GuppyBreeder180604
Fishaholic
Hi everyone!
Today I just want to talk about something I noticed while breeding bettas for the second time in my life.
whenever I researched betta breeding I saw that people recommended removing the dad after the babies became free-swimming (around 3 to 4 days after birth) and so that is what I did the 2 times I have bred bettas so far. But this second time around I accidentally took 2 of the baby bettas in the net along with their dad without realizing it and put them in their dad's aquarium while their brothers and sister stayed in the breeding aquarium, I fed the babies reared by me with infusoria and green water for their first 2 weeks of life to then feed newly hatched baby brine shrimp and they grew as the babies of the first batch did.
At around the 3-week mark, I noticed a baby in the dad's tank and took it out and a few days later I found another one and also took it out, both of them were placed with their brothers but they were twice their size. I only noticed them because their dad started chasing them away, i had noticed the male did another bubble nest after i put him back in his home so i assume he did that nest for those 2 babies and just started chasing them after the 3 weeks because they were already suited for living on their own (i don't know how long it takes the male in nature to kick out the babies but I think based on what I saw it would be around 2 or 3 weeks old).
now the whole batch is 2 months old and the dad-reared babies are bigger and already have color and tail shape development while the human-reared ones are just starting to show signs of color and a basic tail shape.
I would have thought that it was just size differences normally present in fish if it wasn't because the dad reared babies are developing faster and are constantly twice the size of their brothers, while the human reared babies are all a similar size (there are bigger and smaller ones, of course, but the size gap between the rearings is huge)| and development level.
So my theory here is that in the end, it would be better for us breeders to let the males rear their babies until they kick them out naturally as to get them to grow faster, I think this occurs because the babies have the safety of their dad giving them care, food and protection so they only worry about increasing in size (this because even tho I never added baby fish foods to the males tank the babies still survived and had the previously mentioned growth boost), as such if we let the dad with the children for 2 to 3 weeks while also using our normal feeding regime we could archive faster growth, better survival rates, and faster-showing colors and tail details.
If any of you have had similar experiences or know of any scientific paper/article done on the matter or on something similar I would appreciate you telling me or just expressing your opinions on the subject.
I will try to make more research on my own and present the results here.
Today I just want to talk about something I noticed while breeding bettas for the second time in my life.
whenever I researched betta breeding I saw that people recommended removing the dad after the babies became free-swimming (around 3 to 4 days after birth) and so that is what I did the 2 times I have bred bettas so far. But this second time around I accidentally took 2 of the baby bettas in the net along with their dad without realizing it and put them in their dad's aquarium while their brothers and sister stayed in the breeding aquarium, I fed the babies reared by me with infusoria and green water for their first 2 weeks of life to then feed newly hatched baby brine shrimp and they grew as the babies of the first batch did.
At around the 3-week mark, I noticed a baby in the dad's tank and took it out and a few days later I found another one and also took it out, both of them were placed with their brothers but they were twice their size. I only noticed them because their dad started chasing them away, i had noticed the male did another bubble nest after i put him back in his home so i assume he did that nest for those 2 babies and just started chasing them after the 3 weeks because they were already suited for living on their own (i don't know how long it takes the male in nature to kick out the babies but I think based on what I saw it would be around 2 or 3 weeks old).
now the whole batch is 2 months old and the dad-reared babies are bigger and already have color and tail shape development while the human-reared ones are just starting to show signs of color and a basic tail shape.
I would have thought that it was just size differences normally present in fish if it wasn't because the dad reared babies are developing faster and are constantly twice the size of their brothers, while the human reared babies are all a similar size (there are bigger and smaller ones, of course, but the size gap between the rearings is huge)| and development level.
So my theory here is that in the end, it would be better for us breeders to let the males rear their babies until they kick them out naturally as to get them to grow faster, I think this occurs because the babies have the safety of their dad giving them care, food and protection so they only worry about increasing in size (this because even tho I never added baby fish foods to the males tank the babies still survived and had the previously mentioned growth boost), as such if we let the dad with the children for 2 to 3 weeks while also using our normal feeding regime we could archive faster growth, better survival rates, and faster-showing colors and tail details.
If any of you have had similar experiences or know of any scientific paper/article done on the matter or on something similar I would appreciate you telling me or just expressing your opinions on the subject.
I will try to make more research on my own and present the results here.
