Male Pk Or Female?

ok so yesterday i was in a LFS after some big bags for moving the oscars, and i notice a tank of female bettas £2 each. so i'm having a look and most of them are fairly standard blue with red wash. but there is one lovely white and pale green/aqua girl.
so i think, she's lovely and only 2 quid can't argue with that, even though i'm not supposed to be getting anything new until after the move! brought her home and set up a tank for quarantine. but tonight i went to check on her and found this!

now i know that female bettas will sometimes build bubblenests, but it got me wondering? so i got a few photos to see what people think, the tail is quite round, which made me think female. but the ventrals are pretty long, which makes me think male. so basically i keep coming back to square 1


also got out a mirror to see what the reaction was and got an awful lot of flaring!



unfortunately because of the angles on the round tank,(and my cr*p photography skills) i couldn't get a good picture of the full face flare, but its quite impressive!


on slightly different topic, i had actually questioned the owner (Tony) as to whether they had some giant in them as they looked a little on the large size compared to my other girls, and he told me there was no such thing as giant bettas, just bettas who had been better fed and looked after! he said that in all his years as a LFS owner surely he would have heard of them if they did exist and anyway he bred his own (VT's) and they all got really big and it was just care. i suggested that maybe his had some giant genetics in them and he basically just laughed at me. (although the fish that he breeds are all VT my fish was from a batch he bought in, so no clue on genetics there!)

I'm almost 100% certain thats a male, the long ventrals, long scopy dorsal and the flare face, only males have that extra flap of skin under their chins when they flare, females don't. Gorgeous guy too!! Congrats!!

I agree with Jaded, male. All of my girls flare up now and then (the three i got) and none of them have had that extra flap under the gills/chin, and have never built a bubble nest. I have heard females will, but I haven't seen a female so far that has built one (at least mine haven't). I love his color tho! Lovely boy!

i do not know.
But i love the fish
great coloring

defo a male! have been there a couple of times the following two fish were bought as females.

btw, if your looking to rehome.... he is exacty what im looking for

sorry but not planning to get rid of him, he's only my fourth male so i'm not too excessive and besides i am now thinking i might have to try spawning him with crystal

or zephyr

could be an interesting result i'm thinking, although probably get better looking fish by F2 or F3

they would make a good pair all the best with that.. heheh if you change your mind about the male........

Jaded12 said:

only males have that extra flap of skin under their chins when they flare, females don't.

Click to expand...

That flap of skin is called a beard, and Females do have beards, they're just not as big as males.

I've had females build nests, but never that impressive. I had one female who beat up every male I tried to spawn her with until she finally built a nest of her own, dropped her eggs, and put them in her nest and cared for them. She eventually ate them, then spawned perfectly with a male. Go figure.



Very handsome male you got there!!!

Oooooooh he is LUSH! deffo a male and an excellent find

I'm 99% sure you've got a male. Very pretty, too!

Wow, I'm surprised anyone would have the audacity to claim that if they've never heard of something, it doesn't exist. Give him links to a bunch of online articles about giants!