otherworldone
New Member
This is my first spawning attempt since I had to get out of the hobby a few years ago. I was anxious to get some baby fishies to watch grow, so my choices of breeding stock were quite limited this time. Anyway, here goes:
The father of this spawn is George, my HM from Thailand. As you can probably see from the picture, he is dark green on black with a white BF pattern. His tail is a full 180 spread and his dorsal is nice and full as well. He has a pretty good mask, too.
The mother of this spawn is Pearl, an opaque white female I got from Marianne Lewis in Canada. She has very clean color. The corners of her tail are round, but she has a nearly HM-type spread. Although I picked her out, this one was part of a Christmas gift from a family member.
I started conditioning the male before the female ever arrived, but the female was only conditioned for one week prior. Both were in full view of the other during the conditioning period. I was concerned about the lack of bubble-blowing by the male during the entire pre-spawning period, but decided to continue anyway.
The pair were placed in a 10-gallon tank filled to 6 inches on Sunday Jan. 15th. The female was placed in a glass chimney that allowed some water exchange at the bottom. The tank was heavily planted with java moss and floating live plants. The plants, snails and some scuds (came with some of the plants) were established in the tank for about one month (less for some plants). The sponge filter was added during the conditioning period and ammonia levels monitored for establishment of filtration before spawning. After the two were placed in the tank, I slowly raised the temperature to about 80 degrees F.
The male still did not seem interested in building a bubble nest, though he was still QUITE interested in the female. Since the tank was well-planted and the female seemed so eager to be loose, I released her after only a few hours. The male ran after her and then ran away several times while the female seemed to ignore him. He didn't start getting nippy until a couple of hours later.
The only sign of a bubble nest I could find the next day were a handful of much-too-large bubbles bunched together under some foliage at the water surface. I was getting more and more concerned for the lack of a nest. But I'd heard of bettas spawning with no nest at all before, so I just waited.
That afternoon I whitnessed the FEMALE nudging the MALE to embrace. He followed her cue and I kept an eye on them for awhile. Since the female seemed to have such good instincts about the embracing part of the whole ritual, the first few embraces weren't nearly as clumsy as I'd seen before. But again the male had me concerned as after every embrace he immediately went back to flaring at her.
When the eggs started to fall...that's when I REALLY got worried. The male wasn't trying to pick up ANY of the eggs. As soon as he recovered from each embrace, while she was still 'paralized', he would go right back to flaring at her and even nose her like he was going to bite. Once in a while she would grab a few eggs off the bottom and try to put them in the nonexistent nest, with him trying to attack her at the same time.
This continued for a couple of hours (maybe an hour and a half) before I saw the male looking at the eggs for the first time. He scooped a few up while I watched and to my utter disappointment, he began SWALLOWING them rather than blowing them to the surface.
At that point I quickly and carefully placed glass chimneys over each of them. Taking a chance on salvaging this spawn, I carefully to removed both fish to recover and began brainstorming a way to save the eggs. I grabbed the cap off of a 4-ounce specimen jar and suspended it at the water's surface with tape.
Using a disposable pippette, I gathered up all the eggs I could find and placed them in this lid. The idea was that if I could keep the eggs close enough to the surface and maybe even get some of them affloat, they would have enough oxygen to develop. Once all the eggs were in the lid, I continued tending to them for several hours. I removed all signs of debris from the water in the lid and replaced the water with clean water from the tank. Late that night I also managed to get most of the eggs to float by slowly blowing bubbles in the lid water with the pippette (don't ask me, I probably couldn't do it again if I tried).
Thankfully, all my hard work seems to be paying off! At about 11:30pm Tuesday Jan. 17th I saw the first signs of movement. A few of the eggs started to 'rock' intermittently. By the same time Wed. night Jan. 18th all of the healthy eggs (about 50 or so, I think) were hatched and the fry are now hanging along the side of the tank, from plants and the styrofoam cup half. I had to siphon in a little more water to let them drift out from the lid so I could remove it (some were getting between the glass and the tape). But even without the male to pick them up if they fall, most of them seem to be keeping themselves at the surface. Of course, they are slowly getting spread out from their hatching spot.
So far this has been an interesting spawn. I've just started trying to hatch brine shrimp for them since I know the shrimp take longer to hatch at room temperature and the fry will be freeswimming in a couple days. But I've already got a couple of microworm cultures established enough for feeding and two very large, very well-established vinegar eel cultures ready. Also, there is an entire sub-ecoculture already established in the breeding tank thanks to the live plants (especially the java moss). So, their first live foods are already swimming around in their tank with them. hee hee
I'm hoping for some good solid whites and nice BF's from this spawn. It will be nice if they take after their dad where fins are concerned, too.
Anyways, I'll try to keep this thing updated as much as possible. I may have to borrow a better camera from somebody, though. I don't have my good camera anymore and the cheapie I have now can't take pictures of fish worth a crap.
*sigh*
The father of this spawn is George, my HM from Thailand. As you can probably see from the picture, he is dark green on black with a white BF pattern. His tail is a full 180 spread and his dorsal is nice and full as well. He has a pretty good mask, too.
The mother of this spawn is Pearl, an opaque white female I got from Marianne Lewis in Canada. She has very clean color. The corners of her tail are round, but she has a nearly HM-type spread. Although I picked her out, this one was part of a Christmas gift from a family member.
I started conditioning the male before the female ever arrived, but the female was only conditioned for one week prior. Both were in full view of the other during the conditioning period. I was concerned about the lack of bubble-blowing by the male during the entire pre-spawning period, but decided to continue anyway.
The pair were placed in a 10-gallon tank filled to 6 inches on Sunday Jan. 15th. The female was placed in a glass chimney that allowed some water exchange at the bottom. The tank was heavily planted with java moss and floating live plants. The plants, snails and some scuds (came with some of the plants) were established in the tank for about one month (less for some plants). The sponge filter was added during the conditioning period and ammonia levels monitored for establishment of filtration before spawning. After the two were placed in the tank, I slowly raised the temperature to about 80 degrees F.
The male still did not seem interested in building a bubble nest, though he was still QUITE interested in the female. Since the tank was well-planted and the female seemed so eager to be loose, I released her after only a few hours. The male ran after her and then ran away several times while the female seemed to ignore him. He didn't start getting nippy until a couple of hours later.
The only sign of a bubble nest I could find the next day were a handful of much-too-large bubbles bunched together under some foliage at the water surface. I was getting more and more concerned for the lack of a nest. But I'd heard of bettas spawning with no nest at all before, so I just waited.
That afternoon I whitnessed the FEMALE nudging the MALE to embrace. He followed her cue and I kept an eye on them for awhile. Since the female seemed to have such good instincts about the embracing part of the whole ritual, the first few embraces weren't nearly as clumsy as I'd seen before. But again the male had me concerned as after every embrace he immediately went back to flaring at her.
When the eggs started to fall...that's when I REALLY got worried. The male wasn't trying to pick up ANY of the eggs. As soon as he recovered from each embrace, while she was still 'paralized', he would go right back to flaring at her and even nose her like he was going to bite. Once in a while she would grab a few eggs off the bottom and try to put them in the nonexistent nest, with him trying to attack her at the same time.
This continued for a couple of hours (maybe an hour and a half) before I saw the male looking at the eggs for the first time. He scooped a few up while I watched and to my utter disappointment, he began SWALLOWING them rather than blowing them to the surface.
At that point I quickly and carefully placed glass chimneys over each of them. Taking a chance on salvaging this spawn, I carefully to removed both fish to recover and began brainstorming a way to save the eggs. I grabbed the cap off of a 4-ounce specimen jar and suspended it at the water's surface with tape.
Using a disposable pippette, I gathered up all the eggs I could find and placed them in this lid. The idea was that if I could keep the eggs close enough to the surface and maybe even get some of them affloat, they would have enough oxygen to develop. Once all the eggs were in the lid, I continued tending to them for several hours. I removed all signs of debris from the water in the lid and replaced the water with clean water from the tank. Late that night I also managed to get most of the eggs to float by slowly blowing bubbles in the lid water with the pippette (don't ask me, I probably couldn't do it again if I tried).
Thankfully, all my hard work seems to be paying off! At about 11:30pm Tuesday Jan. 17th I saw the first signs of movement. A few of the eggs started to 'rock' intermittently. By the same time Wed. night Jan. 18th all of the healthy eggs (about 50 or so, I think) were hatched and the fry are now hanging along the side of the tank, from plants and the styrofoam cup half. I had to siphon in a little more water to let them drift out from the lid so I could remove it (some were getting between the glass and the tape). But even without the male to pick them up if they fall, most of them seem to be keeping themselves at the surface. Of course, they are slowly getting spread out from their hatching spot.
So far this has been an interesting spawn. I've just started trying to hatch brine shrimp for them since I know the shrimp take longer to hatch at room temperature and the fry will be freeswimming in a couple days. But I've already got a couple of microworm cultures established enough for feeding and two very large, very well-established vinegar eel cultures ready. Also, there is an entire sub-ecoculture already established in the breeding tank thanks to the live plants (especially the java moss). So, their first live foods are already swimming around in their tank with them. hee hee
I'm hoping for some good solid whites and nice BF's from this spawn. It will be nice if they take after their dad where fins are concerned, too.
Anyways, I'll try to keep this thing updated as much as possible. I may have to borrow a better camera from somebody, though. I don't have my good camera anymore and the cheapie I have now can't take pictures of fish worth a crap.
*sigh*
Beautiful parents! It's too bad they weren't more interested in caring for their kids... those little fry are lucky to have you!! Gawd. I never would've thought of that, ever. The Dad is really amazingly beautiful, he's like, a Black Orchid BF. I'll bet that you will get lots of marbles!
