Betta Breeding-Is It Worth It/possible?

[guppy2002]

I just put my female Betta in a devided tank with my male. They flare at each other a TON! but Tai (male) started making a bubble nest like crazy and defending it-he's so cute!
I was wondering how difficult it is to breed them- because i am really tempted right now. They are both so beautiful and their babies would be so cute....
They are sharing a 10 gallon right now. The other empty tanks i have are 10 and 7-ish gallons.(and a bunch of mini container tanks and critter cages, of course) What are your guys' expiriances on breeding these guys? Are the fry hard to raise? Thanks in advance!

 

[attibones]

Is it possible to breed bettas? Obviously. If it were impossible, we wouldn't have the fancy varieties we have to day.
 
Is it difficult? Not exactly. It can be dangerous though, particularly for the females.
 
Is it worth it? NO. It takes a lot of time and space and money to manage anywhere from several dozen to a hundred fry. You have to separate all the males out as soon as you can sex them. You need to know a lot about betta behavior. You have to know how to raise the fry (and they need live foods very early on), you have to know what to do with the fry. You have to know your potential parents' bloodlines. The female fry you can attempt to raise up in a sorority. This doesn't always work out. The males need to be separated so you need more than a few critter keepers. 
 
I would leave this up to people who have a lot of time and money to dedicate to this aspect of the hobby.

 

[Ch4rlie]

Attibones answer pretty much covers some of the issues in breeding betta splendens.

I can understand the temptation to breed from your potential pair but in reality, breeding any specie of fish is not really for the faint hearted or inexperienced fishkeeper.

A lot of time and effort is required, as well as the costs involved in getting fry tanks, fry food, filters etc.

Is it worth it? Hmm, well, it depends on what you plan to do with the betta offsprings, selling them is an option but more often than not, it is not really worth the costs and time you imparted in breeding and raising them unless you have desirable or rarely bred species.

If you are determined, I would strongly suggest you do a LOT of research, ask lots of questions and garner plenty of advice from good experienced breeders, also must consider carefully is this what you want to do, have the space, time, effort and able to afford to do this.

Not trying to put you off, just trying to gently let you be aware of what to potentially expect.

Good luck in whatever you decide

 

[Katch]

If your betta is a common Veil Tail - probably best not to. Far too many of these around, hard to sell to shops.
 
If you have soft water bettas are pretty easy to get to spawn. Raising fry is a whole different ball game and as has been pointed out - requires time, money and space.
 
Before even considering helping your fish to have a family - see if one of your local shops is prepared to take the juveniles.

 

[guppy2002]

My male is a pinkish/purpleish color with white tipped fins and female is a dark blue crowntail.
Thank you guys for convincing me not to do it! Thats what i needed to hear

 

[Wildbetta]

Agree with all that has been previously said. 
 
Betta spawns can be as small as 30 or well over 500 with no way to know for sure which way a spawn will go.  The fry are tiny, pretty fragile, and almost always will only take to live foods for the first month or even longer.  This requires the breeder to raise live food sources to feed the fry.  The fry will have to be separated once they start getting aggressive with each other.  This can happen as early as 4 weeks for some spawns.  Even when in the growout tanks all in one group, the water has to be changed every couple of days to remove the growth hormones that the fry secrete which inhibit growth of fellow fry.  And then once they are separated into separate containers - the water changes should be daily or every other day at the least.  So this is a lot of work and time--something most people do not want to spend or even have available to spend.  Then once they are up to size - you will have to figure out what to do with them all.  This decision should actually be thought about before breeding them because if you don't have a game plan for them once grown it will become an issue later on.
 
All this is info is not even taking into consideration the difficulties that can happen during breeding itself.  Since both male and female bettas are aggressive by nature -- it is always a risk to put them together even for breeding.  One or the other could very easily kill the other.  And this happens frequently even to seasoned breeders who know the risk and take every known precaution.  Even if the pair do not kill each other, damage to each other is the normal with both fish having nips and rips in the fins and missing scales.