Betta Breeding

New betta. I'm on the moon... CT female, blue-gray. Absolutely perfect match in colour and finnage for Moonshine. I have been looking for a mate for him for about three or four months. He was a rescue and I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to rehabilitate him enough to breed. It seems that I have suceeded. He's looking very interested in her. Well, he looks as if he thinks that Christmas has come early actually.

While acclimatising the female to our water, I put her in a 1/4 gallon jar next to the male's tank. She had dark stress lines, as I would expect on a fish that's been sent halfway round Australia in a polythene bag. It took about a minute for them to vanish, no joke. Another minute and she was showing white vertical bars. He's been flaring at her non-stop from his own tank of course.

I'm putting her in a private 1.5 gal jar (daily water changes due no filtration). She is full of eggs, but a bit skinny. She's also young and smaller than the male is. I'm worried he could hurt her but I don't have a choice really because if I don't spawn her she'll end up eggbound. I'm going to start conditioning today but the male is nowhere near ready. He has a nest, but has been on normal feeding for months and is nowhere near conditioned. The LFS has problems with eggbound females all the time, they come in, they are well fed, they fill with eggs, if they don't sell they die. Can I safely condition two weeks (or at least 1.5 weeks) and not have this problem?

Also can anybody suggest what I should feed? The males' normal diet is Wardley's tropical crumbles (that stuff is expensive $16 for a little bottle, Wardley's are good in Australia even if they aren't overseas) and Hikari betta biogold. I can't afford to feed biogold exclusively, it costs a fortune and I have a lot of bettas. I alternate - one night on Wardley's one on Hikari - and I feed nothing on Sundays. I also give them the odd pea. I can get mosquito larvae, but at this time of the year I can't get enough to feed those exclusively while I'm conditioning. I will give them as much live food as I can and just Hikari as the dry food, but is there anything else i can get that they'd like? maybe grains of mince or something? I'm always careful about feeding fish or meat to my fish though - is it safe?

When conditioning for breeding I feed a mix of frozen blood worms, brine shrimp, hikari betta bio-gold and occasional live blackworms

If you lower the temperature to 20-22C the fish will be less inclined to develop eggs and become egg bound. The male should be ready to breed even tho he has only been fed on dry food. The females need more nutrition so they can develop eggs. The males only have to develop sperm and that can be stored for months without any ill effect.

If the fish are showing off to each other put them together. Watch the male and if he gets too rough with her, then separate them for a few days. If they breed and the eggs are not fertile it doesn’t matter. But if she is full of eggs and isn’t bred, she will become egg bound and never be able to breed afterwards.

If the male is in a tank with a filter you can put the female into a breeding net in his tank. This will give her clean water but keep her separated from him.

Meat foods are fine as long as they are fish based. For example you can use raw fish, prawn, squid, mussel, etc, but avoid animal meats like lamb, beef, pork & chicken. The fish have trouble digesting the proteins in these types of meat. They will eat it and it can help them grow quickly but in the long run it isn't good for them.
Any sort of insect that isn't poisonous can be fed to them. Mozzies & larvae, flies, maggots, small worms like white, grindle or earthworms, aphids, ant eggs, etc. As long as the bugs aren't toxic and haven't been caught with bug spray, they are fine to feed to any fish. Avoid caterpillas as many are toxic.

When you feed meat foods keep an eye on the water quality and do more water changes. The high protein and nutrients from frozen/meat foods can cause water quality issues.

i dont think they can get egg bound, not like birds, it was my assumption that the eggs are released and the female will usually eat them, i have a sority of females and have observed this behavior more than once. so its not nessicary to be in a hurry. i usually wait a few weeks to condition and also wait to se if she caught any icky stuff while on transite.

pluss if she is thin and just looks eggy right now its probally more due to stress and constipation, i have noticed mith my own fish that when they are shiped sometimes they get , well for a lack of a better term , belly ackes.

so no hurry, am i right about the egg thing? modaz? constine? netty?

Well I'm just going on what I've been told by the LFS. I'm aware that this may be dodgy, but their water quality in their sorority tank is always perfect and I have seen it myself, females bloat up and die. It's not dropsy or constipation, no pineconing and they are still pooing the day before they die. They start having trouble swimming when they are really fat, if you scare them they can balance so it's not swimbladder but they just die! This is the main reason I can never get good females, they are scared to order them because they're always dropping dead. There's another CT female there I would like but she is REALLY skinny, I'm going to wait and see if the feeding up will help. They feed their fish well - frozen bloodworm, top quality flake and spirulina pellets. I dunno what it is if not eggbound.

The male is a bit skinny, he got constipated a few weeks ago and I starved him because he wouldn't eat peas. It worked but he's off top condition, I'd be more comfortable breeding him if I could condition him a little more first.

I did try them on mince last night because it was all I had, there were no mozzie larvae. The female is very intelligent, I have her taking food off the end of a pin already. She's full of character even though she's a delicate looking pretty little thing. I've called her Twilight.

Ant eggs is a good idea, I can get those no problem. As for the mozzie larvae, I will put some containers of water in my grandparents' garden. That's a guaranteed way of getting them. I'll get some live food out of the creek if there is any. I don't have to worry about contaminating them because the water the fish are swimming in is pumped out of the same creek. if there's something nasty in the creek they are going to get it anyway because I change the water very often (the jars are only 1.5 gallons so I usually do it 50% daily.)

Does anybody know what the little red things are that live in warm water in Australia? They are bright red, pinhead sized dots that swim quite fast and eat water weed (usually elodea). They live in mud but if you wash them thoroughly and dip them in salt they are fine to use as live food.

As for feeding fish meat or shellfish, how much is safe?

Sorry for driving you all nuts and thanks for the help.

The little red dots that swim around the water are red mites. If you look at them under a microscope you should see some legs. They are tough little buggers and not all fish will eat them.

Fish can be fed as much fish based meat food as they can eat. Basically just offer them a few bits at a time until they are full, (no longer interested in the food). Then stop feeding them and remove any uneaten food from the tank.

As for Bettas acting normal one day and dieing the next. If they are blowing up like a balloon then they have an internal bacterial infection. Fish Tuberculosis will develop inside a fish's internal organ (liver, etc). When the numbers of bacteria build up to sufficient numbers, the organ ruptures and the fish bloats up.
The shop should really send some of the Bettas off to be tested by a lab. Then they would know what is killing them and do something about fixing it.

They'd never do that they are way too tight! If it ever happens to mine should I treat with tetracycline? (or will oxytet/chloramphenicol be better? Since you're in Australia too what would you use?) I have delayed the deaths of fish with TB by treating secondary infections. Of coures there always comes a point when it becomes futile to keep them alive, but I have had some success treating each 'blowup' with tetracycline or malachite green.

I got some good photos of Twilight this morning. I will post them when I get home (I'm on the school computers). She is really, really cute! I might put some up of Moonshine as well. The only problem I can find with the pair is that both have red ventrals and a red wash on the anal fin - but when I have plenty of growouts from the line I'm sure that I can find some that don't have it so much and gradually breed it out.

BTW: Most of the tail rays that stick out have a single branch, but the one closest to the middle of her tail branches twice. You'll see what I mean on the photo. Does this mean she's a young quad ray?

Oxytetracycline is meant to be a bit safer and more stabile than tetracycline. However, use whichever one you can get. They will both wipe out filter bacteria so monitor the water quality during and after treatment.
If the bloating clears up with malachite green then it is unlikely to be tuberculosis. Malachite green has no effect on Mycobacteria, this would indicate the bloating could be caused by another type of bacteria, internal parasite, or protozoan infection.

If you manage to get some of the sick females from the LFS, take them to the Animal Health Labs at your local Department of Agriculture and have them test the fish to find out why they are dieing. They shouldn't charge you if you say you are just a home fish keeper, and they will give you an accurate diagnosis and potentially a cure for the problem.

Thanks for the advice, I will if I can.

This is Twilight. She's not as eggy as she looks, I think she's still constipated. I shouldn't have fed her so much, I forgot that she would have been fasted before shipping.

I'm afraid i've had two that became egg bound, they didn's absorb them back into the body and unfoutunatly both died, unfortunatly they die very quickly.