Males won't make bubble nests!

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lilmich

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We've decided to try and breed 1 of our 2 male Bettas, but neither one of them will make a bubble nest. We've been trying for 2 weeks now. Am I doing something wrong?
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What is the water quality like (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH and GH) in numbers?
How long have the tanks been set up for?
What is the water temperature? You want the temperature around 26-28C.
How often do you do water changes and how much do you change?
How often do you feed them and what do you feed them?
How deep (high) is the water?
If the water is too deep or there is too much surface turbulence, they won't build a nest.

You need a picture on the back of the tank and some more floating plants. Water Sprite (Ceratopteris thalictroides/ cornuta) is the best floating plant for them. It can also be planted in the gravel.

If you are trying to breed fish, you should feed them 3-5 times per day for several weeks before breeding them. Use dry, frozen (but defrosted) and live foods. Raw or cooked prawn/ shrimp is one of the better foods for conditioning them. Buy some frozen prawn from a bait shop or supermarket and keep them in the freezer. Take one prawn out and remove the head, shell and gut (thin black tube in body) and throw these bits away. Use a pair of scissors to cut the remaining prawn tail into small bite size pieces and offer a few bits at a time. When the fish are full, stop feeding and remove uneaten food.
Frozen bloodworms and brineshrimp are also good. Live mozzie larvae are good too.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day or two when feeding more often to make sure the water stays clean.

Put a cover over the tank so it covers most of the tank, to increase humidity and make the air warmer.

The following link has information on preparing food for baby fish. You need to get the fry food ready before you breed fish because most of the cultures take a month or more to get going.
https://www.fishforums.net/threads/back-to-basics-when-breeding-fish.448304/
 
Koi's tank:
Ammonia 0, nitrate 0, nitrite 0, pH 7.6. I dont know GH.It started it's fish in cycle with seeded ornaments 21st July. Temp 27. 50% change on thursdays. Water is 22cm high I think, the filter is on lowest setting.

Jasmine's tank:
Ammonia 0.5, nitrate 0.5, nitrite 0, pH 7.6, GH unknown. It started it's fish in cycle with seeded ornaments on Sunday. Temp 26. 50% change daily. Water is 23cm high I think, the filter is on lowest setting.

They hoth get fed frozen bloodworms twice a day. The females do too. I already have microworms culturing ready for the little babies, and 1 female wants to breed. Just need a nest.
 
The tanks dont have gravel as I read the males lose the eggs in gravel
 
Lids are usually on the tanks, but i took them for the purposes of the pictures
 
Do a water change every day and feed them more often and more variety of food.

They should have something on the bottom, be it gravel or sand.

The babies are too small to take microworms and need green water, infusoria or boiled egg yolk for at least the first 2 weeks. then they can get microworms and newly hatched brineshrimp.
 
Thanks. Ill put the gravel back in then. Is cooked prawns ok to feed the boys, assuming i cut it up small enough? The boyfriend breeds poultry, so egg yold shouldnt be a problem. Are the young copper sensitive? Plenty of borehole water at work sittinf around going green, but it travels through copper pipes
 
Cooked prawn is fine.

Young fish are sensitive to copper, however, if you run the tap for a couple of minutes before collecting water, it will flush out the water that has been sitting in the copper pipes and the water coming through after that will be free of copper.
 
I see why you get tagged in so many threads now! Thank you, I'll start putting it right tonight.
 
Is there any way of helping a young male (6 months) to perfect his nests? At the mo he's making £2 coin-sized ones, and they fall apart overnight.
 
Too much water movement or surface turbulence will causes bubblenests to break up.
Make sure there are lots of floating plants to help stabilise the nest.
 
I had the filter on the lowest setting. Theres plenty of plants - i have a job to find him sometimes for all the plants, and he had an almond leaf to nest under. I did notice if he placed a bubble too near the edge of the leaf, it would roll off and vanish at the water level, like it's just a plain air bubble?
 

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