Its ludicris for you to say your fish would ignore first bites..
I tried first bites and decapsulated brine eggs on my spawn, and they wouldn't touch anything that wasn't moving until they were 4 weeks old. Their feeding instinct is triggered by movement, period. You're very lucky if you can get young betta fry to eat prepared foods, as the vast majority won't. I sat by the tank and watched the reactions of my fry when I added prepared foods, and until the 4th week they would just eyeball it, then ignore it the second they realised it wasn't alive.
I agree, live food is best, but BBS?? How natural is feeding salt water crustacean to fresh water fish?? Im pretty sure bbs are not native to the rice paddies of thailand. BBS are also known to wreak havok on swimbladders. Many bettas have died from eating brine shrimp. if you dont get all the cyst's "shells" out of the shrimp you are asking for trouble. is it worth the risk?
Hell yes it's worth the risk. BBS are incredibly nutritious, natural or not, and it's the cyst's shells that cause swimbladder problems. I didn't decapsulate my eggs before hatching, though perhaps it would have been safer to do so, but I don't have a single fry out of 200 with swimbladder issues, despite having fed them BBS multiple times every single day for the first 5 weeks of their life (I have two with buoyancy problems, but this is due to them gulping air into their stomachs; their swimbladders are normal.) All you have to do is give the shells time to either sink or rise before collecting the shrimp from the middle of the container. The few shells that do make it into the tank are usually completely ignored by the fry, who will almost always spit them out if they do accidentally take one into their mouths (obviously I'm a nerd who spent hours in front of the tank just watching them feed, lol)
it really CAN be a weekend project for anyone.
...Maybe breeding can be a weekend project, but if you're planning to actually raise the fry to adulthood it takes a little more than weekend, don't ya think?
Why do you want all 350 of your fry to grow? All the weak, small, inferior specimens??
My weak, small, inferior specimens take offence to that!!
Sometimes your smallest, most pathetic fry can grow into your best ones! My fave fry from my spawn was pathetically small at first, but now he's healthy, stong, and gorgeous. I don't have anything against culling, really, but as supersixone said, not a single one of my fry went to a LFS. It just goes to show that you can indeed find good homes for all of them if you're willing to put a little effort into it
. I admit, I'm going to remove eggs from my next spawn because it's going to be CT x plakat and the results won't be too desirable until at least the second generation, but I'll be removing
eggs. I don't have the heart to cull fry, especially not once they're old enough for you to tell which are considered "culls". For a while there they're just little robots, but I observed a distinct period in about the 3rd or 4th week when they began to become aware of the world around them... there's no way I could cull them after they've got their own little personalities like that. That's when I consider them to be real living things, and there's no way I could live with myself if I culled some just because they weren't "good enough". I created those lives, you know? Just because they aren't the best, most gorgeous fish of the spawn doesn't mean they don't have as much of a right to live as all the rest.
To insure my fish are the strongest, healthiest and hardiest i rely heavily on natural selection. by coddling your fish you are allowing weak genetics to flourish in the genepool and thats just not good. I have not ONCE had any funky fish with swim bladder disorders, or anything. If i did they would surely be culled and not "put up for adoption".
I agree with that to an extent, as I wouldn't keep a fish around if it had to be constantly medicated and clearly would be unable to live a full life, but the three gimpy fish from my spawn all reached adulthood and are able to live just fine with their disabilities. Like I said, I think of them as individual lives, and if they're willing to fight to survive then I'll be damned if I'm going to put them down just because they're not perfect. I guess that's the difference -- you don't really think of them as living things, but more as projects?
Regardless of the potential value of your methods, few people if any will want to listen to a person who is as rude and condescending as you have demonstrated yourself to be.
Amen to that.
Seriously Sarah Bella, I'm certain your methods are very valid and the "natural selection" you allow in your tanks is something a lot of Thai breeders do, but it's important to understand that there is more than one way to go about doing things, and while each method has its own pros and cons, I don't think any one way is "better" than any other; it just depends on what you're hoping to accomplish. Your methods more resemble those of people who breed on a massive scale and are only interested in keeping the best fish from each spawn, but a lot of people on this forum breed for the love of breeding. We
enjoy caring for the babies in the way we think is best and actually like keeping the "culls" around as we see each and every one of them as an individual deserving of life. I enjoyed the challenge of having 200 fry around and then seeing them all go to loving homes. That doesn't make us right and you wrong or vice versa, we are simply different
I especially liked this...
I feel the same exact way, especially in regards to bettas because the parents aren't naturally together at all times. If you take a male and a female, put them together to endure the breeding process, I do believe that you are ultimately responsible for each and every life. Not one is more valuable than the next. The prettiest fry are no more worthy than the ugliest.
) @ Wuv **stubs toe** aww shucks 
