Spawn Gone Very Strange....

[blue_betta]

ok, so i had two new spawns set up, one pair (both pks) have not done anythinmg at all, not even a nest has appeared and the pair ignore each other almost completely, in fact i suspect the male may possibly be a very boyish female, or just a big woose!!
anyhow!!... teh other pair (a delta girl and a ct male) looked keen so i let her out of her container and left them while i went to work. came home to find she had been shredded! she looked like a scruffy ct, all the webbing between her rays was ripped but fortunately her rays are largely intact. so i put her back in her container to let her recover a bit and yesterday morning she still seemed keen but i decided to leave her in the container while i was at work... but i come home to find she had not only spawned without the male, but had built a tiny nest and packed all the eggs into it and is tending to her nest as well as most males will! im guessing the eggs will be infertile, but im going to let her run the course of it JUST IN CASE so ive removed the male and left her with her eggs in her container and il see what happens, but how weird huh?!?!

 

[Netty]

That is so weird All my female wanted to do was eat as many eggs as she could fit in her mouth in one go. Fingers crossed.....you never know. Have you got any pics of them?

 

[blue_betta]

so here she is withe her tiny nest. it was a broad flat nest at first but she has compacted them into a tight ball now. ive seen her gather up eggs in her mouth and spit them into a bubble. there are defo less eggs than this morning so i guess she will pick off the infertile ones, which i guess will be them all eventually

 

[Netty]

That's amazing.......but wouldn't it be great if you did get some babies. I suppose dad would just eat them all up would he? or is it possible for him to fertilise any now?

 

[monica]

I have heard this is a possibility. She probably had over-ripe eggs and thought she had spawned with a male so released them herself and placed them in her 'nest'.

Could also be that she is a transgender (hermaphrodite) and can release her own fertile eggs. So I would wait and see.

 

[azulfire24]

one of my female did somthing similar,, it was their second try at spawing and dad was useless except for wraping the mom,, so mom started picking up all the eggs and putting them in the nest ,, finally dad got the idea, but mostly he just moved the eggs that were allready in the nest around,, after i took mom out dad started eating the eggs the next day so i removed him too , lowered the water level to about a inch and the babies hatched on their own, i have about 40 that i can count

 

[blue_betta]

oh well... she ate all the eggs

 

[Netty]

Oh Poop what about your other babies....how are they doing?

 

[blue_betta]

Oh Poop what about your other babies....how are they doing?

having mixed results with my other fry, ive been testing out betta starter and i was amazed at how well the fry took to it, but it needs to be finely crushed for the first two weeks and i stopped crushing it up a little too soon and lost alot of fry. my BOvt X melano pk only had about 20 babies anyway and there is mabey 10 left, some are huge and some are now still so small they are in danger of being eaten by the larger fry. the HM X pk spawn i recently moved them into to same tank as the other spawn as i needed the space and they are only 2 days younger. but they are tiny still!! 4 weeks old today and still very small. they were doing realy realy well up until i stoped crushing the betta starter and they were hard hit =/ i started of with 50+ fry and now only have about 10.
the baby simplex..well they are in with the splendens fry so i can pick them out yet

 

[Netty]

That's really interesting about the Betta Starter. I was combining that with microworm and all of a sudden at day 5 I lost about 75% of my fry and now have about 15 left. What I didn't know was that you had to crush it......I wonder if that contributed to my loss. Did you feed just the BS or did you give them anything else as well.

I don't suppose you can tell them apart at the moment

 

[blue_betta]

That's really interesting about the Betta Starter. I was combining that with microworm and all of a sudden at day 5 I lost about 75% of my fry and now have about 15 left. What I didn't know was that you had to crush it......I wonder if that contributed to my loss. Did you feed just the BS or did you give them anything else as well.

I don't suppose you can tell them apart at the moment

i only fed BS, but there were various tiny water creatures in the tank, i think they are some sort of fresh water copypods, they turn up in my tanks from time to time and the fry seem to eat them. it dont say on the feeding instructions to crush it, but the guy i bought it from off ebay told me to crush it for the first couple of weeks as the bits of food are too big for them at first. but i have to say id rekomend the product, its been a bit trial and error with it, but i know now how to use it properly and hope il be more successful with it with future spawns

 

[Netty]

Thanks for the info blue_betta. I've got lots of little critters too and when I checked on them earlier I noticed one of the fry gobble a couple up really quickly as they tried to dart passed him. I must admit I did panic when I first saw them. I've heard good reports about BS so will try crushing next time. Although I have to say the instructions are minute and had to photograph in macro and then zoom in to read them