dilemma dilemma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

youngsters for sale

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

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

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

Email at mybettas at gmail dot com

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

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

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

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

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

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

simplified sale costing

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

per pair: $40
per individual: $30

shipping: $25 to east coast

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

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

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

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

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

Stock updated, special delivery option for some states

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking forward to some nice looking giants long fin

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

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

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

Check out our limited new stock!

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

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

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

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

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

challengers wanted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

spawning service is postponed

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

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

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

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

giant video spawn

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

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

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


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

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

here's the video

pecking order

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

david and goliath

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy.

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







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

spawning 101

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

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

Preparation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RSS and ATOM links above

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

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

Read the post from any of your favourite readers :)

sample pic

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

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





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

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


edit: strike-through lot is accounted for

the joy of courier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

failed spawn, why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

nice surprise: fry under the hood

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

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

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

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

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

what's coming and going

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

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

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

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

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

Standard quality (age 3.5-4.5 months):

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

Reject quality (age 2.5 months):

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

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

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