Tail Ripped

the other week i got a beautiful new dark grey/blue male fighter for my community tank. when i got him i had in my tnk a very boistrus red tailed shark, and i knew he would probobly rip the fighter to bits so i confined the fighter to a breeding trap as i was rehoming the shark in a few days time anyway. after geting rid of the shark i decided to keep the fighter in the breeding trap for a while yet as i have some very young livebearer fry in the tank which are prety much impossible to catch as there is alot of cover for them, but i dont want them getting eaten by the fighter. anyway... i noticed a couple of days ago the fighter had the very tip if his tail nibbled thru the grate in the bottom of the breeding trap so i put the solid floor into the trap to stop this. i came home from work the other day to fild most of his tail is ripped off, he has a sort of "v" shapped stump left, i was gutted!

my question tho is this. will it grow back? and as i intend breeding from this fish, will a female accept him with a tatty tail?

my question is...what other fish do u have in the tank that could do that damage? Or could he be ripping his tail with the V-slots? I'm actually not quite sure how a female WOULD accept him. You'll have to isolate him in a little tank and recover before breeding,

Really isnt the best idea keeping a male betta in a community tank, his tail will grow back but you need to be careful he could get fin rot. I dont want to sound rude, but have you researched breeding? Its a vast undertaking

im assuming his tail slipped down the side of the solid base and was pulled on my another fish. i had a male in this tank for almost a year and never had any problems. there are mollies, pristella tetras a platy and some coolie loaches in the tank.

and YES i have researched breeding, ive wanted to do it for years, i had a go last year but the male showed strange behaviour and never bred, even though the female was literaly offering herself to him under the bubble nest

Cool, just wanted to check that you knew that you could get up to 500 fry (rare but can happen) So you need to find jars for a lot of males. Is he a VT?

i presume "VT" stands for veil tail. yes he is, or was should i say, lol, just a V-tail now

yes sorry thats what VT means! In general you are better off breeding from other tail types, as VT's can have a right mix of genetic makeup especially if you dont know the parents genes. All depends what you want from the spawn really. (sorry if you already know this and im not trying to discourage you)

its not fin type im after, its the colour, i like blues, greys and greens. not keen on reds and oranges. i had a lovely little electric blue female up untill a few weeks ago but she suddenly came down with dropsy and died. id like to get a light blue or green female to breed with him, like i said, im not fussed about fin type, just colour

sorry to hear that your female died One of my males died today. I like blue ones too. Although we got to reds today

a wee update on how his tail is doing, he is now in his own heated bowl and feeding him regular with "aquarian" flakes and frozen bloodworms. the first 2 pics show how he looked before and the second 1 is how he looks now. you can see the tip of his tail is very dark blue and this is the regrowth, so he is healing and regrowing his tail, wether or not it will completely regrow.. well we will have to wait and see. still not sure how this happened

a wee update. hes doing raly well, tail is growing back nicely and surprisingly quickly. i had to breifly move him back into the comunity tank where he seemed to do fine. but i set up his new home. its a large glass vase with a clear plastic lid on top, a halogen lamp for light and a small heater in the back. when he went in he had a good patrol around, inspecting the decor then gave his seal of aproval by begining to build a bubble nest within a bout 10 mins of being introduced.

Aww, he is very pretty. I bet hes proud of that bubble nest too!

indeed the nest gets bigger everytime i go in to look! i showed him a small mirror to try and get a pic of him flaring but although he flared, he wouldnt sit still for me to take a pic

that blue looks so nice and blends in the tank. its like srealth