well, i decided to try to breed...but i've got Q's

[steppy104]

ok...i just got the male and female yesterday, now i've got her in the breeder thing, and the male in the tank. he looks like he's goin nuts over her so far. in fact, both of them are goin nuts! but, isn't the guy supposed to be makin a nest? i woke up this mornin and checked to see if he made one yet, and he's just swimmin around the tank, while 2 of my other betta's that can't even see the female were makin their nests. is this normal? and if so, how long till he decides to make one?

and another question i had...hundreds of babies sounds like alot. i heard that the male only squezes out so many at a time, and i was wondering if it would be possible to limit the number of babies by removing the male after the first squeze or 2?

ummm....i think i got more questions but i can't think of them right now....

 

[steppy104]

i remember one of the questions!

ok, i've got a male (most likely mutt), and his body is blue, the fin on top of his body is a lighter blue with a little yellow/orange, and the tail fin is mostly yellow/orange with a very thin rim of blue on the outside edge. the tail under his body is like the tail fin.
the female has a very dark body (maybe black, maybe real dark red), and mostly red fins, with a couple dashes of blue. (hardly noticible).

is it possible to try and know wut the kids would look like? and i was also thinking, of maybe not putting the female with this male, and trying her out with my whiteish male, who's actually attempting a nest. (he looks white, but upclose you see it's a real light pastel green tail, and light pastel pink body) i wonder wut those kids would look like?

 

[shrks1fan]

It's not unusal for the male to not start a bubblenest, sometimes they wait until the female has been released and sometimes they'll wait as long as in between embraces, Lol. There are even other times they won't make one at all, although there is a high death rate with them. I would suggest NOT removing the female after a couple of embraces, let them do their thing, you can always cull later. My first spawn I started with between 100-200 eggs and now have about 27 fry at 2 months old, and all that was natural deaths, no culling (except for 2, half inch juvis with swim bladder problems).

And no, there's no way to know for sure what the babies would look like since they are multi colored to begin with and you dont' even know what the grandparents and great grandparents looked like (that will have a bearing on things), you could get fry that look nothing like either parent because it's getting it's color genes from grandparents.

Good luck

Linda
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http/www.cooking-fanatics.com

 

[steppy104]

thanks.....BTW, wuts culling?

oh ya....and i moved the female to be with the other male, but the first one should still be able to see her.

and is it normal, that when the first one saw her that he continuesly banged his head on her seperater thing? she dashed as hard as possible at him, flaring n all, and he would paralell himself to the plastic, and swing his body in a way that his head would swing so hard towards her, that you could actually hear all the fuss.

and when do i know to release her now? the tank she was in, with the other guy, is in a tank with white clouds, a small algae eater (same size as white clouds), rocks, and an ornament. i now put her in a tank alone with my whitish male, with one ornament (a tiger skull lookin thing or somethin).

 

[steppy104]

well, i decided to put the female with the male for a few seconds or so, and at first they swam next to eachother, the male looked like he was trying to rub up on her or something....but the female got mad, started nipping at him, so he nipped back, then she decided to lock lips with him...they stayed still like that for a few seconds, then i stopped them and put her back in her thing. he's now got a bruised lip and still wants a go at her.

is it just me, or does she have the personality of a male? is it normal for the female to go at the male?

 

[cutecotton]

yep, females can be aggressive. and from waht i know, you should release the female hwen you see her getting a little plump with eggs and start showing vertical stripes down her side (barring) which means that she is ready to breed wtih the male.

did you condition the bettas for a few weeks before attempting to breed?

 

[steppy104]

wut do you mean condition?

will smaller females breed? i seen a bunch of little females in the tank, and i thought that they might have been too young....but i'm startin to think that the female that i got is too big! lol. wut does the male do to get the female "in the mood"? both of my males look like they wanna rub on her plastic seperater. thing.

 

[clover]

well i have to say you dont remove the male coz he gards the nest and looks after the fry and eggs you remove the female.
not every babie will live to become fully grown some just die for no reason.
have you got some food for when they fry do hatch if they ever breed?
i use bbs and they love them you can use crushed boiled egg with a little bit of watter to make it in to a past but only add a little of that because it can cloud the water and kill they fry.

 

[cutecotton]

you should cehck out the thread that's posted there about breeding bettas.

Conditioning htem for a few weeks means to give them extra good food, with extra good water, etc to get them in the right condition for breeding. If the female isn't dispalying vertical bars or is plump with eggs that means that shes' not ready to breed. If you add her into the male at this point hte male will see her as an intruder and will most likely attack her.

please check out the thread to make sure you have everything you need before you breed bettas. it does take a lot of researching and efforts, i just dont' want anything to happen to your fish

good luck

 

[shrks1fan]

I think what you need to do is stop all attempts at breeding and go do some research, if you don't know what culling and conditioning is then it's obvious you haven't done much if any research yet. There is alot to know before you get into breeding Bettas, it's not easy and it's definetly not cheap. You need to be prepared with food for the fry, dozens of small tanks/jars to keep the growing males (and some females) in. So please, take a step back and read up on Betta Breeding first. The sticky post in this forum is good and you can do a Google search on Betta Breeding and find lots more informative sites on the subject. Please be sure you are reading and really want to do this first. As for culling, that is what it's called when you need to "dispose" of some of the fry due to health problems, defects or just plain reduce the amount of fry in the spawn.

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[steppy104]

i was just wondering if it was normal for the female to be so...manly. lol. i mean, my white male, made no attempt to bite her at first...just tried pushing her against the side of the cage. she just kept flaring at him, then nipping at him, then he got ticked off or somethin, and started doin it right back. then the female locked lips with him, and i seperated them after that.

 

[cutecotton]

my sugguesiton is for you to keep them sepereated and forget abut breeding for a few weeks and properly condition them before trying again. You'll probably get a more successfull spawn if you do all the research beforehand and condition both fish

 

[endparenthesis]

More research!

 

[steppy104]

i was hoping to learn from experience.... i read the basics on it, and i was gonna try and take it from there....

i'm still wondering why i have the manly female.........................................................

wut i did read up on, didn't mention culling or conditioning. it basically said buy the couple, and put the girl in the chimney in the same tank as the guy, and when she's fat, then let her loose.....then some chasing may go on, then finally they do there thing, she passes out, then might help him get the eggs in the nest, or might eat them....then the guy fights her off again.....then let the babies be born, they feed off their sac for the first 2 or 3 days, then feed them BBS or someone mentioned daphnia before, then vacume the tank with one of them home made sucky things, let them grow up, seperate males, and sell or give away.

thats basically wut most of the stuff i read says.

 

[cutecotton]

lol there really isn't nething to wonder about, all bettas have htier own personality quirks. you just might happen to have a more aggressive female, so don't be suprirsed if she attacks the male, it's pretty normal