A new mission breeding bettas - need advice

I bought a pair of bettas a week before Christmas. I had the pair separated until the 9th January i introduced the pair in my 30 x 20 x 22 tank with floating plants. No heater nor sponge filter as it is quiet warm inside my living room. I covered the tank and switch off the lights and went to bed. Woke up the morning and notice this large bubble nest and female hiding in the far corner of the tank. Male was collecting little white objects from the bottom and then I look and notice all these little white eggs. I removed the female immediately as he was just guarding this nest. I lower the water level and kept the top covered to keep the surface moist. During the first day the nest completely disappeared and all the eggs where floating around the top. I just let nature take it's course I had to go out that day and arriving back late afternoon he had re-built the nest and collected all the eggs. By the 12th the eggs started hatching and male was just laying around at the bottom of the tank and taking any interest in the fry. I removed him immediately and started my bbs hatchery. I just noticed that all his fins had clamped up and started forming fungus and by the end of the day all his fins had fallen off and struggling so I took him out of his misery and then I had to start playing dad.

Feeding fry 3 times a day bbs and liqui-fry and fry is now 18 days old. I noticed white spots forming on fry look like salt grains and immediately browse forum "ick". I removed fry immediately and washed off everything with hot water. I then refilled the tank with aged water as I usually keep a 20L bucket of water, raised the heater 28dg and added ick medication a few drops. Let fry float in plastic containers for about 2 hours and then released them. I have noticed this evening the most of the white spots had disappeared but I am still keeping the temp at 28. Not sure if i should bring it down to 26 or keep it for another day. I also have a small sponge filter running very low and later a small airstone also running low. When I removed the fry their was about 50 fry and during these a couple of days only a few of the weaker ones had died.

I bought another male and introduced the female last week monday and within 5 minutes there where eggs all over the surface of the tank. I do not think this female had laid all her eggs in the first spawn. Male was immature but later nature took it's course and he had managed to hatch about 16 fry.

My down fall might be that I do not keep a light on during the first couple of days during the spawning period and fry hatching.

Are there any Betta Breeders on the forum where I could get some help please.

 

Hi there, speak to @HennieRoux and @solex69, there is another breeder but for now I cannot remember his name./

 

Are you also onto bettas?

 

I dont breed them, but I love them. I have a plain red veiltail male at the moment and had 5 beautiful girls that I lost recently.

 

Hi @keith1964.

I breed Betta Splendens as well.

You're downfall is patience..lol. Remember one thing about lighting, it's as natural as day and night. Some breeders leave it on others do the 12Hrs per day only. I switch my lights off as well. There is no lights in the wild, so let nature take it's course. Firstly, before you breed or even think of breeding you will need a couple of things like: patience, dedication, patience, dedication... did I repeat that? get my drift lol, microworms (excelent first food for fry), LiquiFry No 1 for egglayers (together with some floating plants helps promote infusoria which you're fry will need to survive until they can eat MW or BBS). Sponge filter, 50W heater, airstone, airpump, air tubing, BBS hatchery, BBS eggs, BBS net, through away your Ph test kit, keep your ammonia test kit... you'll need later. Tank partition like Perspex or a storm lamp for the female. Now you experienced first hand, by chance or not, how bettas do their thing. Half fill the tank only, 10cm is fine on a 1ft or a 1.5ft tank. To aid the male and to manipulate where you would like the nest to be build use half a styrofoam cup, works like a charm. The male wil 9/10 times build the nest inside this cup. Use sellotape to tape it to the tank wall so it stays in place. You will also need some jars, plenty of them too. Batches of fry can be from as little as 10 up to 1000 at a time. Generaly in my experience between 350 and 400, this is my current batch size. Right this is you're basis to start of with. Don't go setting up a lot of breeders, it's hard work and very time consuming, if you don't have the time, SPACE, patience and dedication then just don't do at all!!!!

Now lets asume you have all of this, let us start, remember please that this is how I breed my Bettas, you will develop your own style in time, everybody does!

Condition both the male and female for 2 weeks at least prior to breeding with them. Feed them thawed frozen blood worms every second day 2 times per day, easy does it, not to much at a time. Every other day, some live Brineshrimp and some Betta flakes and or pellets. They will not get fed once they are in the breeding tank. The female will be in there for about 2-4 days and the male another 4days, so they need to be well fed.

Take the tank you're going to use to breed in (I use 1ft and 1.5ft's). Put in a sponge filter in one corner, the heater in the middle, and a air stone at the other corner. Place your heater at the bottom of the tank (make sure it's a submersible one). Fill it with about 10cm of aged tap water (about 24Hrs will do). Now hook everything up and test all you're equipment and make sure every thing works. Ok now you can switch of the filtration and airstone. Set the heater to 28 degrees Celcius and leave it there. Put you're styrofoam cup in and stick it to the tank wall in one of the corners. Now add some floating plants and one drop of LiquiFry No1 for egglayers (to promote infusoria growth). Put some sort of hiding place in for the female on the opposite side of the cup like a peace of driftwood or soft plastic/silk or live plants. Now let the tank stand for about two days as is (leave the heater on and switch the lights of at night).

Day Two: On day two add one drop of LiquiFry No1 for egglayers. Check your water temp. That's it.

Day Three: Feed the male and female 2 hours prior to putting them in the spawning tank for the last time. Add the male first. Remember to always acclimatise your fish first prior to releasing them in the tank. Leave him alone in there for about 2 hours to check out the place. Now add the female in either the storm lamp or insert your partition now and put her in the other side after you acclimatised her to the water temp. The male will start to flare at her and she towards him. She will initially show stress bars (don't you stress.lol), it is horisontal lines, these are vissible on darker females only, they will turn to vertical bars showing the male she is ready and eggs are present (just be patient, this may take a day or two). He will start to build his nest if he has'nt already. Leave her protected for a day. Do not feed them.

Day four: Now release the female early in the morning. Make sure you have nothing else to do as you will have to keep an eye on things for a couple of hours. It is normal for the male to chase and nip at the female, this is how the do it. The male will continue to build his bubble nest. Every now and then he will go look for the female and chase her around a bit and then back to the nest. This will continue for about a day or so. The female will eventually swim to the nest head tilted downwards showing the male she is ready to deposit her eggs. If the male accepts her the will do a "wiggle" dance under the cup/nest. There will be a couple of try's at first and no eggs. This whole mating procedure takes about 3 to 6 hours. You will know when they are done, the male will chase the female relentlessly away from the nest and she will be hidding constantly. You can now remove the female with caution as to not disturb the nest (to much).

Right, the female's job is over. Take good care of her and feed her well for about a week or so then back to normal feeding. Do not breed with her again for at least 2 months.

The male will tend the nest now. After +- 48hours the eggs will hatch and you will see tiny little tails hanging from the nest. The will fall to the bottom and the male will pick them up with his mouth and spit them back into the nest. This will carry on until they are free swimming, takes about two/three days at most. At this stage you can remove the male taking care not to net some of the fry as well. Take good care of him. He is very week at this stage and may catch ich or fungus quick, so his recovery quaters must be super clean. Feed him well for two weeks then normal feeding from there.

Now the new fry. Do not feed them for the first 3 days as the live of their yolk sack. Just continue to add one drop of LiquiFry No 1 for egglayers per day to promote infusoria growth. Two days after they are free swimming, start your BBS hatchery. As soon as you notice the yolk sack is gone, start feeding Microworms and add one drop of LiquiFry No1 per day. Don't over feed, no matter how tempting, rather feed small portions 4 times a day than one or to big portions and then there is a lot of uneaten food just waiting to rot in your fry's water and ammonia spike and kill all your fry. By the next day or so your BBS should have hatched. Now start feeding BBS in small amounts 4 x daily. Continue with the microworms in between. If by the next feeding there is still a lot of live food in the tank, skip the feeding. Feed again later, but before you feed again, clean the tank first. From here on perform a 10% water change every 2nd day with aged tap water of similar temp. The fisrt 10 days is critical, after that your home free more or less. As they grow start to introduce powdered baby flake food in small amounts, later on micro pellets, later on bigger flakes and so on. You get the picture.

Remember to check your ammonia levels every 2 weeks. Lots of fry=lots of waste=ammonia. For me a tell tale that somthing is up, is that all the fry gather at the surface of the water. 9/10 the ammonia levels is to high for them. The quickest way to correct this is a 50% water change stat. So don't let up on those crucial 10% water changes after day 8 of free swimming stage and you will do just fine. As they get bigger you will have to "Jar" the bigger males as they do start to hurt each other badly. Thats it in a nut shell. You will discover the rest with experience as you go and what works for you and your Bettas. You can also ask @Rooivlerkie, @HennieRoux, @solex69 they breed Bettas too.

Good luck on all your endevours and enjoy your Bettas and breeding, I hope this will help you, as I said this is how I do it and I raise 90% of all my spawns to adulthood. Some will die, it's nature and normal. Warning though... IT'S ADDICTIVE...YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!LOL

Kind regards

Charles

 

Hi Keith

Everyone breed bettas differently; the key is to take what you've learnt and develop a method that works for you. And yes, @Charles is 100% correct; patience is the biggest secret to breeding bettas.

The advice you've received from @Charles is good, so I'd suggest you follow it. You can also read an old article I typed up when this forum launched called "Breeding Bettas - My Way". Here it is. That is pretty old and I have made changes to how I breed bettas (or use to since I quit bettas) but there's enough info to assist you.

Ciao
Dale

 

Hi
I think a 30 x 20 x 22 is a bit small for breeding. There could be lost of eggs and not much space for them when they grow up.
Once I breed in a bowl. It is about 30 cm accros. My fry started well and then on 2 - 3 weeks they just begining to died. I think the bowl had to little space for all of them. The last time I breed a use a 46 cm tank. On two weeks I moved them to a 60 cm tank. They were very happy. three or four of them is very big and begin to get colour.
I agree what @Charles has said.
It is wise to do water changes every day/ every second day.
The fry realesed lots of hormones.
Also make sure your male and female is healthy and has no diseases.

Good luck on the breeding and raising of the fry.

 

Hi

@Rooivlerkie you are quite correct about the 30 x 20 x 22 tank. Due to space restrictions I use these only for breeding and I do move my fry at 7-8 weeks old to a 60cm grow out tank as well, later on I jar the bigger males and move the others to 3ft tank if necessary, depending on the batch size. Ideally a 3ft tank from the word go is much better, no moving of fry to grow out tanks etc. All depends on space and that dredded "Budget".

 

So happy im not the only one with this Betta breeding addict....haha.

Just one thing that really helped me with getting a 100% success rate in raising the fry, is that I give my fry BS on the second day of free swimming stage, they are large enough then to take in a couple of newly hatched BS, it must be newly hatched or else the BS have allready taken in their egg sack and grown a bit, and off course BS has more nutritional value when the egg sack is still attached to them!

There is also 2 kinds of BS, one kind when hatched is larger then the other type, I remember reading an article about this a couple of years ago, so I can not remember exactly witch type from what area is the smaller type? I have a tin of BS and i do have the brand name on the tin, this seems to be the smaller type.

 

Now i will request that one of you move to Cape Town please?

 

Thanks a million for the advice now I can correct where I have gone wrong.

 

First Betta (50) Fry Tank (20 days old)

Feed them twice a day live BBS. (Week days) 3 times (Week-ends)

Do water changes everyday 2L (container 20L aged water)

Clean bottom every night and uses a snail for during the day.

Will be moving them into 60 x 32 x 36 tank, will be preparing tank over the weekend. I will then grow out fry and see if their are any nice young bettas.

I will need to obtain jars for the males.

 

Hi @keith1964. Congrats on the spawn. No need to move them just yet. Wait until they are 7-8 weeks old. You have plenty of space for them from what I can see in the pics. Your water level looks a bit high though, as they grow up the water level bit by bit over time. Up the feedings a bit, once in the morning, once the afternoon and once at about 7pm. Try to stick to a time shedule, the fry get use to it and so do you.

 

congrats on the fry,
I hope they survive

 

on what age do you need to seperate the males before they start fighting??

 

You seem to be on the right track here @keith1964 just 1 small thing, I have 2 batches of fry +- 450 or so, the one batch went free swimming on the 9th of Jan and the other on the 11th of Jan, and they are allot bigger then your fry in the picture, I also saw 1 or 2 coming up for air this morning, this means their labarinth has developed in some fry.

I give some micro worms as well after the feeding of the brine shrimp in the morning, this way they have something to feed on during the day when I am not there, and their tummys remains full all the time, this works well, especially cause micro worms can live for over 24 hours in the water, so live foods is always available during the day.

@Nick seperating the males will only happen once aggresion is seen between them and this varies from spawn to spawn and how agresive the father was, I have kept males of 1 spawn together for 3 months, where in others only 2 months.

 

Hi @keith1964 and @Nick. I agree totaly with @HennieRoux. It is sound advice and you will do well to follow it.

 

Hi Hennie

How do you start your own micro worm culture? I work so I am not at home during the day. First two weeks I ask my neighbor's daughter to add 2 drops of liqui-fry when she comes from school. I gave her my fist pair of bettas and the female killed the male.

 

My water level was low at first but during the course of the weeks I started topping up. Ick break out in my tank and I did a whole clean up washing everything off with warm water. I also medicated the tank with a few drops of contract medication and raise the heater temp to 28. The ick has gone away but I know it is still free swimming so I am doing water changes regularly. I am still keeping the temp at 28. I usually feed them in the morning at 6-6.30 at night about 7. Need to get some more ocean nutrition brine shrimp eggs. I am also trying to grow my BBS in sea water, my buddy gave me this idea.

 

You will need a starter culture of micro worms first, just put up a thread that you are in need of some micro worms, someone in Pretoria should respond and give you a starter, I will gladly give you a starter but im in JHB, you keep and cultivate them in some cooked oats and a bit of yeast, and they multiply by the day bilions and bilions of them! So you say the female killed the male, that doesnt happen often but ive had some pretty agressive females that tore my males apart...blady panzy haha.

On the 3rd week I normally start to fill my 2 foot breeding tanks, half a bucket per day untill its full, especially with 300 fry in the tank. What filter system are you running? @ 28 deg, your fry should be happy and if maintenence is done on a regular basis, you should not have an ick problem! Remember BS is @ their best newly hatched, by growing them they lose allot of their nutritional value, its not reallyworth the effort to grow BS, rather just buy them in their adult stage live from your LPS, it shouldnt be more then R15 a packet, they are great for feeding to your breeding pairs, and conditioning.