Breeding a betta?

Question

Hi, I new a breeding betta's but I want to really bad and so does my family. Anyways.. I have don some resreach and this is what I found, tell me if this is right.
#1
Have two bowls next to eachother.
#2
place the male and female is the two bowls. And feed them alot of food, but no over feed them
#3
Wait till the female has lines across her belly( I also heard)/
You can see the eggs in her belly?
#4
Make sure the male has the breeding nest ready
#5
But the female in the males bowl.
#6
watch them and make sure the male isnt harming her.
#7
NEED HELP ON THIS ONE ( I think it is: when she dosnet have any eggs left, but how do you know that, is when you take her out.
#8
take the male out in how many days?

Thanks for your help!
#

Answer 1

I have been breeding bettas for over 20 years and this is what works for me

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 temperature 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 separate 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 adding 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 success. 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 separate them. Once separated 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! Feel free to email me if I can help further.

MM

Answer 2

Dustin...Newbie to Newbie...

Condition the pair away from each other for a week or so with live or frozen foods (mesquito larva work great and they are free!..of course your neighbors may hate you).

#1 You need a 10g fish tank w/a sponge filter or a corner filter (I prefer the sponge filter)...keep the bottom bare of rocks/gravel and such, lots of plants (real or fake), 1/2 a styrophome cup taped to the other end from the plants (in the water, not under) "opening" to the glass so the eggs don't float out.

#2 Fill the tank 1/2 full and put the female in there for a few hrs to get comfy...once she is comfy use a hurricane lamp (open on both ends...ususally found in the home decor of Walmart or Kmart or such) and put her in it...now put the male in the tank (female is safey in her "cup").

#3 The female will "bar"...this is pale vertical lines on her body..."stress" bars are horizontal. The male will court the female through the glass.

#4 The breeding nest is NOT a sure sign the spawn will happen...My male NEVER built a nest first, nor was he good at maintianing it, but he was a great daddy (He just died..the morning he died, he had just finished his week with his newest brood of fry..he was 3yrs old).

#5 You can at this point release the female, when she has the "spawning bars", but stay close, if the "stress bars", put her back into the "cup".

#6 LOTS of chasing goes on during a spawn...your girl WILL get beaten up! Have a clean bowl waiting for her when they are done. This is just part of the process...if you have a lot of plants for her to hide in, then that will be better!

#7 When the spawn is complete, she will go hide in the plants (this is why they have to be away from the nest and not under it!) Any attempt from her to go to the nest will result in getting chased away. Have a net ready (I keep mine bent in an "L" shape so I can put it under the female and just lift her out as she come up for air.

#8 The male will stay with the eggs for a few days...the process...spawning-caring for eggs/keeping them in the nest/keeping them clean, to fry (new hatched fry "swim" like mesquito larva..swim up and float down..daddy should do his best to keep them in the nest..this is the reason for the bear bottom)-to Free-Swimming Fry (this is the point they start to swim like normal fish). Once the babies are free-swimming, you can remove daddy. All is according to how warm you keep the tank...the higher the temp the sooner they hatch (and the weaker they are), the lower the temp (not below 76*F/78*F..I like 78*F) the stronger they are/the longer it takes to hatch. You want around 36-48hrs (my 12-24hr babies died after only 3 days..80*F). Once the babies hatch, then free-swim is about 2-3 days, then remove Daddy.

I have tried to cover everything, If you don't understand something, you may email me, or I am a member of a forum that you can join...http://fishroom.rapidboards.com/index.php?...

I only in my 2nd yr of spawning betta, and I have been met with a lot of frowns because I am not breeding "high dollar" betta and only the common Veil-Tails that are found in the petstores (the reason I am breeding these...I have lost more betta fry than I'd like to admit!)

Good Luck with your Betta Spawn!

Answer 3

#1 Two bowls will probably work, but only if the male's bowl is relatively large. He needs enough room to choose his nest site confidently, and for the female to escape him when she needs to. What's done more often is to put the male in a half-full 10 gallon tank and the female in a bowl or lantern glass inside that.

#2 Rather than feeding them "a lot" of food, you need to feed them high-quality, high-protein foods like live or frozen brine shrimp, blood worms, or daphnia. Feeding a variety of foods will give them a wider range of nutrition and condition them for the spawning.

#3 SOME females will show vertical bars from top to belly when they want to mate. Not all of them are easy to see it on. Also, don't confuse this with horizontal bars from gills to tail which just mean the female is scared. As for seeing the eggs, you can't see inside the female's body, you can just see that her belly is fattened with the eggs inside it.

#4 He will blow lots of bubbles that stick together. It's best if you provide him with plants so he can do this on the bottomside of a floating leaf. Some breeders cut a styrofoam cup in half from top to bottom and float both pieces in the tank like little caves so the male can choose one or the other. Make sure they're taped to the side of the tank or secured so they don't float around; movement will break up the nest.

#5-#6 When you release the female, stay close and WATCH. No matter what the signals were, how ready the fish seemed, it doesn't always work out. If the male is biting the female and doing damage to her scales or fins, you need to get her out. If he is chasing her in little bursts but not doing damage, they're still checking each other out. When they start to spawn, he will wrap himself around her and squeeze out her eggs. She will probably float around stunned for a few seconds while the male scoops up the eggs and takes them to the bubblenest, but she will recover. They will repeat this over and over.

#7 As long as the female keeps returning to the nest and allowing the male to wrap around her, you can leave them together. As soon as the male begins to chase her away and she is attempting to escape or hide, you need to separate them.

#8 The male can stay until the eggs hatch 24-36 hrs later. You can remove him about 3 days after that.

You didn't ask what to feed the fry! There will probably be hundreds of them and they can't eat flake food for several weeks. You should ask about that too.

Answer 4

Bowls! I breed loads of bettas, breed them in 10 gallons at least, with a few plant thickets! When feeding feed them some rich foods like bloodworm. Take the female out when the male starts chasing her. Take the male out when the fry are free swimming. Don't worry if it doesn't happen 1st time, and remember, what accomadation will you give to the small males, at 4 weeks they start flaring their fins at each other. Good luck.

Answer 5

do not declare to be an expert in breeding betta fish. All i've got completed is accumulated tips i've got researched with regards to the breeding of those attractive fish. In my examine, there have been truly captivating issues that i've got stumbled on approximately a thank you to reproduce betta fish. For a start up, you go with a female betta fish. those are enormously not person-friendly to return via. maximum petstores in elementary terms inventory the extra flamboyant male bettas. in spite of the incontrovertible fact that, in case you seek not person-friendly adequate on the internet, or ask your community petstore properly, they'll in all probability be pointed interior the superb path. female betta fish are enormously uninteresting whilst in comparison with their male opposite numbers. some are enormously colourful yet their fins are often lots shorter than the adult males. it is likewise available to maintain female betta fish mutually in an aquarium while you won't have the ability to try this with adult males (in actuality, you shouldn't keep the female betta with the male the two - or something that even seems remotely like a male betta eg fantail guppies - they are going to be attacked).

Answer 6

your right, but you will findout it isnt that simple.

on step #7, you will know, because the male will be very aggressive to her again. Thats when you take her out.

You take the male out about 3 days after thefry have become free swimming.

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