$50 per fish, that's becoming the norm these days, but at least you have a "choice". This is also the main reason why we always sell you bulk, cause we wanted it so much in the old days and no one was offering it (not the one that cost you an arm and a leg at least!). With bulk buying, you need not to worry anymore about the pairings, or backup pairs etc.
   
2. Do not rush into it. Don't rush the spawning. Prepare them properly, feed them well, make them comfy (read our spawning 101 or this breeding technique if you're a newbie). Lots of bad decisions came from rushing things. Have you prepared the fry needs? Have you got their foods? How are you going to grow them later? Do you have containers/tanks/barrack? Once you've got that sorted, then you can enjoy the spawning. Don't try to spawn fish that are too young, too old, or simply too large. They need more experienced breeders rather than newbie. Sure you may get lucky once or twice but most probably you'll just fail.
   
3. Can you afford the cost, the time, and the efforts? Spawning is like raising a new family, you need to be able to put lots of efforts to it. We spent a good 2 hours every day for the fish, sure sometimes you can cut off the time by being slack on feeding or not paying much attention to them. Of course the time spent depends on how large your fish collection, but you still need to spend sometime, so put that into your consideration. Feeding, changing water, cardings, they all take time and patience. How about fitting that into your holiday plan? Who's feeding the fish? Can you use automatic feeder (which we find not suitable for bettas unless you conditioned your fish eating pellets).
   
4. Do not become "over protective parents"! Lots of people are so nervous or over-protective that they "crash the party". Fish, provided they are well taken care of, in terms of foods and environment, should be a lot of fun for most people. You can skip water changing once in awhile, they won't die. Sometimes you've got sick fish, so what, just separate and treat him. No need too stressed out about it...You didn't feed your fish this morning, don't worry, they won't die either. You can be forgetful from time to time, nothing to worry about. Should I turn on the lights? Go with your guts, if you think it's good for them, why not...if you worried about electricity, turn it off or put a smaller-watt lights. Stop buying those medicines, you won't need it if you take good care of your fish. The only meds in our place is a water conditioner and tripple sulfa (antibiotics). The latter is hardly used and had expired a couple of years ago...

Hope the above helps you. We'll add more when we remember other tips, otherwise just keep reading our blogs, sure you'll find lots of good lessons in them.

Speed dating approach to spawning

Last night, the spawning didn't happen as expected. It is clear that the male is way too inexperience (despite his large size!) on courting the girl. Perhaps it's also contributed by the sheer size of the female, making him very difficult to wrap her.

No eggs had been falling for hours. We just grew tired of them and separate them. We ran another experiment here, what happened if we swap partner during spawning, will the new male pick where the other left off?

As expected, the old male was way confused, he wondered around his new tank helplessly looking for his nest. The female was on the same state, wondering where on earth the gorgeous male went to. Hiding? That's not very nice of him when they were trying hard to wraps!!

Anywho, the new male introduced to the tank, started to flare to the confused female. The female grew anger towards the new male, trying to send him away from the nest. So maybe there is something in the nest after all...Anyhow, the new male has been dancing with her and she's responding by flaring angrily towards him. And that's when the magic comes, in less than 5 minutes, they are wrapping and tons of eggs falling!

It is clear that when the female is about to burst with eggs and the prettiest male is 'useless', you can indeed change partner quickly to get the spawning happening. There is no need to watch the female miserable and dropping her eggs, that would be a waste to her eggs, her spawning experience (she learns from bad lesson and will drop eggs in the future), etc.

Nice after all that we're looking forward for another nice lot coming in couple of months time :)

What's cooking?

Currently there are 2 pairs waiting their turn on spawning, perhaps we will get an action sometime tonight on one of the pair.

The first pair. Male is our own boy, giant 6-7 months (if not more??? don't keep the track of his age now), size about 4 inches, he used to be nice HM till he got into fighting and started to get collapsed tail. Just an SD now. Nice thick rays and body length. Female is our own as well, one of the breeder-quality female, 8 rays, nice long fin (if only she can grow longer, that would be good), 3.5 months old. Both are first timers, so would expect fast spawning. Male is way too aggressive though, so it is expected that the female will be 'damaged'. She's also very eager and attempts to challenge the male, very nice dancing around the tank is observed this morning.

The pair, too obstructed view, but give the size differences. Male is nearly 2x the size of female if not more.


The female.


Zooming in her tail, just for fun. Not spreading large as yet, but nice long anal.


The second pair. Male is half-giant green from D&S. Female is our own from our copper gold. This may not work out. The female is too large for the male and the male sense there is impossibility of wrapping her, so, it wasn't much action happening as yet. but we could be surprised when we get home later ;) ;)

Shipping to AU only

We've got a number of enquiries about shipping our fish internationally. Lots of US and European acquaintances thought that "east coast" refer to their east coasts, no, it's Australian east coasts :)

Unfortunately, shipping international is not possible, not now, not in the future. Please correct us if we're wrong, but as far as we know, Australian Quarantine requires proper paperwork in order for such shipment to happen, hence only registered exporters can do this "officially". True, there are many opportunists who would just send the fish through EMS, but this is considered illegal. If the destination country does not do checking on such parcels, then it could be okay. Some countries do strict checking, the fish will end up confiscated (provided they arrived there on-time, some EMS could take days and some countries are having opposite weather than ours).

Anywho, unless we've got the above incorrect, shipping bettas overseas is not considered a viable option for the time being. You better stick with your importers or transhippers, they usually get your fish through proper channel with less risks involved.

Sample females HM giant-geno

Samples of the breeder-quality females. Both of these are long fin HM of 8 rays. They moved too much, hence difficult to take pictures. We'll try again when we have time. Both of them spread close to full 180 degree, we suspect they'll grow longer fins. Hopefully can get similar length as their mum in about 1 month time

This female is the one and only of the whole spawn of about 400 :) She has that fan-like pectoral fins, very pretty when viewed from sides and above (difficult to be shown in the picture). We'll try to spawn with her sibling brother later.


There are 2 of similar females to this one. Similar to her mum.


>> Added 11/03/09, 2 more pics of her, not flaring as yet, don't want to excite her too much, otherwise she'll be preparing that tummy with eggs :)




Don't have much time to take pics of other females, but some of them are very nice MG, pineapple, oh, did we mention very nice reds? Perfect for the red boy posted previously. (tempted to see if crossing 2 reds will get one of those extended red; their red colouration is just awesome; body has no indication of cambodian at all)

There are about 6 or 7 females kept on this spawn. We'll just keep 1 or 2, the rest avail for sale with their matching males, $100 per pair, for those interested, while stock lasts.

Update movies of blue and red HMs

Quick update on the blue/green boy and the red boy, HM, giant-geno, about 3 months. For those interested, they are still available for $100 per pair with sibling breeder-quality females. Otherwise they'll be staying around for another 2 or so months before we have the time to spawn them :)

Either way, looking forward to their growth and size.

Apologies on the movies where the cord is hindering the view, the cord is from XL as a gift, pretty handy to keep 2 tanks warm enough :)

blue/green boy, fairly dark but can't be helped, the lighting isn't much of a help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMgp9dWEhQ

red boy, better lighting and nicely shown, still love to move about too much
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C0wSQyNrf4

blue vs red, flare boys, flare! Movie taken from side ways, showing both of them, flaring beautifully :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdOxCPFO-MU

So much enjoyment to see them flare....

BTW, these movies also available on the right-hand YouTube panel of this blog. Their sizes are about 2MB each. If you're interested on the uncompressed version of 20+MB, just give us a yell.

Blue Marble Boy

Just thought to post this, not the best picture of him but we're too busy and running out of time to do proper shooting, so here he is. Good relaxing time to see him flare :) He's avail with spawn sister for $75, for those interested.

Picture, from side way.


Movie, short and blurry but will do, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfeuyrgHIgg

Huge warning!

These couple of months have been very stressful days. Natural disasters aside, we were trying to buy some fish 2 months ago -- yeah, that was a long time ago. Apart being cheated, gave them all the benefit of the doubts, but only finding out that he was cheating us after all, and trying to recoup all of our loses via PP claim system, we are also bombarded with all kinds of nasty words.

Funny how people could turn ugly when they were actually the ones should be blamed for. We paid for the fish, very large sum of money involved, waited promises after promises, requested kindly for refund repeated times, got ignored, yet another promises, no indication of the fish nor the money, and finally the bills arrived. VZ was screaming so loud, the neighbours would have heard it. So, asked them again for refund, a week pass, two weeks passed, request again, and finally said enough is enough. if refund aint coming, then see if PP or CC can do better job for us.

What do u know, once PP is involved, so far 3 accounts got locked out, all people involved scream at us asking to close the claims. Hey, we repeatedly say to them, claim can only be closed when we got our money back. we sent to their PP, so we let PP takes the money back for us. After all, the bastard isn't willing to refund us back, nor send our fish.

Let this be a huge warning to everyone. We know JLM had informed others of this, but she had been kind and discreet about it. Well, we aint care. Cheaters are cheaters, everyone ought to know about it and avoid them at all costs. These names/emails have been used in auction sites. They refer to either the same person (with multiple accounts), or same group of people who help each other and involved in the con.

List of emails/names you need to avoid (not in any particular order):

• doctor aquatic (dr. lek or dr. that)
• sawaddee aquatic (apinan sangmarn)
• patthasith
• fahad sangmarn
• the_fisheries (in the group but hadn't had opportunity to clash as yet -- luckily didn't send PP payment)
  
• watt (don't know who this is, but kept being mentioned)
• dern (same, but being mentioned)
• added, another paypal heaven: anusorn (anusorn54@windowslive.com)
• they morphed as a new name sompoch (sompoch2009@windowslive.com)
• added, ocean_aquatic (ocean_aquatic@hotmail.com; these guys really like morphing from one to another!)
• new morphing, Lucky_farm (luck_9999@hotmail.com), beware
• more morphing: diamondcrown_farm

These people are the ones behind some of the banned auction site names such as the_sea99, etc. Would have thought that the auction sites can be made safer from these guys, but then it is probably too hard to detect anyway.

We're sure the list will grow pretty soon as the drama evolves. Oh, don't you ever piss these people, you haven't heard the worst swear words ever yet. there it goes all imaginations of how gentle and kind thai people are -- may not be applicable to general population, but majority of the above is trully scary.

Lessons learnt?

• don't believe in any sweet talk -- boy, aren't they best at doing this?
• don't send your money to different paypal names -- wonder who gave the initial warning for this? wish we had listened
• when something smells fishy, trust your nose
• when they keep pressuring you on purchasing that darn awesome fish for "special" price, you know you're going to be in deep sh*t later
• don't ever ever send your money via western union or moneygram (when you've got problems, that money is down the toilet)
• do NOT try to upgrade your current transactions by buying more, make sure you've got your current batch shipped -- before you realize it, you'll be spending hundreds and into the thousands.
• don't try to be friend with them, when money is involved, things usually get very dirty quickly
• keep record of your conversations, you gonna need it in rainy days

While we have slim chance of getting "friends" with these guys, not that we wanted anymore, scare the sh*t out of us, and no possibility of recouping our money nicely -- not to mention more than half can't be recouped -- we hope we cause enough nightmare on their ends too. Serves them right for cheating. It seems, from the conversation, it is clear that they've cheated others before too. Maybe no one dares to speak out, they get away with it, and see another light to try it out again....

Looking back at this, wished we've spent that money on something else, perhaps to the bushfire victims. *Sigh*, what a miracle a sweet talk can do....

So, before you realize it, hopefully you are not the next target. Be warned. For those already in their trap or similar situation, let's share it, either to help each other or to warn others.

If you are concerned, do contact us. Happy to share some of the story/proof -- will only share to those getting trap or similar situation, not to those "curious". Our suggestion is, if you can, stay away from them unless the transactions involved are small.

"Why would the chicken cross the road? There is food on the other side". Just be very careful on your dealings with sellers, while most are decent people, some are not. Identifying one from the other, unfortunately, requires a little bit of skill.

Update pineapple boy pics

Just thought to update pineapple boy pics. They were taken couple of days ago. His movie also avail on right panel, for those interested.

This pic is not so good on lighting (flashed), but shows better spread of the boy :)


A fairly cramped picture below.


As mentioned, he's avail as part of the breeder-quality on sale. When we have time, we'll take pic of the female, very nice one ;)

Breeding technique

A number of enquiry came about breeding techniques. You may want to read our spawning 101, that should get you started. The problem with us at the moment is that we've spawn successfully so many times that we forgot how to make failed spawning, so bare with us when we retrace our steps.

For start, conditioning. Nothing really special that need to be done. if you feed your fish with frozen, flake, or live foods, then keep it up. We usually prefer live food, a lot easier to handle and less cleaning. Make sure the male doesn't see any females for couple of days or weeks prior the spawning. Do the same to the female, don't allow her to see any males (she can live in community tank, no biggy)

Tank size, between 5x to 10x the length of your fish, with width about 3x to 5x. Usually we do spawning in 16" tank, but 12" is ok too, so long your fish comfy.

Many people made mistake of spawning their fish in established tank. While this is sometimes ok, we usually spawn our fish in a brand new established tank. The water has to be aged (or dechlorinated) but typically the tank is newly established. Remember that we don't use gravel, plants, etc, hence this kind of setup is fairly easy to do.

Selection of males and females. Of course you need to get 2 healthy ones. Males need to be able to make bubblenest, and very active. If he's not active, you need to find ways to make him active. If your tank is too cold, or too hot, males won't be happy there. So, a nice 25-27C temperature is good. Nothing more important than getting your male comfy. If he's eager, you are half-way through already. Next get eager female too. Female size should be wrappable by the male. Too larger female is no good. Too young bettas also not good, they lack the readiness or experience. Usually a 4 or 5 months bettas would be best, they're more than ready.

Introduce and cage the female. You need to pay attention to see whether the male and female are interested on each other. Male should be making nice bubblenest in 1 or 2 days time, if he's not, then you know he's not ready yet. Female needs to be flaring back to the male, that means she's interested. If she's not, you are not going to get successful spawning unless the male extra super agressive.

Some females will jump up and down the tank when chased. That's normal. Make sure you *don't* have anything for her to anchor into. For instance, if she's scared of the male, she will have tendency to jump over a leaf, or anything above water. If she gets to this mode already, and you do not stop her (by removing those objects that she can anchor to), then you will *not* get successful spawn. Why is that? Well, because the female is too young ! She's still immature and scare of the males. She doesn't know what to do but running away.

If you follow the above technique, hopefully you get good successful spawn. If you want big large spawn, then feed them a lot, extend the introduction period. If you want "manageable" spawn, then you can simply introduce the female right away, knowing she has sufficient eggs there and she's healthy.

In most cases, the female will be torn to pieces, unless you've got very gentle male.

Good luck in your breeding :)

Observations on the HM giant-geno line

Perhaps the most joyful experience so far on doing bettas is in getting the outcome from current spawn, there are just so many wonderful colour turns out in the spawn, all of them active with nice spread. True that some of the offspring have thin finnage, but majority is very nice and thick.

While crossing multi pair won't get you solid coloured bettas, you get some very unexpected colouration thrown at you. Not knowing the outcome perhaps is the best medicine, particularly for those who do not expect much from the colour department. Check out our previous posts to see some of their beautiful pictures.

It's also interesting to find out how some of them turn out to be HMPK when majority is very much long fin. In fact, they are so long, the fin can be considered excessive length. The plus side is that the fin is not even feather tail nor rosetail !

Some of the breeder males are just awesome, show quality (wondered whether we have show happening around -- have heard about QLD show, that's still on?). Would be nice to send them off for a show to compete. They'll lose on colour, but the form is great :) Too bad they're still young though, could easily be beaten by those older fish, but hey, fun is fun.

While many of our previous spawn have decent pectoral fin, width is reasonable, length is slightly shorter than anal, many of the current breeder-quality males actually have very long pectoral fins, not to mention long anal fin to match it (and of course caudal also long). It does seem that they've got tendency of very long fin, hence our confusion when we find some HMPK being thrown in the spawn. About 10 of the breeder-quality females are 8 rays (if not 16, just can't count them as there are too many splits). But that's not only it, the fins are also excessively long, at least for their age and body. So we're kinda waiting to see what they'll turn out in a month time. Currently the 10 females occupy the full tank on their own, large 3" tank. They flare to each other but in a kind way. Big bouncy tummy, so fingers crossed we'd choose 1 to be crossed with D&S half-giant (still sometime to get them ready for F2, they still need proper growth).

Perhaps one that we're still complaining about is the tendency of their finnage to be "too long". This has detrimental effect when environment isn't as clean and water changes not happening too frequently. When environment is not supportive, their top-cornered fins can become bending (either top dorsal, or top caudal). This is particularly noticed when we have some of them being placed in small tanks, the bending happened whenever they go to the water surface where dorsal fin would be folded. Is this genetic? not so sure either. We experimented a bit and noticed that the smaller tank males do have this tendency, while the bigger tank ones are quite free of the problem. Interestingly, some females have shown this as well, initially we thought "oh, crap, it's genetic", but then upon closer inspection, it wasn't actually bending. The females that show this "bending" are in fact have heavy branchings such that the most outer caudal rays are being "pushed" aside, hence it looks like as if they were bending. The females would swim naturally, and when they flare, you'd notice that "bending" went away.

The $64,000 question is then whether they will turn out to be giants after all. While some will not be giants (most giant spawns will yield certain percentage of "regular sized" bettas that carry giant gene), some half of them do seem to be giants or at least carry it. It's not as thick finnage as you'd want a giant to be, but that could very well be because of the "line". The size and growth, however, are impressive. A set of breeder-quality males, for instance, are the size of a standard full-grown HM now, and they are only about 3 months old. Their size beat easily some adult HM males, but funnily you can really see that they're just "boys". They've got the young smaller face, that innocent face.

Health of the spawn has been great. None of the fish sick with anything whatsoever. They don't have those typical problems with HM, such as collapse fins, fin rot, etc. All in all, there had been no issue at all with these guys. This is considered special, since in their early days we had quite frequent interruptions to our electricity, hence nights could be pretty cold at times and yet they were not affected. Other lines, including our HMPK giant lines, were affected by such interruptions, so these guys can be said as the winner of the breed for now. Hot weather and ice block didn't seem to worry them as well.

Are there any SDs in the spawn? Yes, of course, there are. There are 3 SD noticed so far. The real number could be larger (don't know if any fish sold were SD or HM cause we sold them young). Their body is quite large, but that could be attributed to large tank. The one thing that we found weird about these SDs are their finnage branchings. They are actually 4 and 8 rays branchings. So the branching is actually quite nice, but somehow they stayed at SD. It could be that they lack the necessary exercises, our fault really, cause we didn't have enough tanks for all fish, hence they were neglected for awhile and their finnage being torn during flaring. While the number of SD is, hopefully, low, it does seem that this line require constant flaring exercises to build their fin. Once they've got to be HM or OHM, lesser exercise regiment can be done without harm. Some of them have very straight finnage, which means without any exercise they'll always be HM or OHM, they form the typical D shape needed for desirable HM line. Oh, they don't have DT line ;) Isn't that great outcome? Such nice spawn without the help of DT.

So, what would we like to improve on the current line? This would be the list:

1. get bigger giants, the bigger the better, with longer tail
   
2. exteme branchings, also like this experiment
3. some OHM females would be good ;) We've got OHM in males, but would love to have on females too
4. crossing with our copper, to achieve yet bigger giant
5. get one of those "sky hawk" dorsal, that would be awesome
6. improve the strength of the rays, perhaps crossing to other stronger finnage giants
7. anyone has nice dragon giants? that would be a good mix for this lot ;)
   

Looking for nice blacks and reds

One of fish from D&S died today :(
It's a nice black dragon female. The colour brings back memory of our own super black line, terminated awhile back.

Anywho, if anyone out there has nice black line, preferrably pure black (double black, super black) or nice black dragon, let us know. We can always exchange our stock ;) Wanting to start black line again.

Not looking for melano, though double black or super black from melano is good so long the female is fertile.

Alternatively, if you have nice blood red or super red, we like them too :)
Not traditional red, nor cambodian red (at least not showing any of cambodian flesh).

BTW, only looking for long fin HM or HMDT, no short fin, finnage has to be acceptable, hence picture would be nice.

Betta posters

Today when we went pass local petshop, we noticed that they've got very nice betta posters. A couple of them, some from Thailand, 1 from Singapore, and 1 from Indonesia. Amazing combination of PK, VT, HM, DT and wild. We asked whether they will import the bettas from those countries, but no one knows. The posters apparently belong to one of the owners and he wasn't there.

Perhaps next time, when pass through there, we'll see if we can get him to get more bettas. They only have VT and CT. May even offload some of our HMs to them ;)

Interesting posters though, may need to start hunting as to where to get them. Would be nice to be placed in the fish room, oppsss garage.

Fresh air and rain help soothe the soul

Picture tells a thousand words:

Green & Copper Spawn

New spawning happened last week, but we've been busy, so only have time to update it now.

Male, from D&S, nice half-giant



Courting video, cut off cause it got really rough! Spawned on same day, 20th Feb. Female was introduced right away to the tank without proper introduction ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em1UX0yJ9oY


The eggs, male taking care of it (can't really see the eggs, but he's busy there)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt47x5eH6cI


Not large spawn, but that's the whole purpose (can't handle yet another large spawn!). There are about 200 or so of these fry.

Fry at 1 day



Fry at 3 days

Fish Tycoon game, addicted and fun

Just thought people may like to try this out. We had been spending some time with this game, it really takes your mind off all the stress. Suffice to say it is very addictive too :)

The game is called "Fish Tycoon", it is available on lots of devices ranging from PC, MAC, or even to mobile such iPhone. The purpose of the game is to collect the 7 rare fish by crossing 1 fish to another. you breed the fish, and sell the excess on the shop.

It's so cool, the fish grow as the time passes. You breed a fish now, go away for lunch, by the time you get back, you've got plenty of baby fish :)

The trial version only allows 1 tank plus 1 sale tank and max 7 fish per tank. Paid version allows up to 21 fish per tank with an extra 1 tank.

Go get it, it's so much fun, you can set the timer to run as normal or double the speed. you can buy various items for your fish. Just promise not to cheat (lots of cheats available on the net), cause cheating will ruin your experience :)

Unfortunately, the fun only lasts till you find the 7 fish. Once that's done, the whole game will just continue forever.

Blood still boiling over Black Saturday

There had been enough sadness lately, with all those stories of bushfires. Flood over QLD has been seen as "less" devastating in comparison. Lots of anger up in the air on the state readiness (or rather unpreparedness and lack of coordination) to handle such disaster, despite everyone knew it will come eventually (who's the idiot that couldn't predict that will happen when you've got a full week of 40 degrees happening). On the same time, this has been forgiven with all the open-hearted aussies who had been digging deep to help them, including your kind donations! So, thanks again, we can't stress this enough.

Having said this, the drama isn't over yet, rebuilding processes just starting up. We will eventually see that those brave firefighters and volunteers to get rewards they so deserve, and those who were incompetent (on part of the government and their agencies) to pay the hefty price.

We still vividly remembered how the rep spoke on national TV on Friday, the day before black Saturday fire, to say that they'd be "acting on it tomorrow morning", and that was barely Friday afternoon. He clearly played down on the whole thing, showing how incompetent he was (and everyone who supported him). He dared to say so when he announced there were 14 people died, and he was expecting only about 40 people! Maybe he thought the number were still small enough, so another night won't do much harm (note to him: 40 degrees for days, it aint getting cooler at night!)

What was the suggestion when the fire started? "stay inside your house". Oh, well, no wonder we had so many people died. Where is the evacuation plan? Are we the only idiots living on the planet, when fire is ravaging so closely to your house, you'd think staying in house will save your life or whether your life is worth more than all the material you're trying to protect? As you can see, our blood is still boiling with this event.

That wasn't the only incompetent thing they've done. Bureau of meteriology had been saying how the wind will change etc, and yet, they did backburning sporadically, resulted in, yes, you've heard it, bigger fire! Now, we aint pointing fingers to the firefighters that started the backburning, that wasn't their fault. The lack of coordination and planning is sooooooo sad. It's as if the many firefighting organizations are not even communicating to each other.

It's so sad to see our fellow aussies die needlessly, just because we took for granted those who supposed to protect and give "good advice" to us.

Sure, the easiest solution would be to point fingers to those who start the fire to begin with. Heck, for all we care, just give them capital punishment for causing so many deaths. That solves the problem. Their lives shouldn't be more valuable than those whom they destroy, why would they get the luxury of being jailed? What's the point apart from wasting all our tax payer money.

Having said this, those who were incompetent also need punishment. No, we're not talking about "review of processes" or restructure here and there, that's lame! They shouldn't even dare to say that's the "only" lesson learnt from this! It's about time this government (and all state governments) to be accountable for all of their incompetence. We paid them high salary not simply to sit there doing nothing, if that's what they think of the job, then they better darn be sacked.

Here is the things we encourage others to do as well:

• donate (time, money, effort, whatever)
• make sure this won't happen again (point the fingers, raise your voice, get them accountable)
• capital punishment -- one has to be responsible for one's action, no leniency, or otherwise others will take for granted of the leniency (law should be there to protect the victims, not the offender!). okay, this maybe still too many controversy, but something ought to be done with our law. year after year we still see people starting fire, that just means our law isn't working

Hhhh......now we felt a bit better, we've been keeping this deep inside. We know this post won't help much to those who were hurt, but hopefully it serves as acknowledgement that we are not leaving you behind. Thanks for reading, feel free to correct us.

Last remaining stock

We are raising the money for Victoria bushfire and QLD flooding. For those interested in our stock, please consider to donate the money to help our fellows aussies and we'll send you off the fish of your choice (below).

Procedures:

1. choose any fish you like here (confirm with us that they are still available!)
   
2. donate the money to appropriate charities (redcross.org.au is recommended) or call 1800 240 667 (Victoria bushfire) and 1800 173 349 (QLD flood)
3. we'll send you fish once you've let us know
   

If you dont know/want to donate direct, you can send the money through us. You need to include the shipping charges ($25) to your donation (and donate it on our behalf).

Fish available (all giant-geno):

1. 3 lots of juvies (unsexed; see sample pics on this post); each lot is 10 fish for $40; 2 months old
   
2. 2 lots of large HMPK juvies (see pic on bottom of previous post); each lot is 5 pairs for $60; 2 months old
3. 1 lot of large HM juvie (see sample pics on previous post); 5 pairs for $75; this lot is on hold but register your interest and we will inform asap if the holder decides not to take them; 2 months old
4. 1 lot of adult HMPK of 5 pairs (sample pics on http://mybettas.110mb.com) for $100; 4 months old
5. 5 breeder-quality HM giant females; each $100; 4 months old; large size, suggested to only breed these with large males; sample pics

Please note: in the unlikely event of DOA, we may not be able to provide replacements if we don't have any left in stock. However, rest assured that DOA rarely happens (fingers crossed).

Contact us direct on our email (find the email on right hand panel). Thanks for all the support.

>>> Added: just for fun, here is a sample of lavendar HMPK juvie again :)


>>> Added, more pictures of HMPK juvies, taken 18th Feb.

Chocolate/Coffee bean boy


marble


A couple people had been looking for a sample of MG, here you go. not good lighting, but still...


pineapple boy is the easiest one to take pictures :)


>>> Added 21 Feb:

The following left in stock now after caging all fish in the smaller tank:

• 1 lot of hmpk juvie, 5 pairs, $60 (2 green MG, 1 blue MG, etc)
• 1 lot of hm juvie, 5 pairs, $75 (1 opaque marble, green marble, etc)
• large HM juvie for breeder (both male and female for breeder), each pair $100
• large HM giant female, 4+ months, $100 each

The above would be all stock currently held, finally we managed to clean up the tanks. Thanks for all who have supported the effort, much appreciated.

Here's sample of green marble boy, he just got isolated for couple of days and had grown considerably :) He is part of the hm juvie lot above.


Here he's again, funny boy, he likes to cruise the whole tank when flaring


Sample of 2 breeder HM juvie males are avail on these movies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6DBBAs6UjA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4BAHYY-pvY). Both have grown much larger since the movie was taken. These breeders are part of a 6-pair breeders we kept for ourselves, but we've decided to only keep 1 pair for ourselves. Your chance to get very nice breeders. Finnage are very nice for both males and females. Note that they are about 2.5 months only, so they will be growing to a much large size. Breeder females are matching the size and branchings of their males ;)

Updated picture of the pineapple/chocolate/black bf male, nice size and very active boy :)


>>> Added: here's a movie of pineapple boy, taken a week/two ago but only had time to post it now (compressed to 1 MB)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90C8cQbEMak

Quite nice spread and pretty agressive (the opponent was dark, hence difficult for him to see)

Clearing out stock

Been awhile not updating things. Heatwave is still hitting hard for most part of the country, poor Melbourne and Adelaide ppl. Temperature here isn't that great either since last week, but at least now we are settled to 27-29C to early 30s. West is still awful, upto 10 degrees higher.

Here some shots of our HM juvies from our giant spawn (update of the 40 days trouble forecast), taken last week. They are separated into individual tanks now, and have grown much bigger and prettier. If we have time, we'll take their updated pictures during the weekend. They are 2 months old today (yesterday?), we should have taken their pics for celebration :)

They are very active and are showing large finnage.







We've still got some left from last sale, and we've got to clear out the stock quick.

For those who are still interested on them, here are the deal, do contact us quick cause they are priced to sell and they have to be out of the door in a week time.

1. 5 pairs of HMPK $100. Check http://mybettas.110mb.com under stock for sample. Ready to breed, all HMPK or OHMPK.
2. 5 pairs of "bigger" HM juvies $75, sample pics above, pics to be updated later
3. 10 random of "younger" HM juvies $60 (approx 5 males & 5 females)

With every purchase there always be a surprise bonus :)

Shipping to east coast $25. Shipping to Sydney will be same-day delivery, other cities should be 1 day delivery.

Oh, free shipping when you buy more than 2 combinations! Our email is on the right-panel, in case you're looking for it.

>>> Update some pics below. Most are not spreading to the max, but you get the idea, with little exercise they'll be HM easily soon. In case you've missed it, they are all coming from giant spawn at age of 2 month atm.







Slightly decent pic of the red marble, he moves too much :)


Pic of the pineapple boy, just couldn't resist him.


This one doesn't want to pose nicely, but he's actually slightly OHM, only just :)




PS. a number of enquiries came. If you're interested on buying more than 1 lot, any subsequent cheaper lot (2nd, 3rd, etc) will be half-price. Hope that helps in expanding your betta collection...

Further note, it seems there are a very few (3-5 noticed so far) of HMPKs in the spawn. This indicates that the parentage inherited their giant genes from HMPK somewhere. While the vast majority of the juvies are long fin, we can't guarantee that you'll get all long fin (specially when females are involved).

>>> Added: YouTube video of 2 males, 2 months old. Warning, size: 15MB (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6weEX4VRRA). There is a 70MB version of it, but that's way too long and large for uploading

>>> Added: found 2 lot of "large" juvie HMPKs in the tanks, for those interested, they are $60 per lot (5 pairs). Here is a sample of lavendar boy HMPK. Colours range from pineapple, lavendar, green lace, etc.

Extreme branchings for HM giants?

Just occured to us that 32 or 64 rays branching may not look too great on normal HM, but wouldn't it be awesome on giant HM? This type of branching would suit the body of a giant, when everything is so big. Just pondering....

Of course one would only find 50% giant on this type of branching, if lucky, but it's still something interesting to see.

So far we've seen 16 rays, perhaps 32 rays males on 4+ inches, expect to see a lot more :) Wonder how the fry will turn out, just like the dad/mom?

Giant female breeders

Definitely not the best pics, but it's so difficult to get good lightings for these guys and they keep moving/dancing too fast. But we thought it would be better to take their pics now before they're off to XL, otherwise they'll be gone forever :)

2 females here, at the back, flaring against HMPK boy. All fish are 3.5 to 4 months old. The females are mostly 16 rays branching, with some branchings perhaps at 8 rays. Both are very close to HM spread.

The comparisons with male may not be appropriate, would be better to compare them with normal HMPK female, but you get the point. Comparing them with male shows how they are larger than the male. Comparing them to standard HMPK female would have been showing how they are easily double it :)

We've been keeping these females as reserved for sometime as part of another 10 or so females, XL finally wanting them :) Certainly going to miss them....





Remind to self: do not be tempted to spawn them!

Cool toys for blogging

Non-betta related, but just thought to mention to you guys. If you have any comments on this blog whatsoever, feel free to leave feedback. We've just installed some new widgets for the posts:

1. the usual comments/opinions feedback, if you want to say in length or even argue with the post
2. quick and easy "Readers say" where you can just tick the relevant option (let us know if you think there ought to be more options)
3. quick and easy "rating" system, if you find any post to be of any value
4. the email icon is also useful if you'd like to forward the post to someone

Anywho...feel free to leave as much or as little feedback on the posts.

Finally, some skin layout arrangements of the blog, hope you find it easier to read them. Search button on the right panel is good if you can't quite nail down which of those posts discuss certain keywords that you were looking for.

Some ideas for dotted bettas

Interesting how people call their bettas, or their strains, and come up with all sorts of names. We've called some of our bettas "dalmatian" cause they really look like dalmatian dots to us, at least their appearence does resemble one :)

A similar dotted pattern for instance is called "orange dot" or "dotted orange" when it appears on orange-based bettas. This doesn't get fancy name to it, since no one can figure out what it resembles. A variant to "orange dot" seems to be "orange polka" or "polka dot". Again, this name is not catchy enough and people have difficulties of relating to it (who's in the textile industry these days?). Calling the bettas with fruity name such as "mandarin" isn't really attractive either. Similarly, a yellow-dotted on melano doesn't really get fancy name either.

Another name, though not related to the dots, used frequently and becomes strongly associated with strong yellow colouration is "yellow banana". Perhaps, banana in some countries are really strong yellow. It refers to "intense yellow" but it seems "yellow banana" sounded better?

Now, what about orange-dotted on chocolate bettas? Recent name to it, which seems to fetch ridiculous price, is called "armageddon". Not sure what the history of that name, it doesn't really look like the end of the world, but it sure is catchy.

As with most dotted fish, they are inherited! So, it's kinda funny when the seller tries to reassure that the offspring will be armageddonized. In fact, it is so strongly inherited that it is difficult to get rid of the gene, just like marble ;)

Talking about armageddon, it seems the line comes from black orange being crossed to dotted orange. We're not quite so sure what was the fuss about. Surely it's fairly easy to produce these days, but why would the price be ridiculous?

Anywho, what kind of dotted fish would you like? How about some of the ideas here:

1. dotted copper red - copper red with with orange dots. you could try to cross copper gold with dotted orange or dotted black orange, it will produce copper red and hope that some of the fry carries orange dot. you may ended up with dalmatian or red marble, but that's pretty as well :)
   
2. dotted MG - MG crosses with black orange dotted, you get multi but some will be MG and black orange too, just a matter of placement where the dots ended up. maybe this is the way they've got armageddon initially!
   
3. dotted red - surely they can try to cross dotted orange or dotted black orange to super red (or extended red). c'mon, we like to see the flaming red! Some multi colour are expected as well, but there may be a few nice dots in the mix
   
4. red gold dotted! - now that's something to look forward to. the golden body with red finnage, and throws a bit of red or orange dot on that beautiful finnage. you may need to get either orange black dot or orange dot and cross it with a platinum gold. The outcome should be red gold and we'll see whether the dots will show up ;) Some fry will be cambodian based while others would be black base (if you cross to black orange).
   

A bit of warning though, bettas carrying dots usually yield to some marbles being thrown in the spawn. So it really depends on the parentage of your fish. Nevertheless, if you're bored, and want to experiment on the dots, why not give the above a try? Worst case you'll get beautiful multi colour offspring and even some weird colours from the mix. If you manage to get any of the above colouration, do show it off to everyone!

Showing off after full tummy

As with any animals, bettas are so much fun and energetic when they are young. This is especially true when they are teenager, just about to sprout, and still finding their own territory.

Everyday when we feed them, these youngster of barely 2 months old, effective beg for food. However, once their tummy full, a much more attractive activities happening! That's when they started to flare to each other, moving about the tank and pretty much teasing each other to see who can spread the biggest tail :)

Perhaps this is an early exercises that they're practicing, before they reach adulthood. Just like a young lion cub will tease each other and learn how to hunt before they are completely on their own, hunting and finding their own foods.

Anyway, here are two pictures of them flaring, after a full stomach.





They flare to both males and females, don't really care who stands on their path. VZ kept saying "males have their own ego on flaring, but females don't want to be left behind too!" This ritual is more apparent when their tummy full. On other times they seemed to be quite peaceful, with some occasional flaring, not as frequent.

The nice thing is, of course, rarely any of them hurt. They break off when the flaring gets intensified. This kind of flaring, will continue for another 1 or 2 weeks before the bigger males get separated. From then on, they will flare and fight like an adult :)

For those interested, the fry are still available for the lot of 10. Better contact us soon and enjoy your own flaring show :)

Guess your betta sex

Bettas identifications have been an interesting game, when done during the early stages of your bettas, say when they are 1.5 month to 2 months old. Sometimes they are very easily identified, while other times you'd need to rely on your gut feeling or plain simply guess skills :)

While various variants of bettas (CT, PK, HM, VT, etc) may have slight variations on the way to identify them, the methods mentioned here are applicable in general.

So, here's some simplified methods. Currently we are showing methods for long fin betta, specifically HM.

The first one, is very easy to spot. This is a female. She has the egg repository clearly concealled under her tummy skin and a much larger egg peck popping up.


On a smaller female, you may still see the egg repository faintly showing off under the skin, and also a smaller egg peck. This is when you have a little doubt whether that was really a female you're looking at, or you need zoom glasses just to freeze her to check her clearer! This is when you need other clues to help you out. The easiest one would be to check her anal fin length compared to her peduncle. If the anal roughly same length as peduncle, or even shorter, then chances you're looking at a female. Short caudal fin (in an HM line) is also good indication that it's a she! Caudal fin length as a cue can't be used for PK though, cause all PK is short! Anal fin is also helpful, you'll notice that usually the height of female's anal fin is half of the male's. That is, if you measure the height of her anal fin, you will notice that she has a much shorter anal compared to the male's counterpart.


Note that on the first pictured female, and the one below, the anal fin is slightly longer than her peduncle. This is because the line is an HM, hence she does have the tendency of having longer anal.


There are times when you just have to say, "hmm....not sure about this one". Check this fish for instance, it doesn't have egg repository, it does have egg peck but we can't be sure of doing identification based on egg peck alone, cause males also have egg pecks (as we will see soon). The fish's anal and caudal seem to be short enough. Gut feeling tells us that this would be a male, though he doesn't sprout yet. Why would that be the case? Cause the caudal seems to be a tad longer than other females. The lack of egg repository is also a good guess, cause usually small females already have some small number of eggs stored in the body.


Here's another "unknown". The fish clearly has short fin at the moment. Egg peck is clearly shown there. No sign of egg repository. So it'll be a matter of time (1 week perhaps) before it shows off and identifiable.


Another unknown, due to young age. Anal has started to grow a bit longer, hence may just be a male in 1 week time.


A clear identification between males and "unknown" can be seen in the following picture. Upper fish is unknown, but lower fish has clearly show long fin trait and therefore identifiable as male.


Here is for the fun of it, another male. Egg peck is clearly showing up, but he's definitely a boy. Anal and caudal are giving away his sex, of course.


Some more males.




So, hopefully you can go about and try to identify your fish now :) Don't worry if you have mistakenly identify them though, no harm done.

Bettas feeding frequency

Feeding frequency has been discussed numerous times in forums. We have been experimenting with a number of feeding rituals, ranging from regular 3x feedings per day to 2x feedings per week. So, what's the conclusion?

With regular frequent feedings, provided each feeding is completely making them full tummy, you would expect that you're doing much more regular water changes. This is unavoidable as they produce faster waste. However, it does seem that the fry grow faster too, before the growth stabilizes at around 3 to 4 months old, and then it goes steadily growing at a slower pace. Frequent feedings extremely required for younger fry, they need all the food to grow. The problem with young fry, such as those 1 month old, is in knowing when they are hungry. Lateness in feeding them will resulted on some fry to stunt and non-active. Feeding them too much will make them lazy, triggering BSD and other sorts of health issues.

Prolonged frequent feeding to older bettas will result on cutting their life expectancy. This is interesting, as it seems, the faster the cells grow, obviously the faster they will die too. In some instances, their life expectancy will only be up to 1 year, with an average of 8 months. Most die due to stomach-related diseases or internal parasites (note, more food, more gunk, more chance of infections).

Infrequent feeding, when applied to older fish such as those older than 3 months, seemed to be doing just fine. Bettas live double to tripple of their frequent feeding counterparts. In some instances, some bettas live over 2.5 years and yet having the youth body of 8 months old! Body growth slows down considerably, they will keep searching for foods and yet you must have a strong heart not to feed them! You will, however, get much greater death rate as you need to know when your bettas really hungry and need the feeding, otherwise they will just starve.

In one of the experiments, feeding them with a slice of bread (e.g. vegetarian) infrequently while cutting off all meat foods seemed to get them through. But this is not recommended. Although bettas are omnivore, they need their meat! This feeding regime has average survival rate of 50% to the age of 1.5 year. Wonder if anyone ever analyzed whether this type of feeding is no difference from feeding bettas with pellets? Sure, pellets have all the "vitamins" added to it, but at the end of the day it doesn't come from meat product, isn't it?

Our practice these days is to feed younger fry of less than 3 months old 3x and anything larger will get their feeding irregularly. They are only fed meat either in the form of live food or frozen. Sometimes they get 1x per day, sometimes 2x per day, sometimes 1x per 2 or 3 days. Irrespective of the feeding regime, they need regular exercises, so keep that in mind. You may "visit" your bettas, and they're looking forward to see you feeding them, but instead you may only uncard them so they can flare :)

Hot hot hot, ways to cool things down

It seems  the days gone from tough to tougher. Yo-yo weather last time was only the beginning. Last 2 days had been extremely hot at our place (though the afternoon seemed to be okay when the predicted thunderstorm hits). It seems more to be expected to come over the coming weeks, bush fire has started as well...

The water in the tank must have been more than 30 degree easily. Feeding fry doesn't seem to be so much fun anymore, worms placed in such warm water will just die off in a matter of an hour (or less, didn't monitor this). Quite surprising that the fry didn't want to take their foods, must have been busy trying to figure out how to cool their temperature down.

This time, we're prepared, just. The whole freezer has been preoccupied by blocks of ice. Tank temperature is lowered to 20 degree in the morning, let the temperature rises slowly by the warm air, and then in the afternoon a bunch of ice blocks dumped to the tank to further lower it to mid 20s. 5 Large tanks seemed to be doing okay with this technique. It also gives us some time to refill the freezer, making sure we have sufficient ice blocks.

Now, the problem is the 50-odd single containers. Moving them to the coolest area in house, the bathroom, doesn't seem to help. Temperature isn't getting 40 degree like outside, but it's still a fair 30+ degree. The problem is, in the morning the living room would be hotter cause it's facing east, but in the afternoon the bathroom which is facing west got the hit. This means, we have to move them from bathroom to living room in the afternoon, even though living room's temperature doesn't go down that quickly. Too tired to move them around, so they stay there. VZ has been complaining how she can't find her daily make up but she understands it's a temporary measure. Kids seemed to be okay with all this, they find it

No one has ample time to really get aircon fixed, it'll cost couple of grand cause it's ducted. So much for trusting the previous owner about top notch ducted aircon, they must had been cutting too much corner on doing the job.

We're testing a idea that we'll use when the temp rises too high next time. It works like this. Put individual fish to plastic bag (still need to buy this bag, don't have the good size at the moment), and then put the bag in the empty container. In the morning of predicted hot weather, we will each take some of the bettas to the office. This is fairly easily done by punching a hole in the mid level of the bag (above water level of course) and passing through a strong robe through it, before putting all bags into big shopping bag. Making sure we're not spilling any water, the robe act as the hanger for the bags. This way, they can get luxury treatment of aircon in the office, which usually stays around 25 degree :D

Well, we figured, we only have to do this once or twice, so it's no biggy. At the end of the day, when we came back home, we just offload the plastic bags back into the empty container, ready for the next heatwave. This whole trouble seems to be only worth doing when the temperature to be predicted 40+, anything lower than that seems to be manageable by the adult bettas.

Moments to remember in your betta's life

okay, just like any of your kids, when you treasure any  moments spent, what would be the moments you'd like to remember for your bettas? Though each betta is different, making the global theme (e.g. "spawning") somewhat dull, the specific detail of the moment worth remembering (e.g. when the female teases the male) !

In our case, here are the top moments, from "the start" to "the end is the beginning":

1. courting, when male and female dance the ritual; each tries to impress the other, teases one another, just reminded your teenage years ! ahh, specially that "first love"
2. wrapping, egg dropping; how both male and female freeze on that split second moment
3. picking up the eggs, thy both need to pick the eggs. love you honey, let's get the eggs to safe place
4. seen how relieved the female after spawning? she'll go to the corner, keep one eye at the nest, sometimes come by and help the male pick the fallen eggs
   
5. male tending egg; some males would stand there, staring at the eggs, and not move an inch! remember how you waited in the hospital for the baby's arrival?! Your male must have been waiting there patiently, making sure no single egg left behind, all taken care of
6. hang in there, boy! your fry first hatching and trying to cling to his life, on the tank's glass or on that single bubble his dad had made for him, and perhaps a bit overcrowded competing with some of his siblings!
7. you miss that one, that one, and that one. oh, c'mon, surely you can pick them all up quicker!! that's when the male tries his damn hard to pick the fry, and you sounded more like your mom, nagging your dad for his inefficiency :)
8. patient is virtue. see how the male patiently picking up the fry, despite the very same fry may have fallen off the bubble every single time he spits him out
9. see how proud the mom in picking up her fry too...she would pick the nearby fry, make some bubbles for them, and spit them out, while keeping safe distance from the dad
   
10. don't play too far...that's when the dad keep picking up as many free-swimming fry and move them closer to his bubblenest
    
11. chase, boy, chase it! nearly there, nearly there, got it! good boy...that's when you see him snatch his first brine shrimp :)
12. no, not that one, no! that's when you're screaming to him when he tried to eat that over-lengthy worm, but then you felt all good when he learnt how to split the worm in half :)
13. how they all stare at you when they are hungry...hurry, hurry, hurry!! we want food !!
    
14. his first flare...that's memorable, how he flares to another sibling after a full tummy
15. he's a teenager now, see how he flares to another male, how he keeps a good eye on that gorgeous female, how excited he becomes :)

With any good moments, there are bad ones. Here are sad moments that hurt, wish they never happened:

1. make the damn bubble, boy! why can't you make a single damn bubble! there is a gorgeous female there, make it, damn it!
2. ah, crap, that's it! you just torn the most beautiful female caudal I've got. I hope it's all worth it, otherwise you're off to the toilet!
   
3. you big dumb boy, how hard could it be wrapping that female! do i need to teach you that!! wrap her from that direction...no, no, not in that corner again! there isn't enough space there, stupid idiot !
4. oh please, don't drop that egg yet...no, wait when the male wrap you...ah, crap, what's wrong with you two. those eggs are not fertilized, focus, focus on wrapping, not on picking those unfertilized eggs!!
5. third time's a charm? i'm warning you, do it properly this time or you're out of the priority list
   
6. did you just suspect your female cheated on you?! that's your fry fallen there, pick them up!
7. where did you spit your fry? i didn't see it ! sh*t, did you just eat your own fry?! i'm watching you, dont you dare do that again! spit them up right away!! now !!!
8. what's wrong with him, he doesn't look good...c'mon boy, you've got plenty of fry to take care of, are you okay?
9. ah, darn, i've got no food and there are plenty of hungry fry here. what should i do? is there a nearby shop open? who has some supply?! someone, help me!
10. no, not that over-lengthy worm, don't eat that one! ah, crap, now what do i do? you see, i told you not to snap that one, you can't breath? wait, let me see if I can pull that worm out of your mouth...
11. what's wrong with you guys? why are you dying off one by one? i've changed the whole tank's water, but still dying off, what should i do?
    
12. what the hell are you doing on the floor? mobbing? stupid fish, do not jump!
13. how many times do i need to tell you, do not get into your brother's room! now see what you've done, both of you, *sigh* all that beautiful fins, ruin :'(
14. that's another male there, flare! you coward!

"You've seemed to have gone through so much suffering, if you were given another chance, would you give it another try?" YES! It's all worth the experience.

Grow boy, grow!

That's the frustration when you're expecting a fry to show off their true potential. Unfortunately, fish is not going to grow overnight and many have realized this but still deep inside expect their fish to behave somewhat differently.

In order to get your fish growing to large size, particularly if they are giants, many breeders suggest to do the following:

• large tank for the boy
• frequent water changes or at least frequent topping up the water
• flaring activity, be it to another male or to that gorgeous female next door
• irregular feeding (boy is different than girl, they worries about their ego rather than stomach)
• don't keep a wall clock next to your tank, watching the minutes go won't help!

There has been some people saying that they keep their fry together in community tank till they are of age 3 months old. We have never been successful on doing this, at the age of 2.5 months at least they will start flaring which sadly resulted in torn fins. The opposite sometimes is worst too. Early separation causes the boy to have "early withdrawal syndrome" where he's so scared, not in the mood, stressed up, and basically stunt. Temperature plays significant role if you're separating him. We find, with less fluctuation and frequent flaring, the boy will turn out okay.

Now the challenge of getting him large size in very short amount of time is still a puzzle to us. While females are easier to handle (just keep feeding them foods), the males growth is somewhat restricted. Our experimentation has shown that males with females insight grow faster than the ones purely isolated with other males. Females with males insight will mature faster than their all-females counterpart, but their sizes are no difference than all-females.

Large tank for a single boy seems to be problematic as well. He's getting the feeling of too isolated, the tank is just too big for him, and he's lonely. Less interaction seems to reduce his growth rate.

So, as you can see, there are lots of things that we still need to learn on giant bettas, particularly the long fins. HMPK seems to be somewhat easier, their bulky body size is purely the result of exercises and foods. Finnage isn't something to worry about, they are not so troublesome compared to their long fins.

Another experimentation that we did, which was quite successful, was to have around 8 bettas or so in a large tank. Each betta is caged in a cut off 2L or 3L bottles, and a single betta is let roam free in the large tank. You'd see flaring exercises happening for a good half hour to 1 hour before you need to isolate them again. Isolation is as simple as the caging, by getting a 4L milk bottle cut off to form the cage. You can vary the number of bettas in a tank, depending how big your cages and your tank, but the point of the experiment was to show that they do indeed grow much faster and larger in such environment. Now, the only thing that you need to do is to make sure each caged betta has a chance to roam free in the tank, just re-cage the previously free betta and let another one free. This exercise not only build the size of your bettas, but also build their temperament. They will be accustom to disturbance, changes, and will flare instantly to any other bettas. Nothing more rewarding than to see your bettas flare like crazy showing off that beautiful finnage!

Unfortunately, this experimentation could not scale. If you only have a couple bettas, it's all great. If you have lots of them, you'd need lots of large-size tanks. Some bettas are very good in jumping or swimming through small openings on the lower part of your cage (if you didn't cut the cage in straight line). So, from time to time you've got "accidental" fights, which you will regret cause your beautiful bettas won't look the same anymore :)

We haven't experiment with drip system yet, lots of other breeders are having good response with this system. The problem with drip system, in our opinion, are three fold. first the waste of electricity (heater) that it requires. Controlling temperature to be around, say 27 degree Celcius, needs a 300 watt heater running all the time. Summer may help, but that's only about 2 or 3 months of the year, whatever happened to the rest of the year? States where sun shines close to all year round, such as QLD and NT, are somewhat lucky. They just don't need to worry about heaters. 2nd problem is the growth of algae on each container in the drip, sometimes rendering the whole thing to be pointless cause your bettas can't flare with other bettas. third problem is the accumulation of waste product in the dripper. Slowly but sure you'll get the dripper blocked, water pressure and distribution no longer in balance. Oh, did we forget the frequent amount of topping water? Drip system evaporates water much faster.

Home-made drip system would be fantastic, if they can address many of the above problems efficiently. We're still searching for best design for drip system. Something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg to build, last for sometime, and doesn't cost too much to run.

Anyhow, getting back to raising large boy. We haven't been paying much attention to foods and its influences to betta size. While it has been known that live foods stimulate growth and colour on bettas, frozen foods or pellets seem to deliver the same outcome provided the bettas are exercised properly. Hence, this is still an unknown area for us. Some experimentations that we did where we fed a tank solely with frozen food and another with live food didn't show noticeable differences. This ignores some side effect of certain foods (e.g. feeding frozen food incorrectly can cause bloating easily; live worms may carry diseases; etc).

The joy of mistaken identity

Funny how some sellers treat us very well cause they assume we were someone else. On the plus side, we've got good deals (the guys must have been having good reputation), but on another side we've felt bad to take advantage of them. We tried to rectify this whenever we can, but after awhile, we just ignore it :)

This happens both in Discuss and Betta communities (though we're being identified as different persons). It may have been the fact that we don't socialize much and would like to keep our daily life as private.

Doh, as much we love the hobby, the hobby should stay as it is. Don't get us wrong, we love old friends and new ones. Still keeping in touch with them. Some we hated but they stick like magnet, in a good way..., but the dealings are more *to the point* these days. You want X, we have X, we'll give you X. Go away, do your experiments, and if you have something we love, we'll contact you and get it... Perhaps we just get older, more isolated and do things on our own. Besides, who can socialize with us these days, with the very limited (and odd) time we've been having.

This mode of communication has its downs. We come to accustom that not everyone is going to reply back to us. Things get sorted in days, rather than minutes. The good thing about it, we also are not expected to reply to anyone unless we have free time. So if you don't hear from us for days, don't be surprised. Most times we're here and there, but sometimes VZ and me will have to travel as part of the job.

So for those out there, if you are looking for your long lost friend, we used to be moving about, stayed for a year in QLD (back 5 years ago), landed in Parramatta (8 months or so) and now North Turra. Previously we stayed briefly in Perth, that was the good old time when nothing can be found there (in the pet shop). Otherwise, you're looking at the wrong guys (but happy to get acquainted with you! though keep your distance). AD has a bunch of his lost friends, but that's because most of them went back to Vietnam :)