Giant females sale

For breeders out there having difficulties on getting absolute top-notch giant females, here's your chance to secure some.

We have breeder-quality giant females HM and HMPK lines, aged 3 months. A couple of their characteristics:

• guaranteed to produce giants of at least 2.5-3 inches in 3-4 months of age
• guaranteed at least 30% of their offspring to be giants.
• guaranteed to produce at least 80% HM/HMPK 180* spread in their offspring.

Of course the above guarantee will only work if you have equivalently good male, however the lines above produce very consistent outcome so far, hence you should not be far-behind if you cross them to good-enough males. Check out distribution of giant genes for reasoning why the above characteristics are important...

No males from these lines available, all of them sold.

The size of the males to be suggested to spawn with them will be at least 2.7 inches. Any smaller males may not be able to wrap them.

Here are a sample picture of the females with 1 standard-size HMPK female as comparison.



>> Update 29 July: added 1 more pix of the mustard/lace marble female, 4 or 8 rays.


>> this one shows comparison of the standard HMPK female swam semi-vertically, while the water barely covered half of the body of giant HMPK female. As you guessed it, pix taken during complete water change time :)


>> this one on-hold for SM, the longer fin copper female.


>> These 2 are just another MG marble, waiting for buyer to spawn them ;)


You are advised to get them now when they are considerably easier to spawn or they will grow much much larger at later stage.

Each female is available for special price of $100.
There are 3 outstanding HM females with 1+ inches of caudal tail available, each $150.

If you have purchased the males from the same lines above and considering to get the females as well, we will cover the guarantee for 3 months after date of purchase (assuming that would be sufficient time for you to breed and grow their offspring). Money-back guaranteed, less shipping cost!

Email us for any questions/clarifications - given limited time we've got online these days, serious buyers only please...

Youngster clearance sale

Time for us to clear the tanks, there are just too many of them to manage at this point in time. It's your opportunities to get good quality giant-geno to start your own line :)

Check out these batches and these batches for sample pictures.

10 random-coloured bettas for $100. You can mix and match giant-geno HM, giant-geno HMPK, standard betta, dwarf bettas, etc. We'll try to get you equal number of pairs when possible. Colour ranges from blue/green, mustard gas, multi-colour, copper variants, deep-sea blue, etc. All fish in the sampled pictures are included in this deal as well (if they're still avail). Shipping $25 or pickup meeting can be arranged.

The bettas you're getting aged between 2 to 3.5 months old. All giant-geno has thick and larger size than their counterpart standard bettas. Giant-geno HM line may show SD finnage but we'll try to get very-close-to-HM sent to you.

>> update 29 July:
Pictures of 2 SD males, taken yesterday. They're not the best looking form for an HM line, but they are fairly large in size, considering they're not even 2 months old yet. Some of the ray branching get to 8. Crossing them with any of the females will get you that some nice HM, if you're game on breeding them.

They're temporarily on-hold for WR, pending confirmation, but if you're interested, do let us know.





These 2 (white and copper) are temporarily on-hold for RD. Again, let us know if you want them and we'll pass them to you in case RD doesn't want them....





>> For those looking for very nice giant HM, this 3 months old serenade boy (a name coined by nicebetta) is available for $40, or pair for $70. He's been a bit neglected and the gunk affect a bit of his caudal, but he's still very young and full of potential. Thick rays, nice tie, and semi-masked platinum eyes.

Giant, bubblenest, confirm!

We were intrigue when seeing some recent auctions of giants HMPK which show some pictures of the males with bubblenest and in the image you'd see "bubble nest confirm!"

We thought we'd shoot the seller the question. What's the big deal about bubble nest and what does it confirm. Well, it boils down to very simple fact. He was just trying to say that he doesn't sell old aged giants which may not be able to spawn anymore. The bubble nest is a good confirmation that the giant he's selling is still very active and can be spawned. It makes you wonder, whatever happened to the giants that he's selling without the bubblenest pictured, does that mean they are old giants? ;)

We told him that most if not all of giants that we've bought and raised made bubble nest, so that's not really a good confirmation on anything :)

In a way, it was a statement that many if not most of the giants sold in the market are too old. This is understandable since most true giant HMPK will only reach 3 inches length when he's 8+ months. Sure you've got the exceptional ones, but majority will be around that age. Dont you ever trust that advertised aged written on auction sites. No way you can get a 3" giant aged 3, 4, or 5 months old, particularly if it looks like an old giant!

Old age is not so much big deal if you are experienced breeder. You only need one spawn to get to the next stage. However, you will need several tries if you are inexperience and that's when it matters in choosing appropriate breeder fish.

Surprisingly this is a well kept secret from buyers, but there you go, you know about it now ;) Think twice before you purchase that giant, check the picture in detail to see indication of old age. Get your fish from trusted sellers...

Top ten reasons you want to be a betta addict

10. There are lots of bettas greeting you at any time of the day when you come home.

9. They'll forget all the bad things that you've done to them once you give them a feed.

8. You get a very lively flaring show on every un-carding.

7. You will be the talk of the neighbourhood with your beautiful bettas.

6. You are not so scary to the kids anymore.

5. When you are strapped for cash to buy birthday present, there always be your bettas as gifts.

4. Your co-workers are eager to open your parcels, despite they are labeled "Live fish" or "Worms".

3. Monday is really your sickie day - you stayed up late night to show spawning techniques to your bettas.

2. Pretty girls (or boys) like you more when they see your bettas - now it's up to you to take that advantage!

1. You are god since the dictionary defines Betta-spawning: An activity of courting 2 bettas in an act of god-like pursuit by a human.

Top ten signs you MAY be a betta addict (but you didn't realize it)

10. You know every betta acronyms and use them in conversations.

9. You find faults on every betta that you see, even pointed out the 1-scale misalignment that nobody noticed.

8. You read all the spawning posts on the net and actively give spawning suggestions despite you never spawn your bettas.

7. You only have 3 bettas in your 10-chamber custom-built tank.

6. You meticulously measure water quality despite using aged water.

5. You buy 2 copies of a betta poster - 1 for bedroom and 1 for living room.

4. You have boxes of smelly microworm culture weeks before you started spawning your bettas.

3. You drove 3 hours to an LFS when you've heard they've got new imports despite you can't confirm if bettas are part of the imports.

2. You panic when the bbs doesn't hatch and started crying when you realize it takes 2 days to prepare new batch and by that time the fry will starve to death.

1. You have only 1 betta but fully prepared with all medicines mentioned in the forums.

Top ten signs that your partner is a betta addict

Change he, she, his, her, appropriately to the gender of your partner.

10. You only win an argument after a threat of doing harm to his betta.

9. Lots of discussions on dinner table revolve around his latest betta addition.

8. He skipped church complaining being tired only to find him in the fish room at a later time.

7. You shop guilt free after saying "You can buy that pair of bettas you've always wanted, dear...Can you pay this for me?"

6. He named his bettas, still remember their names after the bettas long gone, and yet he can't remember your friends' names.

5. You heard him mumbling "stupid fish" every time he comes out of the fish room - it must have been a failed spawning.

4. He boasts about his biggest fry in every tiny detail despite you can't tell which fry he was talking about.

3. You discovered one day that half of the items in freezer have "fish food" labels on them.

2. He insisted to get broadband "It's for the kids' school work", but half of the time you saw him online on betta forums.

1. He refused making love because he wants to witness his bettas spawning!

Dwarfy's dwarfs

Remember dwarfy? Well, we decided to play with the dwarf genes, and spawn them. It was a difficult spawn since their size was incredibly small. But to our surprise, it was a successful one.

Not particularly large spawn, about 20-30 or so of them. But they sure was entertaining. The size of the brood is consistently small. A small few are standard size HMPK, but majority is small. Note that we didn't do anything special with the spawn, no starving, or any tricks. They have ample of foods, just not growing any bigger :)

They are about 6 months old now, about 1 inch in size. Definitely a bit more difficult to distinguish male/female, but there are some clear winners there.













If you want to purchase them just email us. We do not encourage breeding dwarf bettas but at the end of the day it's your decision to make. On the bonus side, there is nothing physically or genetically wrong with any of these guys, so you know you're getting healthy bettas.

Beautiful youngsters

While we're extremely busy these days, breeding still continue, at least behind the scene and in a very much smaller scale.

Interesting that we now can control the number of offspring that we'd like to have in any single spawn. If we want small number, we simply spawn any of the available adults without much warming up. Large numbers can be attained by properly preparing the pair and carefully calculating when they need to spawn.

Anywho, enjoy the below pictures. Their size is slightly larger than your typical HMPK but you guess it right....they're giants. The key is knowing their age, then you can appreciate their size ;)





They are about....1.5 months old, hatched on 6/6/10. Always entertaining to see these youngsters grow. Looking at the picture, one would thought they're your typical HMPK/HM at much older 5-6 months. Always hungry, but at least with much great attitudes too.

Top ten signs you are a betta addict

10. Your method of falling asleep is by counting how many bettas you currently have in your tank.

9. You rush to betta section of your LFS, despite it has been displaying the exact same bettas for months.

8. You sit for hours watching your betta/fry swim as if their next moves will be the best performance that you don't want to miss.

7. You talk to your bettas and always believe that they understand what you are saying all along.

6. Your wallpaper is a betta despite constant criticisms that you should put the picture of your children/partner instead.

5. Your lounge room has only 3 furniture: sofa, coffee table, tv - with betta tanks on the coffee table and the TV on the floor.

4. You spend a good half an hour every day to decide what to feed your bettas.

3. You rushed to LFS to get medicine when your betta sneezes - or so you thought that he was sneezing.

2. Your entertainment room has been converted to bettas room and your partner is prohibited to enter it.

1. You pay your partner's shopping at the checkout and utter silently "that would have been X pairs of gorgeous bettas that I could have bought...".

Mid-year sale

For those interested in our bettas, we've posted some for-sale videos on youtube. Lighting isn't on its best, nor the cleanliness of the tanks. Furthermore, the fish were shocked when we put the light on top of their tanks, hence expect them to be a bit confused :) Fish in real life is a lot better than what's shown.

They are all giant-geno. Body thickness is very promising. About 2.5 months of age, being separated only 1 week ago. Females available as well.

Contact us on our email (see on the right-side link for email). There are more fish avail, just ask us. Shipping only within AU (sorry for folks from o'seas, but you know the drill - no o'seas shipping possible due to gov't restriction).

A quick run-down of the avail fish:

• Mustard HMPK and copper gold HM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhJmeCdhH4E
• CopperGold HMPK & Green BF HM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nf7Ct9yBr0
• CopperMustard HM & Green HMPK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNlFhQKMIOY
• Green SD & Red Maroon HMPK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjso0lNlfXs

Semi lame picture of one of the mustard boy:

Question: how to cure open-gill in bettas

> i have a male betta with one gill open, do you know how to cure this and why it happens.

This is considered a defect in bettas in our book. Most of the time your bettas will live a normal life, that open-gill wont bother them at all. Spawning-wise, if the open-gill is on one side, then it's ok too. They learn to spawn from the good side ;)

We believe there are 2 reasons why bettas get this problem:

1. genetics
   
2. environment

If your bettas have genetics abnormalities, then there is no way for you to cure it. It's there and inherited. Usually your fry will have a perfect gill when hatched till about 1 month old. Then you started to notice one or both of their gills to open up wide for a much lengthy period of time. Before you know it, you're too late, the gill got stuck and stays open forever. This category theoretically is not really "genetics" since it will only happen at about 1 month old. The gills are used to pass air bubble (if you watch your fry for some time, you'll notice how the air bubbles come out of the gill). Some bettas have weak gill muscles where the air bubble got stuck in the gill, forcing it to open for a much longer period of time. Long exposure of the gill seems to cause the muscle to tear and that injury shows up as your open-gill problem... Many people attributed this to simply bad water condition ;)

The second cause of open-gill problem is caused environmentally. For instance, we regularly use rough fishnet to scoop bettas. What we noticed in small and big bettas, if the gill got stuck on the fishnet and the bettas do not recover from the injury, they will end up with open-gill problem too. You can avoid the problem by changing the fishnet to a cloth-based one, for instance. On rare occasions we see adult bettas develop this problem by flaring for too long period of time. The gill is no more than a constructed muscles, tear happens...

Now, as for the cure, there is no real cure for it. Knowing the cause of the problems usually help you to devise a cure. For instance, we have cured a couple of adults that starting to develop open-gill problem by giving them a good rest after flaring exercises. This has to be done as early as possible, when you notice they're developing it ;)

Question: HM cross HMPK always result in HM

> will all my fry become HM if father HM and mother HMPK? all of them long fin?

Depends. Many people believe that halfmoon genetics involve multiple genes. So, if you cross 2 halfmoons (either HM or HMPK), theoretically you will get some halfmoons. Now, the percentage of halfmoons in your fry depend on the goodness of quality of their parent genes. These days, if you have good eyes in picking pairs, you most definitely can get around 80% halfmoons in the spawn. Note: some breeders only quote the percentage on their males, others include the females as well. We typically count both males and females.

Failing to choose good breeders will yield to....Super Deltas and Deltas. In fact, in the early days of halfmoon development, it is common to get SDs from any halfmoon pairings that you do, irrespective how wonderful the parent fish were! Over the time, the gene pool of halfmoons in bettas getting better and better thus increase in your chance of getting halfmoons as well. You will still get SDs fry if new gene pool is introduced to either of your parent fish (e.g. one of the parents being crossed to non-halfmoon line).

There are lots of ways to increase tail spread including crossing with DT, rosetail, feathertail, and of course a fish with lots of branching. Note that you can get a betta which is rosetail DT or a DT with lots of branching and yet not a rosetail nor feathertail.

As for the fin length. Yes, majority will have longer fins, longer than plakad if that's what you meant by long-fin. The length of the fin depends heavily on the parent's HMPK gene. If the HMPK were a cross from an HM, then you can expect a standard long-fin fry. However, if the female HMPK comes from a pure HMPK lines (assuming it has never been crossed to HM line), then your fry will have a medium long-fin. A medium long-fin is typically longer than your standard HMPK, but not-as-long compared to a full HM fin. Lots of people collapse this category as simply long-fin. We'd rather call them medium-fin for clarity (do you get offended when people refer to SD as HM?)

It is safer to assume that the fin length outcome is the result of permutation of the parents' fin. So, you get 25% HM, 50% medium-fin, and 25% HMPK. So, in majority (75%) you will get short-fin and those medium-fin fry which look very much like short-fin ;)

Question: why some fry bigger than others

Continuing question/answer time, here's another follow up.

> why are some of my fry is bigger than others, and some are too small.
> It seems the smallest fry wont grow at all.they also show slower growing rate.
> is there any related to the food?

If you've done spawning a number of times, you notice that the above problem seems to reoccur frequently. There are a number reasons for it, but it boils down to 2 things:

1. genetic - you never know what the history of your fish. This is hardly likely, since if it was genetic, you would expect most if not all of the fry to be small
2. environment - the most likely cause

Genetic can play a role in making stunt fish, however we dont have much knowledge in this field as yet to say anything conclusive. One thing that we notice though, many extreme feathertail/rosetail will have smaller body compared to their siblings. It seems that the gene that produces excessive branching on the rays also affect other cells on the body, making them slightly smaller.

Let's discuss the 2nd reasoning. Basically, your fry develop on slightly different pace. Assuming you always provide ample food for all of them, there will always be some slow learners in the pool. (note that if you don't provide enough food for the fry, it is pretty obvious that some of them will starve and grow slow).

Feeding experience is important to the fry. Getting them used to the competition of fighting for the food and eating vigorously will ensure that most of your fry develop fast and large. The negative effect of that would be some "shy" fry will be stunt when they see others being too aggressive. If this is continued for longer period, there is no way for you to help those stunt fry to grow any larger.

It is therefore important for you to monitor the fry and separate the big ones to another tank as soon as possible. Usually this happens on 3rd week or earlier (or otherwise you're too late!) Removal of the big ones from the rest of the brood will relieve the pressure for those possible-to-be-stunt fry. If you do this early, the rest of the normal-sized-not-so-big fry will grow and prevent/reduce the number of your possible stunt fry.

What we noticed is that stunt fry will result in a number of conditions:

• tank is too big, fry scattered everywhere, difficult to find food
• tank is too small, fry bumping to each other, some bumps harder than others
• wrong food for wrong stomach - vinegar eels or microworms are not as nutritious and can't be the regular food
• dirty/smelly tank full of gunk
• extreme tank temperature (too cold/hot) rendering your fry to be inactive

As you noted, once they are stunt, it is very difficult to get them un-stunt. You can feed them lots of food, they wont grow any bigger! In fact, we have been experimenting with some of these dwarf to see if there is genetic involved - similar to the theory of giant gene being unstable we suspect dwarf gene exists too and producing semi-random occurrences. We would like to see the outcome of crossing 2 stunt fish (provided we can identify if they are male or female to begin with!)

The rate of stunt-ness varies. Sometimes you get an extreme rate where majority of your fry to be small. Again, assuming genetic is not playing any role, we would suggest you change the way you feed your fry :) In our case, we have around 3 to 10 fry stunt in a 100+ fry, and this is totally acceptable in our dictionary anyway... Most of the time, you wont care about the stunts, just let them be :) So long they're happy...

Question: how to develop to any type of fin and colour

It's been awhile since we're posting, so let's start this with this question below.

> how can i develop some of my betta into any type of fin and colour that we
> desired for?
> for example i have a solid blue OHM males with female plakat with brown body
> and red fin..what will be the fry after i have spawn them?

Before we start the discussion, let's assume that the bettas in your hand support your goals (e.g. there is a chance for the line to achieve the goals). We're not talking about "how to produce super red fish if I only have melano pair" for instance. Despite this is still possible, it will take a much longer route to achieve (read more for background reasoning on this).

Those are 2 *different* types of development and typically very difficult if you want to focus on them on the same time. It is much easier to focus on 1 type first (e.g. the fin) and then continue the development to the 2nd type (e.g. the colour).

So, for instance, it is easier to focus your development to get the "perfect" fin that you are aiming for in, say, 4 generations. If your goal is to get straight nice fin of OHM in 80% of the spawn (e.g. 80% of fry will be OHM with nice fin), then you must develop this line by crossing OHM males with HM or OHM females. Most of the time, crossing it with plakad is not going to get the fin that you want! During this phase, you may need to buy suitable females from other breeders. Be patient, you don't want to waste your "line" by crossing the male with just any female. Each of your male (or female) is so valuable that you must make sure that when they spawn, they will bring you closer to your aim!

Now, say, you've achieved your first goal. It is time to improve the colour of your line by searching for other females that can deliver the colour that you want. You may get the females from one of your spawn, but chances are, you will need to buy suitable females. Note that when you introduce a new female, you never know what the genes this female has, so, on your next spawn, usually you will degrade your first goal (e.g. if you had consistently got 80% OHM in your spawn previously, when you cross any of your males with this new female, the outcome may result you to get only 30% OHM in your brood). This kind of "2 steps forward and 1 step backward" is very common when you introduce new genes. However, this time it is easier for you go to get back to your first goal (of getting 80% OHM in the spawn) - you only need to cross the F1 females of this new line with their "uncle". Remember, the "uncle" has the desired goal (80% OHM goal), hence crossing with them will guarantee that you maintain your first goal while pursuing the 2nd goal. You need to know the timing for when to cross out your bettas.

Short answer for your question. If you cross your OHM male x plakad brown/red female, you will get.....super deltas. if your female is HMPK, then you may get HM fry and of course HMPK (I'm assuming your OHM male also carry HMPK gene; most HM has been crossed to HMPK during its development). Colour-wise, you will get multi-colour. Usually in the form of blue with red-wash (e.g. blue red) and green red. Depending on the genes of the males and females, you may get mustard gas variation too. If any of the fish has marble gene (may not show on the current fish, but they can carry the gene), then you will get marbles thrown as well. Multi-colour is the best starting point for colour-related goal, since you will get a lot more chances of mix-and-match to see if your fry will end up with the good colouration that you're looking for. Consider yourself an artist, use your brush and start painting. You will need a lot of practice and experimentation and it may takes a long time to get the most gorgeous painting in your life, but you'll enjoy the process and the outcome :)

BTW, this has been discussed as well on "tips on achieving your betta goal". If you are focusing on giants, the discussion on distribution of giant genes may help you figure out whatever happened to your spawn :)

Comments welcome folks.

Collapsed fins on fry

This question comes up a number of times. Why, and what to do when, your fry has collapsed fins?

In our experience, there are a number of reasons for the collapsed fins, and if you treat it sooner, usually your fry will recover without any apparent damage.

The solutions depend on the reasons and could be any of these:

• water too cold - bettas are tropical fish, make sure you have water temperature around 20-25C at least.
• water too hot - don't boil your bettas. any water temperature above 28C is not good.
• overcrowded - your fry won't like it when you try to cramp too many fish in a single tank
• mixing with more active fish - if you mix your fry with other fish which are either larger or more active (e.g. move too fast), they'll get scared easily and tend to collapse their fins
• too much disturbance - did you turn that air pump too strong? slow it down or turn it off! Don't turn on the lights 24/7, fry need to sleep too, u know!
  

Hope we don't forget other things, but if we do, let us know so we can include it to the above.

Happy caring for your fry

Some females like them rough!

Spawning is one of the most exciting experience to watch, if you have the chance to. It can be pretty brutal where the male betta will chase and attempt to impress the female betta through a series of show offs.

The chases usually end with the male nipping bits and pieces of your gorgeous female's fins. Prime candidate would be caudal and anal fins, but dorsal gets the same treatment nonetheless.

In our experience, females will only be submissive when the males show that they are physically and genetically (at least felt by the females) superior and they are indeed deserving to be the father of the females' fry. Spawning and courting are just the proof of survival of the fittest concept as practiced by bettas.

What you don't see everyday is when the female has a little "doubt" on the males' suitability to father her offspring. Some females will challenge the males to see whether they are worthy of such crown. These challenges come in the form of a little bit teasing here and there, fighting back to the male during the courting, or simply giving the males that flare to entice him more. Usually the females are convinced on the males' capability when the males started to chase and nip the females.

These challenges occur very frequently when you try to spawn giants. The reason being, we believe, is because the giants have a much larger body size, hence the females are typically not afraid of the males. "You can fight and I can fight better!"

However, what if the females are still not convinced? You will see some brutality where the females would overcome the males, and sadly the males will run off. That's the end of spawning for most case.

When the two poles are in roughly equal strength, you will see some brutalities on both sides. Not only the female will be torn, the male has to enjoy the same :)

Aggressive females, in our opinion, are very desirable. We believe the offspring produced will be of high quality - active, beautiful, and strive to harsh environment (e.g. less sickness). This seems to be indicative of their mothers too, since we noticed that very few of the aggressive females were sick, despite the extent of their injuries. Sometimes we see quite extensive damage to their bodies (predominantly because the giant males delivered extreme blow to the females' bodies) and yet they recover well so that they can spawn again.

Enjoy this video, courtesy of KH (their owner). In it you'll see how the female challenged the male. Not only she challenged him, she even ate the torn pieces! At the end, she was convinced that the male is more than good to father her fry, so they had good spawning.

The 3 minutes movie (cut off from the original as it run well too long)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk7e3cjpHgM

PS. if you WTB (want to buy) these ex-breeders, contact us. KH has indicated that he's more than happy to sell them for the next person who'd like to spawn them. There are reasons why you'd like to purchase ex-breeders, as we posted previously. We highly recommend these bettas if you're dying to get your hands on very good quality giants (and breed them, of course). Sigh....if only we were not too busy, we'd snap them fast :( These bettas are for sale in a couple of days time - we suggested to KH to keep the males longer with the fry ;)

Envy what other people have

When you don't have bettas of your own (or can't afford to have them one way or another), then you can always admire and envy other people's bettas.

Here is a couple of beautiful pictures of KH's bettas... They're all giants and beautiful ! The things that really impressive about them are the fact that they're long fin giants with 32 rays splitting. You don't get that kind of bettas everyday ;)

PS pictures posted on their respective owners' permissions. Some of the photos were taken at our place when they're in transit, others were taken at KH's.

This one is a chunk of tail ripped from a female's caudal. There are 2 root-rays that came out when the male rip her beautiful caudal, your turn to do the counting on how many rays she has ;) This is from the green female...






These are pictures of the copper females. She is OHM with beautiful 32 rays. Next to her is a HM male (about 3 months) for comparison of their sizes ;) Check out her rays too....





This the pic of 1 of the males, HMPK. Thickness of his body is amazing! What's more, look at that dragon scaling ;)


We're still waiting for some more pic, fingers crossed, there should be more to come....

Spawning any of these guys will definitely a lot of fun in producing awesome giants. If you're game and interested in them, give KH a shout (contact us and we'll pass you to him).

Why you should purchase ex-breeders

This question has been asked a couple of times. Should you or shouldn't you purchase ex-breeders? Why would you purchase them anyway?

Our society has been accustomed to purchasing items new. Lots of people don't like used items. In betta breeding, there are reasons to go for one over the other.

Purchasing new bettas

• they're still "virgin", you felt happy when you see them
• they're not exposed to breeding experience yet, hence your "experience" can guide them in the best outcome that you wish them to have
• their cost varies, but usually more expensive depending on the type and features that your bettas have
• combination of their lack of breeding experience + your lack of breeding experience = greater chance of breeding failures
• your choice of bettas limited to whatever available on the market (usually people sell show fish on the market and they're not necessarily breeding-quality)
• their breeding-quality depends on how good your eyes identified their features - inexperience betta keepers will need to learn a lot to properly identify good bettas
  

Purchasing ex-breeders

• they're no longer virgin, they are used items, they are torn. you need to be able to ignore these torns and realize that these ex-breeders are going to be used for breeding again at your place, hence will be torn eventually!
  
• they have been exposed to breeding (presumably successfully), hence your experience in breeding contributes little to the success of their future spawns (presuming you provide them with acceptable breeding environment)
• their cost varies, but usually much cheaper than what they would otherwise cost.
• minimal experience on your side + the bettas' breeding experience usually leads to successful spawn fairly easily
• they are proven to be breeding-quality, at least on the eyes of their previous owner - hence it is important to know where you buy your bettas from and whether you can trust their judgement.
  
• their availability in the market is usually close to nil, you get them direct from their respective owners. many bettas breeders are not willing to release their breeders for a simple reason: you will be able to produce the same quality of fish that they're currently working on, hence introducing competition on their side when they try to sell their fish later. if the ex-breeders are used to produce the next new line, then their owners usually don't really want to release them
  
• due to the above competition reason, sometimes you need to twist bettas owners to release their ex-breeders, and the economy dictates that everything is up for sale "for the right price", hence you may find their prices are easily double if not triple your standard bettas.

Some types of bettas will make the option of purchasing ex-breeders becoming more appealing. For instance, if you're breeding giants (like what we're doing), you may have heard numerous times that "giant is super difficult to breed". Well, that saying is true. It is easier to breed giant bettas when they're small and young, but the result usually is very disappointing since your chosen young giants could have been non-ideal (e.g. they may be not 100% giants since it's hard to identify their quality when they're too young, see more discussion on giant gene distribution). It is probably safe to say that in 100 pairs of true giant bettas spawn attempts, there would be only a very small fraction of them to be successful spawning. We dare to say that the proportion to be about 20%. That certainly has been true proportion in our experiments. Note however that when we refer to true giant bettas, we refer to 3+ inches for your male HMPK and 2.7+ inches for your female HMPK. The size of the female dictates your success!

We had been asked whether we've purchased ex-breeders before. Yes, we had and we continue to do so. In fact, given a chance between purchasing ex-breeders and virgin bettas, we prefer to purchase ex-breeders from trusted betta keepers.

A lot of typical (HM, HMPK, CT) breeder-quality bettas are sold in auction sites, or purchasable direct from their breeders these days. So, this may not necessitate you to purchase ex-breeders. However, if you are presented to purchase ex-breeders from rare lines (such as giant, etc), then we suggest you to snap the chance! These rare lines are very difficult to get and usually the owners will put extended measures to protect their rare lines.

Advanced breeding technique - trisome experience

Say you'd like to spawn your gorgeous betta male with two females, but you don't want to wait for a too long gap between their spawning (perhaps you feel that the rearing time for the fry is exhausting your resources), then this blog will show you an approach to get what you want!

You will need:

1. male1 and female1
2. male2 and female2

You want spawning to happen for male1 with female1 and female2.

You need to make sure that you are there after the spawning to swap the female!

So, here's the step:

1. you need to release both pairs (after conditioning them etc) at the same time. By this time, your males should already have that gorgeous bubblenest and the females are eager to spawn.
2. Monitor your bettas closely, on the first wrap of your pair (say male1 and female1 starts wrapping), try to separate the female. You need to use a non-transparent cage such as cut off milk bottle to cage the female. Do the same thing with female2, if you notice that she's doing her first wrap.
   
3. Now, scoop your female2 into male1 tank. They will do their usual dancing again and then they will wrap.
4. At this point, you get male1 and female2 spawned successfully, congratulation !
5. Once female2 is finished spawning (e.g. she's going away from bubblenest and try to avoid the male) quickly cage female2 and release female1.
6. At this time, female1 will be waiting and ready to spawn that male (remember she saw that male already, and was ready to do wrapping etc), so from her memory, she's just continuing what she paused before.
7. Whoalla....you should get male1 and female1 spawn now, adding female1's eggs to the already deposited eggs in the bubblenest!

Since you're not really using male2 for spawning (rather you use him to beat the hell up of your female2), you can pretty much choose any type of bettas for your male2. We used PK or CT for male2 to maximize his aggressiveness.

Now, if you're intrigued, feel free to try this out. We've tried this method a number of times successfully, so we can say "the more, the merrier". A word of warning, be ready to take care of up to 1000 fry !!!

Advanced breeding technique - extremely low water

Scenario: you've got pair of bettas doing dancing and wrapping, trying their best at spawning.

Problem: they are very eager pair to spawn, but the male can't seem to wrap the female nor the female knows how to put herself for a complete successful wrap. They may wrap, then somewhat slip off, or the female got pushed aside and the male sank like a rock to the bottom of the tank.

Solution: read on ;)

The above problem is quite common when you're dealing with 2 conditions:

1. the female is equal or way too big for the boy to wrap
2. they're inexperience

You can do a number of things, but we'll discuss one approach that we applied ;)

1. you can switch the male/female with more experienced one - in order for this technique to work, you need to move the female to new male (rather than moving the new male to female's tank). We've done this a number of time with great success
2. continue with the original pair, fingers crossed they may learn the technique before any of them giving up or the female dropping eggs
3. continue with the original pair and "force" their environment to work better for their lacking in technique

We've applied the last technique for a pair of K.H.'s giants. The female is big (more than 2.5 inches) and the male is bigger (more than 3.2 inches). The problem is that the female has a very bulky/large body width, the male can't wrap that body with ease. They've been trying to wrap for more than 2 hours without success. The female was exhausted and she was dropping some eggs already....

Applying the last technique to the pair, we've seen successful wrappings at last!

What did we do? Quite simple really...we lowered the water with this formula: male's total length + 1 inch. So, basically we have them spawning in a barely 4 inches height of water! You can use airline tubing to suck out the water, just don't disturb the nest...

Now, you may say, well, that's pretty much a normal water height for spawning, isn't it? No, not really. We typically spawn bettas at about 5 inches of water if they're short fin. Long fin HM usually get about 5 to 6 inches, not much different really. However, these are giants and they're very big! Try to keep your giants in a 5 inches of water, they'll be going crazy. You can see how the male becomes difficult in moving about.

The good thing about this technique is that it forces the male and the female on that confine depth, hence remove the possibility for them to "slip off" during wraps. Basically, once the male wraps the female, the male sinks to the bottom of the tank and with him he carries the female! If the female is somewhat "slip off", at least she's still within very close distance from the male.

You need to watch out for a couple of things though:

1. don't lower the water too much, they can't even wrap if it's too low. As a guide, measure your male in a complete flare position, make sure he has at least 1 inch space to maneuver (e.g. bending his body to wrap the female)
2. don't worry if their movement destroys a bit of the bubble nest. if there are too much erratic movements, you better wait till they're really in "wrapping" mode to lower the water (not lowering the water when they're in "dancing" mode)
3. Obvious enough, you can't apply this technique if the male's nest is obstructed with plants or other things in the tank.

If you notice that either one of them is feeling uncomfortable with this technique, you better increase their water height until they're feeling happy. Sign of uncomfortable varies, so you better watch your fish closely :)

If you're game and want to try this technique (or you know you have failed pair that you want to give another try), you better contact us for a chat to make sure you are ready to apply this technique - time is of the essence during spawning!