Breeding More Docile Bettas.

[Spookymuffin]

Not sure how many people would be interested but I felt like I should share just in case.

My boyfriend and I have been selectively breeding Bettas for a few years now (In his house mind you, my mother wouldn't allow fish in the house until a few weeks ago) and it's not for tailtype, colour or fighting ability. We've been breeding them to be more placid.

Many generations in and we're finally beginning to see some progress. The current strain contains females that can almost always be kept together in varying numbers, size and age groups and males that do just fine in with a small number of females. We have yet to achieve any kind of major success with males that will tolerate each other.
All fish that have been bred so far are common-as-muck red and blue Veiltails. Once we perfected the temperament standard we were planning on trying to introduce some more colours or fancy tailtypes.

A few weeks ago I got a lovely White Platinum Halfmoon male (my first Betta for myself woot!) off Aquabid and after spending some time observing his behaviour and general temperament I was quite pleased to find him to be quite the sweetheart.

Currently he is sharing a heavily planted 54litre (one of my two rekord 60s) with two females from our docile strain, so far so good, and I hope to breed him to them to hopefully introduce the genes responsible for the Halfmoon tailtype and white platinum colour into our strain.

We're hoping, time and money allowing, to have a fully established strain of Siamese Friendly Fish (still trying to think of a not so lame name) in the next five years with enough genetic diversity to consider selling them. And we do both actually have access to genetic profiling technology; I'm studying zoology and he's doing his PhD in cell and molecular biology.

It's been very interesting and a lot of fun the last few years (I've even managed to get a few zoology papers done for college out of it) and I'm hopeful that we'll manage to demolish one of the larger hurdles about keeping Bettas.

 

[Amunet]

Well good luck with that. Keep us updated on the progress!
I think it's gonna be interesting to see what you 2 can get and hopefully will be able to actually get Siamese "friendly" fish lol.

 

[Netty]

Will be really interesting to see how it all works out for. We have a very fiesty Plakat male that we spawned recently. We thought he would really tear the female apart but were amazed to see how gentle he was once she was released. However the babies had to be separated at 4 weeks instead of the usual 8 cos they were a right bunch of hooligans.

How do you go about choosing which pair to put together. Is it based more on the male or female behaviour or both and how long do you keep the babies together for? Do you leave them and only take out the ones showing agression until you are left with the calmer more docile ones?

 

[newfishy]

what are the breeding conditions and the tank sizes the fish are commenly kept in?

 

[tangokitty]

wouldb bee cool if it works!

 

[nemosworld]

i'm curious as to whether they'll be able to successfully breed when they're totally docile. i always associated the bad temperament with courtship behavior

 

[Spookymuffin]

The males and females that we choose for breeding have to have the following characteristics:

Males must never physically attack females, a small amount of chasing to establish dominance is allowed but only if it is short lived. They must also prefer to flare at other males rather than try to kill them.

Females must never physically attack each other or any male that they come in contact with. Females who flare at other females are not desired.

We've never had any problems when it comes to mating. There is still some chasing but the male is much less aggressive when he actually catches the female. Mating is often violent in many otherwise peaceful species so this has not been seen as a major problem.

As for tank size, our fish are never kept in less than 10 gallons Most contain one male and three females, some are just females together (usually six) and finally we also have one ten gallon with two males that seem to get along just fine. I've tried breeding them to some of our more docile females but I've yet to replicate their behaviour in their offspring.

We also have a few 14/15 gallons that usually contain 2/3 females that we've bred and a male from outside the bloodline e.g. the set up with my new Halfmoon that I mentioned in the first post.

For breeding we just drain all but a few inches of water from their main tanks and let the magic happen. Males seem less inclined to chase females away after spawning and even less likely to try and physically hurt the female he has just mated with.

As for the babies, they are kept in 20 gallon grow out tanks and more or less left to their own devices (while still being fed and monitored for disease of course) until they reach sexual maturity. Then any aggressive females are removed and put into individual two gallons to later be sold off as pets. Males are tested for aggression towards females and towards their own gender. Any male who shows aggression towards females does not make the cut and is sold off; any male that shows less aggression to other males is given pride of place and access to more females than the others.

 

[trojannemo]

awesome work...couldnt this work be considered for your phd if you're going for one?

i for one think you deserve the millions you'll earn if you are successful at this. talk to a lawyer regarding copyrighting/patenting their genetic profile. that way when and if you are successful you can restrict who gets to sell them!
provided of course that you intend to release them to the public once you achieve a succesful line...

if it happens...i want a tankful of bettas!

 

[BettaMetta]

SpookyMuffin,  Are you still working on breeding more docile bettas.  I ask because I have a half moon betta male right now that I keep in a tank with two female bettas, 4 corys and some guppies and he is totally docile.  The trick for us is we got him as a young fry and introduced him into an established tank and if he showed any aggression at all (like you described he flared at the females when we first put him in the tank) we gave him a "time out" by placing him in one of those floating betta tanks that float on the top of the aquarium.  These fish have been together for many months now and there have been no problems. We'd also like to try to breed him with one of females.  In particular, were you able to replicate the docile nature in the next generation ?