Factors influencing giant genes

> I have a pair of giants that live in an outdoor pond.
> A few months while checking on them, I noticed a single fry swimming around with them.
> She is now 4 months old but never grew any bigger than a normal sized betta.
> What kind of ratio of giant to normal sizes do you get in your giant spawns?
> If I breed her with one of my HMPK boys, I should get some half giants, right?


The percentage of giants produced in any spawn to some extent is still governed by the .


Let us try to list some of the very apparent factors that we believe to contribute to production of more giants (for those who are interested in the more politically (or scientifically) correct discussion can close their browser now). The size of the giant depends on a number of things:

1. stability of the gene - this is very similar to HM, crossing 2 HMs won't get 100% HM. some giants have much more stable genes than others. Read the distribution of giant genes link that we've posted awhile back. New giant blood typically only gives about 10% giants (even if both parents are big). Half-giant, apart from the apparent size, also refers to the percentage of giants that only produce about 5% giant offspring in its F1 (when crossed to another giant), at which point its F2 and subsequent FXs will increase its giant-ness percentage.
2. food - starving giant fry will produce stunts and therefore won't be any bigger than typical HMPK, though good giant gene will ensure that even if their size isn't any bigger, their scales and finnage would still be "thicker". If they're still young, you can feed them a lot and you should see their body mass to increase dramatically
3. rosetail gene - rosetail will make the body somewhat smaller than what it would otherwise be. In giants, a 3.5" giant (not showing rosetail but known to come with rosetail trait) will typically only have 2.5" to 3" siblings. unfortunately rosetail is heavily used in production of HM and HMPK to improve their form, and therefore quite difficult to avoid (any HM/HMPK giants that you buy will carry rosetail gene one way or another, even if their current form look like an SD). Extreme rosetail on the other hand has been a controversy for some time with some would pay a leg and an arm to get while others would avoid it like a plague.

Your outdoor adventure is probably due to combination of the above. If you cross her back to the parent and feed any of the offspring properly then you'll get nice giants out of them (ignoring their form or colour etc).

Crossing her with standard HMPK will reduce the percentage of giant-ness. Will you get half-giant? probably. Most probably is that you'll get lots of "slightly-bigger" HMPK (25% giants) rather than half-giant. It should take about F3 in order to recover some satisfactory giants once they're crossed to standard HMPK, that's assuming F2 and F3 will always choose the largest of the spawn.


Good luck on the spawning...

Easter Bettas Sale - Here Come The Dragons

It's Easter again and with the festive seasons come the colourful giants to your door step.

Here are some giants available for those who are wanting great quality fish.

They are still young but should be ready to spawn now - lots of females with eggs there, so prepare your tanks folks.

These come from competition-winner lines and many of them surely show the quality.

Pick up can be arranged, email first.
Courier to most cities cost $25 for as many bettas as you wish.
Cheaper delivery method available - no guarantee on arrival though, you take the risk.

Bulk prices:

• Lot of 10 for giant fancy XL = $150
• Lot of 10 for giant fancy L = $125
• Lot of 10 for giant dragons XL = $180
• Lot of 10 for giant dragons L = $150
• Mixed 10 giant fancy and dragons XL = $165
• Mixed 10 giant fancy and dragons L = $135
• Mixed 10 normal females (fancy, dragon, dumbo, HM, HMPK) = $70

We'll try to get you 5 males and 5 females when available but you may get more males if one of those females "turn out" to be males. Large number of females have very good form making them a bit difficult to differentiate from males.

Individual prices:

• giant dragon = $35 ea or $60 pair
• giant fancy = $30 ea or $50 pair
• giant dumbo (only female) = $45 ea

First come first served as usual. Email us if you're interested.

Here are the pictures of the dragons - many other dragons available, just don't have time to take their photos.




Giant fancy pictures below, some with perfect form, great for competition.



This one is a very nice show quality.




Notice how sharp and nice the female caudal is.



Giant dumbo HM - fins are ruggerized cause they're from community tank.





Go breed the giants.

>> Added: 9 April - some more giants before the battery flat, will add more later.

Red dragon

2 red dragons

Nice scaling

Glass white marble, full of personality

Another show stopper


Young boy recently jarred

Chunky boy (right hand) needing flaring exercise but otherwise very promising in size

We're back !

For those who don't know, we've been away for a good year due to unforeseen matter. Thanks for all the wishes and prayers, everything is slowly coming back to normal now - sort of.

What can we say, all bettas were given away and with the help of a few individuals (thanks KL and GD) we manage to have some fun in keeping some bettas now.

Haven't gotten the chance to sort out all of the emails yet, there are only about 800 of them...Probably won't be able to respond to many of them. If you're looking for some fish for sale awhile back, then tough luck, they were all gone. Keep watching this space though, some are to be posted sooner than you thought. If you're looking for advice or inquiries, you'd be better off resending them again or you'd probably found the answers by now.

Again, look forward to chat with any of you again - definitely miss the fish.

Reflection on current giant batches

It's good to record it somewhere of our reflection on the current giant batches. In a simple words, what's good, what's bad, and what needs improving.

The bad first:

• anal fin is a typical HMPK, a tad long, making it shorter would be good
• some long fin has SD caudal, not quite HM

The good:

• very nice, broad and high dorsal. Some HMPK shows dorsal broadness indicative of DT despite no DT gene
• HMPK has awesome form, nearly 100% shortfin males are HMPK with close to perfect D shape
• body is thick and big, pretty strong indicative of giant genes
• rays quite thick
  

What can be improved:

• more colours would be good, currently all are blue/red, green/red, copper-ish, black orchid, green, blue, marbles.
• ray branching varies from 2, 4, to 8. Majority males are in the area of 4 branches. Not sure if they'll branch further (cause parents were 16 rays). Indicative of fresh new bloods in this line, still unstable as far as ray counts go.
  
• caudal for long fin needs improvement by crossing to siblings or another good-caudal fish
• while majority is large size giants, only small (maybe 20%?) will be true giants. Crossing the largest ones will improve the odds further.
  

Top ten Mastercart betta commercials

Yes, the title has that mistake on purpose :-)

10. A pair of bettas $150, tank setup $200, your bettas finally spawned, priceless.

9. Gold giant pair $250, deluxe breeding tank $80, your bettas decided "be friends", priceless.

8. New barrack $350, DYI sump toolkit $55, mobbing your floor in the morning, priceless.

7. Gravel $20, new rainbow lighting $12, betta caught on artificial plant, priceless.

6. Heaters $200, (overdue) electricity bill $600, melted frozen food, priceless.

5. Live blackworms $100, home-made chopping kit $3, watching your fry choking on worms, priceless.

4. Buying MyBettas' 10 fish $100, DYI barrack $150, finding 4 dried bettas on the floor in the morning, priceless.

3. Imported pair $150, tank filter $40, your only-10-survived fry eating BBS, priceless.

2. Spawning ebook $10, buying that gorgeous HM male $100, looking his tail shredded by your 'female', priceless.

1. Moving house $500, taking your in-laws to dinner $400, their cat munch on your bettas, priceless.

How do you know if it's really a giant?

This question has been raised so many times and recently this has been raised by a particular buyer (again), so we thought we better explain it here and explore this further. We'll update this blog as we go in showing the growth and progress of 1 particular male...

Before we delve deep, let's talk about the logic behind it first. If you buy adult giant, then there is doubt, it's easy to measure them. Just get your ruler, see if they're bigger than 2.5 inches for HMPK, and you're set - they are giant. Whether they are 75% giant or 100% true giant, that's different story, but at least you can be certain that they are giants. A couple of example of such large giants are shown here for males and females or our current for-sale females. On rare occasions, we could be lucky to show such pictorial comparisons - when we have standard HM/HMPK lines going on the same time. Unfortunately, these days we can't do that, we don't have time for multiple batches of spawning, so we only spawn 1 or 2 pairs every a couple of months....

But what if what you've got is merely juveniles? There is no point of reference to compare them. The only thing that you need to be aware is their age and what size they are currently.

So, here is an example of our current giant spawn on sale. When you get them, the HMPK will be the size of your standard adult HMPK, and the HM barely gets to the size of standard adult HM.

The first comment that you'd hear from uneducated eyes would be "it's not really that big, isn't it?". Are we irritated or offended with such comments? No, not at all :-) When you have started breeding your own, you'll appreciate much more of their giant-ness, as mentioned on point 4 of this post "You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? Go breed bettas and show us what you meant."

While we can't be sure whether this particular boy is a true giant or merely 75% giant, we are certain that he's a giant. In fact we're willing to bet on it - send your wager on email, we'll start gambling racket ;). Currently he's 1.5 month old or so (definitely less than 2 months old), and he has the size of standard adult HMPK. Yes, he's not very big yet, but wait a minute....how old is your standard adult HMPK? They are at least 1 year old if not much older (many bettas sold in your LFS range from 1 year to 1.5 year old, occasionally you've got 8 or 9 months old too). So, here you have a 1.5 months old betta with the size of a 1 year old. Now, that's perhaps a strong statement only understood by people who breed bettas - cause you won't have a clue what a standard 1.5 month old betta looks like unless you've bred them and rear them! For those who wants to know, the average 1.5 months old standard betta would be so tiny, you can't even yet identify whether they are male or female.

Anyway, rather than trying to explain everything through words, we thought we'll show you the progress of 1 single boy from the current for-sale batch. No, he's not the biggest of them all, nor he is our next choice of breeder. He's just an ordinary giant betta being pulled from the for-sale lot for the very reason of this comparisons.

1.5 months old, size of standard adult betta.


We'll update this in the interval of 2 weeks, till he's about 2.5 inches or more. This should take a good 1 or 2 months of update :-)

For those who have standard HMPK that you'd like to compare to this boy, shoot us email and we'll see what we can do to compare them side by side. It sounded silly to go to LFS and purchase an HMPK just to do such comparison, particularly if we're not interested in maintaining pure HMPK lines...

Advanced breeding technique - conquering "let's be friend" bettas

Nothing annoys you more than buying very expensive pair of bettas only to find that they're more than happy just "be friend" rather than doing the real spawning. This surprisingly happens very frequently to many beginners (and also advanced) breeders.

Typically, you'd have male and female eager to spawn, flare like crazy, but when you put them together, they're not getting into any actions even after you've left them for a week or two there. Sad story is, they may get tired and given up on spawning :(

There are multitude of reasons why they like to be friends only, and that's for you to analyze and figure out. Some techniques such as putting another male in the tank (to get his ego up and charging up), or pairing with another female, etc are left for you to try out. On this blog, we're going to explore one technique based on trisome experience that has been quite successful for us from time to time.

Why do you want to still pursue the spawning for them? Well, perhaps because they have very nice genes that you like, but whatever the reasons, it has to be strong enough that you want them to spawn. One example when we wanted our pair to spawn was when we desperately wanted to get the male's gene since he was the last of his line and the female was the best that we've got. That boy was sulking, practically ignored the female after 2nd day of meeting, and the same goes for the female...Definitely not a good sight particularly when you have such a high hope for them.

So, in order for this technique to be successful, you need to make sure that both the male and female are still interested, they still flare occasionally or at least there is intention from them to show off and perhaps get into spawning at later stage - go ask your bettas direct, they'll tell you up front of their real intentions...

What do you need? You need another pair of bettas. This is the rundown list of their conditions:

1. Let's call Male1 and Female1 are the pair that you really wanted to spawn
2. Let's call Male2 and Female2 are your bait.
3. Female2 has to be smaller and inferior than Male1. Male1 has to feel that he's macho again, and female2 is interested in spawning with him. Female2 can come from any line, anything that you don't really care much about (or less important than your female1)
   
4. Male2 has to be aggressive and brutal. He doesn't have to be the best looking betta that you have, so long he's aggressive, you're good to go
5. Condition them well, they won't breed if you don't feed them well, no matter how big or old they might be.
   

Now, say you've known that either the male1 or female1 has that history for being friends. Now you need to make sure that male1 builds nice bubblenest, spawning has to happen when there is bubblenest on most occasion - some odd couple may spawn without bubblenest, but the nature has dictated that they ought to use the nest! How do you get the male to build the nest? Well, pair him up with female2, your bait female. As said, female2 has to be smaller than male1, less aggressive etc. Only when you get a good nest that you can try this technique, cause otherwise you might as well put your male for display purposes only.

When you notice that male1 has built half of the nest, a good small spoon size, you need to put female1 with male2 in another tank, and let her get beaten up. She has to feel submissive and ready to release that eggs. We don't care if male2 has built nest or not, but typically he would have built a nice nest too. So, while the 2 pairs seemingly progressing their spawning attempt (male1 trying his best to build his nest, male2 trying his best to beat female1), you need to watch for both pairs on 2 conditions (usually they come very close to happen on the same time):

1. male1 has built nice nest, bigger and thicker, but you predict that he'll "be friend" again
2. female1 is nearly submissive and wanted to get wrapped by male2

Once the above condition happens, which typically happens on 2nd or 3rd day (or longer, depending the nature of your pairs), you can do the swapping. Take female1 out, put her into male1 tank, remove female2 from the tank. They'll get a bit of dancing again, and by this time the male has already got that nice nest and the female is beaten up. You may notice that the female would try the water again by flaring to the male, but usually she'll get into action within a good an hour or so. After all, she's holding all of those eggs and they're about to burst out, she usually won't have much choice ;)

This technique requires you to monitor them closely. You don't need to be expert in bettas spawning to do this technique, but it does require you to get a good feel on the timing. If your timing is not right, you won't get them to spawn. If you take out female1 too early to join male1, she may still have that strength to hold the eggs and therefore she's not going to release them. A good time to introduce her to male1 typically when you started to notice a few eggs started to fall off, or she gets into spawning wrap with male2.

If you notice that male1 is ready to get into sulking mode before female1 is ready, you can take out female2 out of his tank and left him alone there. He needs to be alone, don't let him get into sulking mode or "be friend" mode. How do you know he's getting "be friend" mode? Well, you notice that he doesn't want to maintain his nest anymore, or they go their separate corners of the tank, or he no longer chases the female or tease her. Just take her out of the tank. If you're concerned that he's not maintaining his nest anymore, you can introduce another male there just to get him flaring again (usually this is not enough to get him maintain the nest, but at least he won't be sulking). After a period of no-female there, you can re-introduce the female or new female, just to get him build/maintain the nest. Ensuring this male maintains his nest would be the most difficult step for this technique, since you need him to spawn successfully.

Anyway, once you've introduced female1 to male1, you may notice that female1 will be eager to get spawning done (after all, she's ready to do it with male2 when you interrupted them). Male1 may not yet ready though, he's basically only done half of the job - building bubblenest. He's not mentally ready to do the wrapping yet. So, you'll notice that he chases the female initially, but then you also notice that the female is a lot more submissive now, she'll come under the nest willingly, and that usually leads to successful spawn :-)

What's another lesson that we learn here? Don't throw away your bettas simply they don't fit into your plan. As you can see, you need the help of male2 and female2 to do the right job for your male1/female1 pair. Keep as many pairs of bettas handy, no matter how ugly or unsuitable they are for your plan, you need their help one of those days. Perhaps this is also a good reason for buying bulk ;)

So, there you go, a technique that you can try yourself, if you find that you really want to get something out of your precious pair :) Happy spawning, don't be afraid to experiment, you don't have anything to lose - well, your pair had decided to be friend previously, what worst than having an expensive display pair when your main goal of purchasing them was to get a spawn!

Breeding bait - getting pairs for free

We've given this some thought and perhaps you'll be interested in it too.

A simple question: what does it take to get you to start breeding - apart from our top 10 reasons?

Well, here's the proposal. You purchase any of our fish (whatever lot available at any time when we have a sale, such as from current sale), and if you manage to spawn them and get some fry, if you would like to cross the fry to one of our currently-for-sale bettas, we'll give our bettas (that you're interested in) for free! Limit 1 pair per customer per line of bettas you've purchased from us (it doesn't mean that 1 customer only can get 1 pair, you can get many pairs so long you've spawned whatever lines you've initially purchased from us).

Basically the steps would be:

1. you buy any bettas we have for sale (call this F1).
2. you spawn these bettas (amongst themselves or with your existing bettas)
3. you record the spawning in a blog, forum, pictures of their progress, whatever way for verification
4. when F1 fry is big enough, and if we happen to have some bettas for sale that you're interested to cross your F1 fry to, let us know.
5. we'll give a pair of bettas that you're interested in for free...
6. you'll spawn F1 fry with the new betta(s), and if successful, you can claim yet another free pair from us when your F2 fry is ready (and we have more stock for sale), loop back to step 3.
   

No restriction on what you spawn your bettas with, so long at least 1 of the bettas ought to be coming from us - we're interested on how the line continues too, and perhaps wanting to buy from you ;) Also no restriction on which pair that you're interested in to get for free, so long we have them for sale, you can have them.

In order to qualify for the next free pair, you need to spawn F1's fry to one of the bettas that you've got for free (as mentioned on step 6). Same procedure applies. So, practically, you are helping us to keep the line going and we're helping you to supply your stock so long you're interested in breeding them. Win-win, don't you think?

Let us know if you're interested and happy breeding. For those reading this and had purchased from us in the past, yes, you're qualified to get your free bettas if you'd like to cross your spawn to any of ours - provided you've got your spawn log handy.

Everyone loves a bargain

As that saying "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys", you need to invest a bit to get good stock. We've known so many buyers who are strapped for cash (or so they say) and therefore they negotiate heart and soul over every little things. Perhaps in some ways they save that extra $$$ and on the same time felt good about the deal, but what they ought to remember is that the sellers typically don't make much money over the stock they're selling, therefore the buyers' win is nothing more than imposing the sellers to consume the lost.

Most betta sellers are no difference, they sell their stock (or sell other's stock) with little margin. Squeezing the price isn't helping, particularly if the bulk of the cost is not on the initial price of the stock but rather on other associated costs such as importation or shipping. Sure, there are greedy sellers who'd charge an arm and a leg for their stock but that's what a free market is about, you have the choice to get whoever offers the most cost-effective and yet appealing bettas to you.

Why do we mention this? Well, not because we frequently challenged in such situation, which we do, but because a couple of sellers from o'seas are complaining on this issue too. Bare that in mind when you do your bargaining, don't over do it, or at least don't impose too much. Demanding too much from the sellers is simply a turn off and giving bad image to the rest of us.

If you really must bargain, at least you need to know whether they are a breeder or a reseller. Some have a clear status but the bulk of them are difficult to guess. Statement such as "from our farm" doesn't mean they really have a farm! These are common misconception since a reseller considers their source as their own farms :) Breeders have tendency to give good deals whereas resellers need to make a bit of profit from their purchases, hence you may not get much bargaining power with them.

Overall, the price of the goods reflect their quality. Most of giants sold for instance are sub-standard within their categories, but that's the way it is, the economy is tough and therefore quality sold needs to balance with what's affordable.

Serious breeders typically only purchase good quality stock. You either need good eyes to spot the good quality ones, or you know the stock quality of the sellers'. We've had our fair share of mistakes in spotting good vs bad quality stock, but over the time we'd like to think that we've learnt from our experience.

When a deal is too good to be true, then there usually is a catch with it. On the same token, when the deal is too expensive, there is a chance someone is ripping you off :) So, either way, you're stuck in the middle trying to figure it all out...

Go, hunt for good bargains, be honest to the sellers and get a win-win situation. When both parties achieve win-win, the relationships will carry on to the future purchases and it eases your trouble on identifying trusted sellers.

Biosecurity Australia - the last defence against whatsitsname

Or so some people think.

You can cut them a little bit slack, they don't care so much about hobbyists, what matters is the security of our little wiggly tailed fish in (commercial) ponds throughout Australia. Some joke heard includes "who the #$%^ cares about fish in rivers/ponds and who are the idiots who'd import fish to feed local fish". Well, you can scream your heart out, but the pollies aint gonna hear it - they've got their headphones on.

It will make life a lot harder to get your bettas, not to mention it costs more and more than what they are today - even today's standard is way too high already!

It brings back the memory of voting, you don't like both sides but you ought to stand for something. For those who'd like to put a little bit of resistance, you can go to online petition. If you don't have a clue what it is, chances are it won't affect you yet, but nonetheless you can show a bit of support and fill the petition anyway - who knows you'll be into bettas/cichlids/etc soon and by that time it'll be too late for your vote to count for anything.

The odds are not good, so don't bet on it. What you can bet, however, is to be self-sustain as soon as possible. If you haven't started breeding yet, start now. If you haven't stocked up yet, buy more bettas and be ready. We all know that the tsunami will come, but it seems to come a lot sooner and you're running out of time to save the hobby by not doing anything :(

Anyway, if you seriously want to do something about it, you'll find ways. As for us, we'll give you hands on breeding if that helps at all. Give us a shout ;)

Top ten reasons to start breeding bettas

10. You know you want more of them, the genes must be preserved!

9. If the parent costs you $100 a pop, imagine how much $$$ will you get for all the offspring!

8. Seriously, how hard could it be to get these two to spawn!!?

7. He's kinda lonely there. Wouldn't it be fun to have a full house of these so called fighters?

6. I dare you to do spawn them! Did I hear chicken noises?

5. Do you believe that liar? He said black crosses white produced red, blue, and green - you must try it out!

4. You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? Go breed bettas and show us what you meant.

3. Revenge of a loyal customer: you've bought enough from pet shop, time for them to buy from you.

2. When you've spawned successfully, you get green belt. Spawn more to get black belt - we bow to you O King of Bettas.

1. You ran out of money for the dope, selling the other kidney is not an option, time to make more of this fish and sell them.

Why buy bettas bulk?

Lots of people keep asking why we only sell bulk and rarely per individual bettas. A very common reason is that we don't have time to deal with individual betta (taking pictures, sending per fish basis, etc).

Things that you are not aware is that we sell bulk because learning from our experience as buyer we always wanted the seller to sell bulk!

The thing that you may not be aware of is that, if you want to delve into breeding bettas, which is what we're hoping you do, then you need to buy bulk. Breeding requires trial and error, particularly for new breeders, and lots of the time you fail with 1 pair and may get very successful with another pairing. If you only buy 1 pair, then you will soon discover that you need to purchase yet another pair and start the process again.

Bulk buying is also advantageous if you want to make sure that you get the 'best' genes out of the line. It's akin to choosing the best of the brood in a spawn of 300 fry. One of the fry would be the best of your choice to continue to the next level, why settle with something else? Spawn them as many times, choose the best of any combination, and move on. Chances are, you will not be able to go back on your decision once you've spawned them. It takes a good 2 or 3 months till you know the outcome of your pairing choice :) Buying bulk gives you that choice to choose from the pack and therefore prioritize your breeding plan.

Sure there are other advantages such as saving shipping money, getting them bulk also saves you lots of money that otherwise cost too much to buy them individually. Some people buy bulk cause they want to populate their display tanks, after all, bettas are very beautiful fish to display. Why pay the premium for individual fish when you can get lots of them cheaper ;)

The beauty of buying bulk, as we like to enjoy it from time to time, is getting surprises on what you get. In most cases we won't know what we sent you, they're too young to judge on their quality. There are times we realized that we've sold our best of the brood unknowingly till the buyer shows the fish at much later stage. Basically you get the first pick (randomly through us) of the brood. Some buyers were even willing to pay higher price so long they can pick and choose what they're buying. That's more than acceptable so long they stick with the agreed number of fish per transaction - remember, selling bulk helps us to reduce the number of fish in our stock.

One of the question raised was whether buying bulk of 10 is good enough to "cover all bases". We don't believe so, no. In order to get a pair of the best of the brood, you will need more than 5 pairs to see what kind of pairing is preferable, and with the trial and error (with failure is taken into account) you will need at least 2 of the same males for every plan that you have. If you simply want to "just spawn" a pair, then yes, 10 is a good number to start. But if you are being choosy or simply have plans then you may want to consider to get more than 10.

Reflecting back, we were much more delighted if someone would be able to sell us bulk, if only importation cost isn't so high. Locally available stock can't satisfy our needs/goals and most of the time we ended up importing the necessary fish.

Advice on breeding bettas

There are just too many questions asked over the years, something along the line of "I want to start breeding bettas, but I'm too ..., what are your advice?"

Well, there are too many advices that we (and many other people) can give, perhaps it would take weeks for you to understand/read them all, so we better boil down to bullet points :)

The Nike's approach
The "just do it" is perhaps the best we can offer. You don't know how it feels until you do it. Your first try could be a great success, but there always be something to learn even if it was the greatest failure. It's a journey of self discovery, you get to know your bettas as well as you get to know yourself (of your nervousness, patience, happiness, sadness, anger, etc).

Calm yourself down
Nervous is common but be prepared. Don't over-prepared since that usually triggers more nervousness on your part. Prepare a basic check list, so long you know how/what to do with things not in the checklist, then you're good to go. Trying to work out the best lighting for breeding is the wrong priority in the list!

Commitment
You need lots of it. Don't breed if you are not willing to commit time, money, resources. Not knowing where to dump your bettas is not an excuse, cause you always can approach your LFS to sell them off. Many LFS are happy to buy bettas locally. Sure, you may not get much from them but was that the excuse of you not breeding?

A lonely journey is excruciating, get a friend!
No one asks you to go through breeding experience alone, make sure you always have friends to help you out, giving you advice, encourage you, or basically pat you in the back "you're doing just fine". There are forums with similar minded people, join them. You're reading this blog, aren't you, so you know we're here as well ;)

Get a map
This is just an analogy. Breeding bettas is similar to driving through unknown city. The first thing you'd do if you want to drive through unknown city is to get a map. But even when you look at the map of the city, most of the time you don't have much a clue what the 'real' road condition looks like. So, before you breed, you need to map out the journey. Start writing your map. You are "here", you want to get "there", here are the main intersections, how do you know what certain events/intersections look like, what do you need to do when you get to that point, should you take a left turn or the right? To get an idea of what your breeding map looks like, read articles on the net/forums/blogs/etc.

Find a reason, a desire
Don't start breeding "just because". You need to have a goal, a desire, a strong reason why you think you'd like to start breeding. The reason could be as simple as "I want to get to the next stage", or it could be as religiously as "I'd like to improve Australia's betta quality". Some people settles on "I'm fascinated with their vibrant colours". Without strong reason/desire, your breeding will fail. Not because your bettas failed spawning, but simply because you've given up too early. Breeding bettas is very challenging, at times very frustrating, but also very rewarding when you are successful. Reminding yourself of your reasons/desires will keep you motivated and strong during the stressful times, and you gonna need that!

Be creative
Some people said "I don't have the right environment (tanks) for breeding". These kinds of excuses are just that, excuses. We've bred bettas in all sorts of environment, from a small 10cm x 10cm cube, to a 4 footer, to a 2 footer that we 'split' into 10 compartments with plastic boards, etc. If you have the desire to do it, anything will do. You need to be a little creative in solving your problems. Remember the Nike's approach ;) If we gonna wait for you to get all the necessary gears in place, we may ended up waiting till next year, and by that time your desire is all but gone...

Other than the above, you only need to know the basic checklist for breeding bettas. There are too many articles written on this (including numerous covered in this blog), just grab one. Simple checklist on "choose good male + female", "cage female in chamber", etc, should be a common knowledge to you by now. No need to get worried over tiny details, you should be ok so long you do draw a good "map".

Good luck on your spawning.

Giant active bunch

Just a short movie of the current spawns. We merge them to a big tank yesterday since they have the same hatch date. That saves all of rearing time for us :)

What interesting from this bunch is that they are just a month old but seems to be very competitive. Coming from HM giant lines, there may also be a small few HMPK thrown in. Both males and females flare :) Slightly difficult to differentiate between males and females for some of them, but there are some outstanding males and females sprouting already. We noticed some OHM form there too, that's a good sign. Branching is at 4 at the moment with some few already at 8. No rosetail gene that we're aware of, but we shall see how it turns out.

It's always amusing to watch them flare on every feeding time - since that's the only time we are around. Guess how frequent we need to change their water...Every day! These guys produce so much gunk that every night we have no option but to change their water first before feeding them, they can't see the food! They have consumed a full 1L live worms in 2 weeks time. Growing them would cost a leg and an arm, but that's the nature of these giants.

They are yet to be jarred, perhaps tomorrow or the day after. Lots of jars to be cleaned before they can be occupied.

Enjoy the movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJFZV5qbvg

They are available for sale, for those interested. Random 10 bettas at $100 including shipping. Buy more and you've got discount too, of course. While stock last and our apologies again: we can't take individual pictures or select any particular fish for your order - there is simply no time for us to do that. First come first served ;) And before we forget, you *may* see a nip on your ordered bettas, watch the movie and you'll understand why we can't control such small nipping. Definitely no major nipping yet ;)

They grow extremely fast, barely a week ago they were not even sprouting and flaring much yet :) We're more than looking forward to getting good giant genes out of them.

If you want them, email us.

>> Update, here is a sample picture of one of the boys. Most of them are of similar quality, nice form :)

1) avail, bonus


>> Update, for those looking for HMPK, it's confirmed. Some HMPK in the batch. Enjoy their low resolution photos :)

2) similar fish avail




3) similar avail


4) similar fish avail


>> More pix as they're freshly jarred...Some lucky ones will depart very soon :)


5) similar avail


6) similar avail, bonus


7) avail


8) similar avail


9) avail


10) similar avail


Some have requested that they'd like to choose what to be sent to them. We thought "fair enough". Here's your chance, have a choose from the above pictures, you can only choose 3 from the above. If they are avail, then they'll go to you, otherwise we'll let you know if something similar avail ("similar" refers to form, not to colour - when we say they are similar, you will get same exact form). So, 3 of your choice, and 7 randomly from us. The random ones will come from newly jarred bettas and if they are females, they will come from the grow out tank. First come first served, your chosen fish may be offered to the first person who wants it and pays for it! Keep watch of this page, we'll post more pictures of the males AND females! Yes, there are some very promising females seen in the tank and they'll be made available too. Remember, we haven't even reserved them for our stock yet, hence you'll get the first pick of some of the very best :)

Also, apologies for those who felt disadvantaged on the above offer (those who purchased from us previously and didn't have the chance to get the pick). If you would like to purchase more from us, you get to pick up to 5 of your choice out of the bulk of 10.

Some pictures above are marked "bonus". You can pick 1 as your bonus provided you buy 1 lot, for free, while stock lasts. They are free because there is something wrong with them! It could be torn anal fin (picture could be taken prior to the torn), it could be SD form, it could be slight imperfection on one of the fin (imperfection in our eyes, which usually very minor in other people's eyes), etc. Only about 5 fish available as bonus. Contact us if you want to know what's wrong with your chosen one.

>> Update, took a few more pix of newly jarred ones, a bit of accidental fight on one of them... Can't take pix of females, running out of jars :(

11. Only a few of black orchids, here's one of them.


12. Also very few copper green marble, nice colouration...


13. This one is nice pattern with great attitude too. Definitely one to watch for.


14. Can't get enough of this guy, aggressive and moving fast. Slight OHMPK.




Body thickness for the boys above (and their females) are really nice. Over the weekend we'll need to sit down and properly select a few for our next generation. In the meantime, any of the above that you're interested, you better yell fast before they're gone! Special note to those HMPK fanatic, they are bloody good form, go get them now!

Our apologies for those who have special requests (e.g. choose X, Y, or wanting to pickup/visit us), time is not permitting and that's why we cover the postage to get a quick sale without much fuss....Thanks for understanding.

>> PS. For those intrigue on the size and progress of these batches, we've picked 1 male above and started to track his development size on this post. It'll be updated every 2 weeks or so, so you better follow it to see or compare what you've got there with what we've got (and how we grow him).

>> Warning: DO NOT try to spawn them yet, despite their perceived standard adult bettas size. They're only 1.5 months old atm. Instead, feed them lots and lots of food and you'll be amaze on how big they'll get...

Question: can I spawn giant with standard bettas

> i have giant male and female but fail to spawn them, can i spawn each giant
> with normal betta?

This depends heavily on their sizes. If the size of the giant male is slightly bigger than the female (e.g. he's still young or he's only half-giant), yes, they will spawn. If your giant male is way too big compared to the standard female betta, then chances he will fail at wrapping her. She'll just pass through the big loop. On the same logic, usually if you try to spawn a giant female against standard betta, you will fail due to her too-big size for the male to wrap. You may be successful if you manage to find a slightly bigger HM male - wrapping in this case would be challenging but you will get a small percentage of hatched eggs.

In the world of bettas, you will only have successful spawning when both male and female are ready and interested. Giant is no difference, but you do need a lot of interest from them above your typical standard bettas :)

Good luck on the spawn.

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