Long Finned Female Bettas

[dave_oddballs]

yesterday i went to my lfs to pick up some fish and he had a tank of female bettas with really long fins, not as long as male vt's but still quite long! Some nice colours too!
Is it common to see females with longer fins now or are they hard to get?
David

 

[mfcclc]

I don't know whether it's common but i have a female ct with long fins, if she wasn't full of eggs i'd swear she was a young male!

 

[Netty]

It is getting alot more common now to see females with the longer fins. Some breeders think it's partly due to some foods being fed when they are fry. We had a spawn last year where Mum was very short finned but the baby girls had huge fins and for along time we were sure they were male. Until about 3 months when they suddenly all started dropping eggs.

It makes it so much harder to sex them too at a young age. We've another that we bred that I'm reluctant to breed because I don't want the extra fin length in any babies girls.

 

[dave_oddballs]

how come you dont want to breed them? i thought a betta lovers dream tank would be one full of fancy male bettas that would live together? what a good looking tank it would be! so if you could breed females to be as fancy and good looking as males then this would be possible right?
the ones in my lfs were really nice, especially some bright yellow ones with supprisingly long fins!
David

 

[mfcclc]

The trouble is by using parent fish with really long fins, the babies will in turn have even longer fins which will in the end cause the fish to have swimming problems due to too much finnage. It would be nice to have fancier females however it is not fair to the fish and also makes the breeders job even harder when it comes to sexing the fish. If you were to buy and breed these females with the long fins you should stick to male plakats as partners or fairly short finned males. Females can still be stunning even with shorter fins x

 

[love4aquatic]

The trouble is by using parent fish with really long fins, the babies will in turn have even longer fins which will in the end cause the fish to have swimming problems due to too much finnage. It would be nice to have fancier females however it is not fair to the fish and also makes the breeders job even harder when it comes to sexing the fish. If you were to buy and breed these females with the long fins you should stick to male plakats as partners or fairly short finned males. Females can still be stunning even with shorter fins x

netty- can you post a picture of Big Sis? how did she get those long fins? who were her parrents?

-I personally was wondering why realy experienced breeders havent created the extended tail females. i want to try to create that line, but i am in no way expirenced enough. i was thinking of finding a female with fairly longer fins and crossing her with PK, would that cause the fins to be short tho? isnt the longer fins dominant? after that cross i would choose a nice female and cross her with a HM male with strong fins, possibly PK or DT in the backround?? but i dont want the recessive traits to show up too much.

 

[Jdubz]

Sounds like a Nice idea to have females as nice as the males but wouldn't the male think it was another male when she was in the chimny thus not making a nest and always attacking the glass?

 

[squiremaster]

I've seen long finned female Bettas before

 

[Netty]

Here are pics of a couple of long finned females of ours. As has been said....by spawning these not only does it increase the finnage in the females but also the males. This would make it even harder for them to swim as the heavy fins would just weigh them down. Sexing can be hard enough without having females end up looking like males lol

They both have the same Dad - Taro

Big Sis

Her Mum - Tien was a short finned RT

Dyson

Her Mum - Sahara was a short finned HM

 

[love4aquatic]

spawn big sis!!!!!

i love her colors!!!

breed her with a PK!!!!!

 

[Netty]

Nooo.....we've got other spawns we are in the middle of setting up for and she's just a pet