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!

Betta hobby: barriers for entry and solutions

Too many people are turned off to betta keeping. Main reasons are all well-known such as:

1. too expensive
2. not enough time
3. not enough stock available

Too expensive

If you're getting your bettas imported, then yes, it will ended up to be too expensive. Importation cost usually is equal to the cost of your fish if not more! Purchasing a USD20 fish will cost you around AUD25 to AUD30 to import. Don't forget your shipping cost as well, that would be around AUD20 to 25. The old mathematics of "purchase more to reduce cost" doesn't actually work here since the more you purchase, the more you're paying for importation cost anyway. If you purchase a betta, would you just purchase one? Rationale governs that you purchase more than one, or perhaps just a single pair. On average purchasing 2 pairs of bettas costs around AUD220 (USD40 per pair, AUD100 total import, AUD20 shipping) - the hobby is looking more and more distant for everyone to afford...

Sharing shipping cost can reduce your cost a little bit, hence do that whenever you can to share with other fellow buyers.

At the end of the day, you are at the mercy of your importer/transhipper. Unfortunately nothing can be done about that, except if your importer/transhiper would be so kindly reduce the fee ;)

Your best option would be to join similar-minded people in the hobby, such as SSS, or any betta forums where you can find established breeders selling their stock for more-than-reasonable price.

Not enough time

You either need to make the time, or organize your timing better. Sometimes this is very difficult choice when mixed with family, job, and life in general. Surprisingly, if you take care of your bettas on a strict routine/regime, you may find that they don't actually take much of your time.

For instance, we have been successful on keeping bettas on the following schedule:

• 5am : first feeding, quickly check any bettas needing attention
• 7pm: second feeding, time to flare them and enjoy for a good half to one hour

This doesn't work lately because of job traveling. Of course we need to adjust the above if we are spawning any of the bettas.

When you spawned your bettas, you need to be able to commit yourself to 3 or 4 meals a day for that tiny fry of yours. Usually this is required for the first 1.5 months, then you can relax a bit and let them join the adult feeding regime.

Some have been quite successful in feeding their bettas every other day (i.e. once every 2 or 3 days). We usually don't suggest this unless you're feeding a 4+ months old bettas, but then you need to try to see what works for you.

Not enough stock available

What can we say, there always be not enough stock, despite you may have browsed through your forums or auction sites. But if you're a bit relax on things, you may find a similar, or good enough stock. For instance, if you're looking for that awesome dragon, may you settle on full-mask perhaps? You only need to cross the full-mask to a poorer-quality dragon to produce that awesome dragon that you've been dreaming on. Creativity helps here.

Looking back the hobby for these past couple of years, it has been apparent that it will remain slow and a lot of work is needed to attract more people into the hobby. The funny thing about the hobby is...it's a hobby, which means there shouldn't be needing any attractions to begin with! Unfortunately the barriers, particularly the cost, is way too high for some, even if they're experienced breeders like us. We look forward for other initiatives such as CBS or plain old let's share the cost together.

Until then, give us a shout if you need any of our stock (only when we do have some). Hope we can share them with you and together we can ease the entry barrier.

Bettas breeding venture, anything is possible

When we thought to give breeding a rest, an offer comes from KL, his partner BR, and their friend JN, to help them out in breeding quest - something similar to CBS, but confined to them ;)

They offered a very nice deal. We've got to choose a new set of breeders (and current breeders that we have; something that *they* and *us* like), they pay for the costs, they have all the tanks prepared, and we come once a week to see how they go with the fish (simply because they're in a short driving distance from us).

The reward for us would be up to 20% of the fry produced ;) We'd rather have some best pairs from the spawn than that kind of number of fry, nonetheless it's still nice gesture...

Given we don't have much of the time to care for any of our fish, it's refreshing to know that we still can breed bettas despite they're not "our own".

They have large tanks, it's a little bit worrying on the very large number of spawns and fry to be produced, but they seem to be committed to it and in their own words "we've got plenty of time to prepare for the foods".

We have chosen 3 males and 3 females for them coming on the next shipment - mixture of HMPK and HM giants (geno at least). Pending all is ok, the breeding should start in a few weeks time.

Pictures coming soon, once all has been confirmed.

Early breeder identification

Continuing from prev topic on identifying breeders, let us show one of the fish that may become breeder.

The prev discussion mainly showed giant bettas and therefore fairly easily identifiable as breeder at young age. What if you're having "just that typical betta" and yet you'd like to find out if your fish is a breeder or not?

Well, here is an example:



Now, the boy is nearly 2 months old. Sure, you may have some of your fish look just like him, but then what would be the criteria that we considered to be good breeder off this boy?

First of all, notice that the boy has very nice wide-spread fins: caudal, dorsal, and anal are all wide, nicely spread. Secondly, if you're focusing on green/turq, he's a bonus, since he has no red wash (nor any of his siblings). He's a clean turq...Furthermore, he is very aggressive, this is always a major requirement for any breeder.

Let us pay attention to his fins. On all of his fins, you notice that they all have that "white edges" that indicate further growth of the fins is about to come. Although all young fish will have their fins growing further, the white edges/tips on all-rays usually indicate a further growth AND branching.

The anal fin is a nicely spread fin, square in shape, and not too long or too pointy. Slight length on anal fin (compared to caudal) is typical unless you're aiming to get symmetrical plakats (short fins bettas).

The boy will end up with slight heavy branching and by all means this is one of the preferred breeders in our categories. He may show up as OHM, just a tad, at later stage.

Note that this topic identifies breeders based on form rather than anything else. Your goals could be completely different than ours and therefore you may not agree completely with this topic. Hope you have some fun identifying your next breeders :)

New year and slowing down

d We've been slowing down on bettas lately, mainly due to work and family commitments. However, it's not to say we stop altogether ;)

Lots of stock had been cleared last year, what's left is only a handful of breeders that, none of which unfortunately, we have time to breed :(

Anyway, time to clean up the tank after a much-deserved holiday. Here's whats in stock for clearance:

• 4 males of adult HM, ready to spawn, never spawned before, age 6-8 months, each $30
  
• 2 males of ex-breeders HM, 50% giant, active and eager to spawn again, each $10
• 10 pairs of HM juvies (well, maybe 1 HMPK), 1.5 to 2 months, see pix below, each pair $20

Shipping to east coast $25.

Some pix of the juvies, dirty tanks and blurred, they're much better up close but good enough for your reference. Colours avail (you request or get random sent to you instead): copper red, copper greyish, turquoise.







Here is a sample of adult HM boy (carry giant):






Beautiful Copper Gold. He has very nice straight caudal rays, something that you may look for a breeder for a show fish ;)







The juvies, turq, active and bubbly...




This one just couldn't stop building his bubblenest...Just love the size and thickness of that nest :)






Some notable quality ones, perhaps will turn out as breeders. For now, they're just as awesome as the rest.




Last one, a heavy feathertail, for those who are interested in using him:

OctoberFest Juvies

Fresh from the grow up tanks, nicely coloured with great attitudes. They're the top of the batches with the rest of the clans catching up in sizes and forms. Copper, blue, green, and mixed colours.

As usual, if you want them now, email us.
















The one month older boy, MG + blue

Accidental purple

There are a couple "blue" males in our tanks and we always thought they're quite special. The blue colouration is different from the typical steel or royal blue. They have a black body, with a white base colour (courtesy of copper), and a very nice deep purplish colour. A not-so-good sample of them is here (this one is a bit over-exposured and blue background!).

Perhaps this is a way to produce a purple colour? If you notice, many purple colouration is actually a lavendar variant. They have strong red in the body. Well, what would you need to produce a pure purple colour without red in it?

Talking about pure random thoughts, perhaps we can mix some ideas to see if we can produce that purple....

The nice thing about copper (specifically copper green), they have the shiny purple colour if you shine torch to it on different angle. Now, if one would be able to extract that purplish colouration and mix it with blue, over some generations you'd create a purple wouldn't it? Well, not really...since both blue and copper are not technically compatible. You'll get lots of red-wash. The blue produced from this mix is what we're seeing as "super blue" or any of the metalic blue variants.

A completely accidental that we've done was to mix copper, lavendar, and green variants. Whoala, F3 produces a nice set of deep purplish colour with clean non-red showing up. F4 may not inherit these colour though, since we'd expect copper/multi variation will be thrown, but surely a couple of them will produce consistent purple...Time to experiment to see if we can achieve this.

Virgin and eager to spawn

This poor boy has been lined up in the spawning tank for sometime. We haven't gotten any time to spawn him - not having much time to care for his fry.

Seems to be a perfect match for one of OHM females. Wonder what the offspring would look like.

This male has 32 branches at least...no, nothing is wrong with his body, it's just that he bends when pix was taken.

Introducing "Dwarfy"

Dwarfy is part of a few bettas in the community of dwarfs from one of our spawn. He has the length of about 2cm (about less than 1 inch) at the age of nearly 2 months old. His half siblings (from same father but different mom) are at least double if not 2.5 times longer than him.

Here are his pix with the same age half-sibling boy. The half-sibling is 1 week younger or so, dad was a hard-working betta ;) ...

New breeds of potential

Some of the youngsters in our tanks at the moment. Looks very nice though still way too young. Will be 2 months in a couple of days time. All of them will be HM and OHM pretty much soon, the tail spreadIf you're interested, they're $20 each.