What is the best way to breed betas?

Answer 1

I don;t know if it's the best way, but it got me through over 20 years of betta breeding -

Breeding tank: A 10 gallon makes a good breeding tank for bettas. Place in on a dark surface and set it up with no gravel or decorations. Use a small sponge filter and a heater. maintain the heat at 78-82, the temerature is not really that critical. Using a hood is a good idea to hold in heat and moisture.

Conditioning: Condition the male in the breeding tank. Condition the female in a seperate tank and be sure they cannot see each other. Feed well on frozen or live foods alternating with flakes or pellets for at least a week. The female should be plump with eggs and the male should be flaring and showing his best color, maybe even building a bubble nest.

Spawning: Drop the water level in the breeding tank to about 5" deep. Place the female in a bowl or other container next to the breeding tank so that the male can see her. As soon as there is a good bubble nest in the breeding tank add the female. Check for eggs in the bubble nest every few hours. You know they are finished when the female is hiding from the male and he no longer leaves the nest to chase her down. He will also not be trying to attract her to the nest. At this time remove the female from the breeding tank. If they fail to breed within a few hours go back and repeat the conditioning steps for a week.

Eggs and fry: The eggs will hatch in 2 days. At first the male will collect the babies and return them to the bubble nest, this is normal. Once you see that the babes are able to swim in a normal fashion, remove the male. Now is the time to start feeding the babies. Feed them newly hatched brine shrimp, micro worms or vinegar eels. Feed several times a day for the first week to 10 days. At that time you can start addig some powdered flake food to their diet and begin increasing the water level in the tank.

Care: The babies need very clean water. Do a 50% or more water change every day and be sure to remove any uneaten food or dead babies that you see. Keeping the water clean and changed very often is one of the major keys to sucess. Be sure you cull the brood. Culling is to remove unwanted fish. Remove any deformed fish right away and destroy them.

Rearing and selection: Eventually you will need to split the batch as they will over crowd the 10 gallon. Removing the females to another tank is the best way. The males can stay together without a problem. Continue to feed quality foods of increasing size working your way up to frozen or adult brine shrimp and continue to do large daily water changes. Once they begin to develop color, you should cull based on color. Keep the color you like and remove the rest. Even if you started with two reds you will get a few that are not red or are not evenly colored. If they are near adult size a shop should buy them from you or at least give you some store credit. Be ruthless, keep only the very best to breed with next time around.

The males can stay together basically for their entire lives as long as you never seperate them. Once seperated even for a day they will begin to fight so keep that in mind.

Best of luck and stick with it, you'll have baby betta before you know it!

MM

Answer 2

Get a 5 gallon breeding tank with a sponge filter and a heater (set to 80F). Cycle the tank. After the tank is cycled, add the male. The female should be in a seperate tank alongside this one where he can see her. Hopefully he will start builing a bubble nest soon. If he does, and if the female shows vertical stripes or a belly full of eggs, add her to the tank. Watch to make sure they aren't fighting each other. Let them do their thing, and when both have blown the eggs into the bubblenest, remove the female. The male must stay with the eggs and fry until they are free swimming. He will pick them up and put them in the nest if they fall. Once they are free swimming, remove the father. You will need to upgrade tanks or buy seperate tanks as they grow.

Answer 3

here is the answer i gave to someone else-----

betta breeding is rather complicated: when they mate and the male squeezes the eggs out of the female and fertilizes them, he proceeds to pick them all up in his mouth and blow them into a bubble nest. He will then defend the nest from the female, so that is a great time to remove her.

the water should be at about 80-82 degrees F. use a bio/sponge filter, bubbling on low, so the surface of the water is mostly undisturbed. the tank must remain covered, since the fry are very sensitive to temp changes and may actually get pneumonia (they have to come to the surface to breathe until their gills develop). its better if the water is only about 6 inches deep, or the male will wear himself out trying to pick up the eggs, and also to have a clean tank bottom (no stones) so he can find the eggs. theyll hatch after a few days, and thats when the male should be removed.

using duckweed in the tank helps, it gives the eggs/fry something to adhere to at the top of the tank. when they hatch, you can feed them baby brine shrimp or fry food (or infusoria, which is basically pond scum-created by soaking hay in water for a few days)

the tank must be kept clean, or the whole mess will grow fungus. a drop or 2 of melafix should help prevent that. its very difficult to get the fry to survive the first week, but after about a month you should be able to tell males from females...its a rather aggravating process, but worth it once the babies get big! good luck!

Answer 4

Well what you do is keep the male and female in the same tank and let nature do the rest.