How Is It Done?

[Durbkat]

How did bettas get there color? Because I read when they were first discovered they were like brown and dull colors how did they get bettas there color? Did the inject dye in 2 bettas and breed them so they got color or what?

 

[ral]

I understand that wild B. splendens already had the colors, blue, green and red, and they went from there. Crossing with the B. imbellis also helped I am sure. The masking I was told comes from the B. imbellis.

 

[Durbkat]

I guess I got my info wrong )

 

[ral]

Pretty sure it was not injecting die.

Basically, I was told it was breeding "deformities" or "recessive traits".

Spawn fish. Get two with the longer caudal fins from the same spawn of from two seprate spawns, and keep doing it until it is the dominant gene.

 

[Synirr]

How did bettas get there color? Because I read when they were first discovered they were like brown and dull colors how did they get bettas there color? Did the inject dye in 2 bettas and breed them so they got color or what?

Here are some pics of Betta splendens as they are in the wild:
http/www.ibc-smp.org/species/splendens.html
Obviously, they're not really all that dull, though nothing like our domestic splendens, to be sure. They got the way they are today through selective breeding... breeding the redder fish together to get more red fish, bluer together to get more blue, etc. Random mutations such as long fins and different colours popped up along the way, and these were in turn bred for to produce different lines.

Here's where I got crazy and rant about something that doesn't have much to do with your question:
The inheritance of acquired traits, an idea made popular by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in the early days of evolutionary science, has since been proven an incorrect theory. The offspring of a fish that has been dyed would inherit the dye no more than the baby of parents with tattoos would inherit their parents' ink

 

[Durbkat]

I know this is off topic but since this is my thread I'm going to do it. What would happen if you bred a VT with a plakat or a VT with a crowntail? Would like with a VT and plakat there would be bettas with like some of the fins would be long like a VT then some of the other fins be short like a plakat? And with a VT and a crown tail would there be like some parts of the fins have the spikes and other parts of a fin not have the spikes?

 

[Mr.September15]

Interesting...

 

[Synirr]

I know this is off topic but since this is my thread I'm going to do it. What would happen if you bred a VT with a plakat or a VT with a crowntail? Would like with a VT and plakat there would be bettas with like some of the fins would be long like a VT then some of the other fins be short like a plakat? And with a VT and a crown tail would there be like some parts of the fins have the spikes and other parts of a fin not have the spikes?

VT x plakat = all VT
VT x crowntail = all veil combtail, to varying degrees.

 

[ral]

Looks like the VT gene is very dominant.

 

[Durbkat]

I know this is off topic but since this is my thread I'm going to do it. What would happen if you bred a VT with a plakat or a VT with a crowntail? Would like with a VT and plakat there would be bettas with like some of the fins would be long like a VT then some of the other fins be short like a plakat? And with a VT and a crown tail would there be like some parts of the fins have the spikes and other parts of a fin not have the spikes?

VT x plakat = all VT
VT x crowntail = all veil combtail, to varying degrees.

But why wouldn't there be any plakat bettas? Is there just more VT genes than plakat genes when you interbreed different tail types of bettas?

 

[Synirr]

But why wouldn't there be any plakat bettas? Is there just more VT genes than plakat genes when you interbreed different tail types of bettas?

The long-finned trait is dominant over the plakat trait, so when the fish carries even just one gene for long fins it completely masks the plakat gene. See, the length of the fins is determined by a single gene, but the caudal spread, which differentiates deltas, VTs, and HMs from one-another, is controlled by multiple genes so the traits blend when you breed them together, rather than one masking the other.

 

[Durbkat]

OoO now I see Thanks Synirr