Help, Help, Help, Please

[brewyn]

Hello all. we have 3 female bettas and 1 male betta, we did have one pr of each but lost the others. well, we think that the females have produced eggs as they have very fat bellies, to the point of explosion, so we have introduced a female to a male* the female being in a transparent bottle * how can we tell when to let her out + plus, can we introduce another female to him once he has done his thing with the first?? we are worried the egg carrying females may mecome ill if eggs are not reliesed.

 

[BettaBum873]

Obviously you've never bred a betta before, I wouldn't recommend doing it without first having a lot of experience with bettas. The females will get eggy once a month or so, and they will release the eggs on their own without the help of the male, they just won't be fertilized. Breeding is super expensive and time consuming!!

 

[brewyn]

thanks for the reply, its put our mind at ease. we would like to breed our bettas and we are actually set up for them, we have a lot of time but were does the expence come into it?

 

[Taridan]

The experience comes in with knowning what to feed, when to feed, how much to feed, what ailments they might get, when to seperate, when to move to new grow tanks... Think on it this way. If you were a dog or cat breeder, you would be very selective in breeding only your best cats or dogs, which could have a litter of up to 10 - 15 depending on the dog. (Most cats don't have more than 6-8, I think) You have to raise them and take care of them, and spend money on vet bills and all of that, then eventually find homes for the ones that you can't keep. Now up those numbers and Prices to, oh say, 100 - 200 depending on your fish, and then think of not only the price of food, the time to look over each and every fish every day for any signs of illness... meh, well, you should get the idea where the experience would come in.

 

[JoLtNbolt]

You might want to check out this link

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=37944

 

[brewyn]

thanks you guys for the replies. sanadi, I think you may have misread our post, we asked where the expence came into it, not the experience, experience eventually comes to all who venture into something new, we have to start somewhere. we hand rear parakeets, 7am till 11pm, two hourly feeds by about 15 chicks or so for 9 weeks, out of every two hours gap it takes 30 mins to prepare the food and then we have to change and clean the chicks quarters after every feed. we have about 1 hour break in between feeds before we have to start all over again.



joltnbolt, thanks, we did come across this information and found it very interesting, although it answered most of our questions we did not see anything about females producing eggs once a month, this was our concern. cheers for any info

 

[OohFeeshy]

Expence? Well....

Cost of breeding tank, decent breeding pair, extras in case pairing doesn't work, food to condition them with, plants for female to hide in, salt/IAL/whatever to heal whatever injuries the pair give each other, microwoms, baby brine shrimp and hatchery, lots of other live fry foods, big growout tanks, other foods for older fry, at least a 1/2g container for every male fry (and some females), dechlor for all these tanks, a way of heating the room the containers are in, water for all the water changes....

Nice short list.

 

[brewyn]

now thats what i was looking for! cheers oOHfishy, thats not too bad, I have lots of tanks,declorinater and treatments as I keep a lot of mbuna and happs *cichlids*. not new to keeping fish, just newish to bettas.

here is one of our tanks with some nice half moon bettas.

 

[Taridan]

lmao yup, I did read it wrong *Insert sheepish grin* Only self defense I can offer is I'd only had four hours of sleep the night before i read that. XD good luck with the spawning.

 

[brewyn]

thats ok sanadi, something we all do from time to time, just done similar on a frog post, its how the other people react that matters. your foregiven. hahahah

 

[ezrock]

hey. to answer your initial questions (in case you didn't find the answer anywhere, and since no one directly answered here for you)...

You can tell when the female is ready by a few signs. She will be following the male as best she can in her little glass canister/hurricane lamp. Also, they often dip their heads low so their bodies are on an almost 45degree slant, with their caudals (hind tail) higher than their heads. Finally, if your females are dark, they will bar up. When they are ready, their whole bodies can have very distinct vertical striping with dark and light bands alternating with eachother. However, mine have never gone to that extent, as I released them once they had just two or three light bands/bars.

So, if your fish are conditioned properly, and your female is showing these signs, you can probably be safe trying to let her go to see if they will spawn.

Finally, you should not release a second female into the tank once the first female and the male have spawned. After spawning occurs, the male gets overly aggressive as he tries to protect the eggs. He will typically even attack the female he just spawned with to prevent her from coming too close. SO, just imagine what he'd do to an 'intruder' female if you added a second female!!! He'd most likely kill her with due haste!

Hope this helped answer your questions. Good luck with the spawn..it looks like you will have the dedication you need to raise betty fry properly

-Ian

 

[fawnmodel]

Honestly, by far my biggest expense in terms of actual coinage is in dechlorinator.
It costs alot to maintain alot of jars and tanks.

But, as for food, food is cheap, and cultures last pretty much forever. I suppose light and heat factor in, I am cheap when it comes to supplies so I have worked out what works best for me (scourning the local buy n sell etc). I usually use halogen lights for my fish and their rooms, those are pricey to buy but cheap to operate and creat great light....Heaters are prob the most expensive after lights, they run me about $16 each for good ones. But in my fishroom I use radiant heat so that room does not require any heaters - and, now that I have moved them to my office they get daylight too. Meds and additives would be the next on the list....

SOME breeders do use two females, its uncommon. I think, its dangerous too....and you are going to have a hard time with quality control as you will not know who came from who - even IF you get two successful spawns.

Better, try the pair. If they work, good. If not, swap out for a different female/male.

Don't worry about females and their eggs. They will either release and eat them, or reabsorb them. I have only ever caught one female eating eggs.

Good luck! I think they will be similar in requirements to your birds if you get any quantity of spawns. You probably know of the obvious ways to make it easy, like lists and records, routines, database etc. Mine take only about an hour a day total, maybe 2.5 hours on waterchange days.

 

[brewyn]

thank you ezrock and fawnmodel, you are right, after the first couple of posts, the original question tends to go a stray. the information you have kindly spent some time on, has been very helpful and we will take note of it. I today have just pulled 8 chicks from the nest boxes inorder to hand rear them, and that does take a lot of patience, time, and energy, and it also costs a considerable amount, but well worth it. thank tou both.

 

[joey]

THe male has to make bubbles for the female to put the eggs in the bubble. B)

That is good that you have a splitter or they would fight but you need to put all your betta together with the male.








Good luck signed,
The betta house B)

 

[ILM]

For me, the expense came more in the the form of "time"--making sure I was home to do the multiple feedings, making sure I could clean the baby tank when necessary, making sure I could put in the 2+ hours every night to change the water in the juvvie containers. Initially, buying enough containers (used food jars didn't work for me) for all the juvview was a pretty expensive investment since I had over 100 males alone, each of whom demanded his own room. I couldn't keep them all heated so I had to plan breeding so the grow-out would happen in summer when the room stays in the mid-70s. Another big investment (the one that finally made me stop for a while) was the time needed to (1) find new homes for them since I refused to hand them over to a lfs (I've seen how the bettas at all of those stores are kept), (2) make all the arrangements (someone has to be home, etc.) and (3) the bagging, boxing and shipping out. You cannot go away for a weekend while the babies are still needing to eat every day either. And if the brine shrimp didn't hatch or went foul, had to make sure there was some backup (and hustle to get a new brine batch going and hatching).

And I have bred 2 females to 1 male--one right after another--a couple of times. I don't really recommend it because if your male is single-minded about protecting his young, he will attack the second female but my males have all been real gentle and sweet. Also, by doing 2 at once, you'll end up with thousands (literally) of babies if they all hatch since 1 female can produce upwards of a thousand eggs easy. Seeing all your babies die because you wanted to make sure they all get food and since you can't easily judge how much is enough you overfed and the tank went so cloudy with bacteria you can't even see the babies so you don't know what you're sucking up as you try to do twice daily water changes to try to clear up the tank just a little, is depressing. Even as wee babies, if the conditions are too crowded, the bigger babies may start to eat the smaller ones.