Community Male Bettas?

[Fate2006]

Hey all! I, like many of you absolutly love bettas As a matter of fact I just picked up a new fringe tail half moon last night from petsmart (my work), I was thinking today about bettas and how it would be amazing if more than one male could be kept safely in the same tank which got me to thinking...

Now, I know that all fish fight for breeding territory, but gouramis are bubble nesters aswell as bettas and they don't fight when they're not breeding... My thought is that if it's possible to pick out the least agressive betta and breed them for a few years then wouldn't the fighting strain eventually disappear? unfortunatly I also realized that inorder to find the least agressive bettas you yourself would have to force them to fight a few times and find out the least agressive one and breed him then do it over and over again until the bettas will not fight... Does anybody think this is possible? Or is this just a desperate plee of a mad man?

 

[t.ropical_m.istx3]

i love the idea. unfortunatly, it's like breeding the will to run out of a thoroughbred. no matter how mild they seem, that will to run's still there and it could appear any time.

the fighting blood's still there and it could take more than a few generations to sort that out, especially if you're forcing them to fight to find the milder one. they're doing the opposite as you want, it probably wont work.


i love the idea though.

 

[zoekin8yg]

actually gouramis can fight when they arent breeding. My male killed another male and 2 females! Temperment isnt completely genetic so it would be a bit difficult selectively breed a less aggressive betta but it could be possible, however would take a lot of work. Forcing them to fight is just not fair on the fish and can cause them to die. The ones that flare less often are more likely to be less aggressive. Just get a divided tank if you want lots of males.

 

[InaneCathode]

Thats like breeding the gold out of goldfish. It's possible, but you're pushing against at least a thousand years worth of breeding.

 

[Jaded12]

Hmmm I guess it is possible... but I don't think it would be very fair to the fish, though... IDK ... maybe, but it would takes tons of work and generations!!

 

[fiki]

there's always the issue inbreeding...

just so you know you are breaking thousands of years of evolution...

and yes... it's like breeding the gold out of goldifish; don't do it. i think the fact that they are hardaszses makes them so cute. my cheeseball wouldn't be the same if he [didn't] flare at the printer...

 

[starrynightxxi]

gotta agree, it's not really feasible. at least, not with domesticated bettas. they've been bred for a few hundred years by people TO be aggressive, so you'd be trying to back-track all that selective breeding. i don't think it could be done in one life time by one person, and meanwhile, what are you going to do with the thousands of byproduct bettas?

secondly, as much as i like bettas, i personally have no interest in a community tank of male bettas. It just sounds gaudy to me.

 

[Kyrielle]

I remember reading an article on bettysplendens.com about aggressiveness in bettas. It is possibly partially genetic, but a great deal of aggression also deals with how they were raised. I think the study showed that bettas are less likely to fight the longer they are raised with their siblings and the more contact they have with other male bettas. This is compared to males who were raised in total isolation and never viewed another male betta or a female. It's kind of like desensitising them to other males. There is also to note that crowntails (and I think plakats) have a greater genetic disposition to being aggressive (but this could also have to do with how they were raised...which is impossible to know unless you ordered the betta from a breeder or raised the betta yourself).

 

[Fate2006]

I agree with the fact that I'd have to go against thousands of years of evolution... and my major consern is that I don't want to have to make the maels fight... I wonder if there would be another way??? hmm... well just a thought of a mad man, devolving bettas would be like devolving humans... possible, but it would take so much time it's crazy... incidently my half moon is starting to build a nice bubble nest... as is my crowntail hmm who should I attempt to breed first I wonder


ahh alas... if anybody does try to do this I believe that they would make a killing on the betta market... I mean who wouldn't want a tank full of beautiful male bettas?? not me ^^ I'd love one

 

[lisie]

Betta splendens in the wild really aren't crazy aggressive like the domestic ones we know. They are territorial and by nature, solitary fish, but they're not as aggressive. Bettas have been bred over hundreds of years in order to BE aggressive. Trying to even get them back to how they are in the *wild* would take at least that long, and even then you wouldn't be able to keep lots of males together.

But here's an idea... why not breed female bettas to have longer fins?? It would take a while, but I'm sure it's possible to get females' fins just as long as the males' are, and yet most are less aggressive and can be kept in a community setting.

 

[starrynightxxi]

oh dear, it's already hard to tell females from male plakats!

 

[GuppyDude]

I have watched many hundreds come and go from this here betta forum, and i can say definitivly that what you are thinking of has been tried numerous times before. No one has had much sucess with such a project, and it has been tackled from many differant angles. People have tried breeding, they've tried conditioning, and i beleive on another forum some sick werido was drugging his fish... I can say from my meager experiance in genetics and multi-cellular life in general (I being one such being), that agression lies in the one's personality, somthing that while inherited, is like playing the lottery. Iv seen bettas who can live with guppys (even fry) and not harm a single one, and iv witnessed guppys completely decapitated by other bettas from the same spawn parents of the peaceful fish, (none of my own fish of course.)

This is going to get dork, so watch out...

In Nazi Germany during WWII Hitler and his team of "brilliant" scientists worked on createing a master race (common knowledge, i know.) While they were successful in determineing and breeding out physical traits such as skin, hair, eye coloration, height, est., they were quite incapable of accurately documenting inherited personality traits. Needless to say, little research was done on such genetics, as we bombed them to oblivion, but i beleive (My opinion), that personality while influensed slightly by ones heritage, can still vary and awful lot.

End of dorkiness...

I am not calling you a nazi, or anything of the sort, in fact im quite interested in what you intend to pursue. If you do plan to work on somthing like this now or in the furture, id very much like to be informed of your findings, as you must be able to tell by now, this greatly interests me.

 

[Fate2006]

I get what your saying, however, a thought just occured, if somebody could find a genetisit who would help with this project (yes I know odds are 1 in a million), then they could possibly find the gene responsible for the agressive behavior and find a way to stop it from being inherited by the young... wouldn't this work out? or am I yet again just a mad man? (yeah I'm aware I'm overkilling the mad man stuff )

 

[zoekin8yg]

The point as already stated by myself and others is that aggressiveness isnt purely genetic (I have studied genetics at degree level). Its the old nature nurture debate

 

[Jaded12]

The point as already stated by myself and others is that aggressiveness isnt purely genetic (I have studied genetics at degree level). Its the old nature nurture debate

Agreed, while genetics has something to with it, a lot of the aggressivness depends on the general personality of the fish, and personality for the most part is not genetic.