bettas breeding?

Question

How do you breed bettas and how long does it take?

Answer 1

I have been breeding bettas for show and for sale for over 20 years and this system works well 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!

MM

Answer 2

I learned something amazing about Bettas that I am passing on to you. Do you know that bettas are really not an aggressive fish and that when you get them you can retame them to be very dosile even around other fish. We did. Bettas were first bred to be in betta fights which are banned now in many states and working on being banned just about everywhere, just like **** and dog fighting is. For some reason they still come in those dinky dishes at the pet stores. Betta's are kept in those dinky little fish bowls for the purpose of making them aggressive because they do not like small enclosed environments. Since it is becoming outlawed, I don't know why they don't stop putting them in the small containers. If you want to make your betta doscile, first get a 10 gallon tank and put it into the tank for a period of one month by itself. Then you can introduce it into a larger tank that has a few female bettas in it... ie 20 gal. and let them be for a bit. Read up on the atmosphere that works best for breeding bettas and make your female tank that atmosphere. We finally put them all into a 50 gal. tank that had other fish into it besides bettas and they all lived very happily together. There were several matings before we gave our tank to our nephew as a gift because he was so facinated with them. He still has the tank and all the fish are fine, living together just fine. When the babies were born, we took them out of the tank so that they wouldn't be eaten by the other fish as food. Then when they were big enough, we gave them away in pairs to neighbor kids.

Answer 3

you need to do some research, because it isnt that easy.

Try looking at my betta site for breeding bettas. As it s alot of step and isnt as easy as putting two bettas together.

Answer 4

the fish dude at walmart told me that when you male beta lets out these bubbles that gather around the edge of the bowl at the surface, that means he is ready to mate. so you have to get a female fish to put in just long enough until she fertilizes and all that will those bubbles but you can't leave them both in there or he will kill her and when the eggs hatch don't leave him with them or he'll eat them

Answer 5

Here is some info regards spawning them and raising the fry afterwards step by step
http://www.aquariumhobbyist.com/articles/BreedingBettas.html
http://www.bettysplendens.com/articles/catview.imp?catid=856


Hope that helps
Good luck



EB

Answer 6

i thought they only breed in the wild! but this says otherwise

http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/breeding/Berdoulay_Bettas.html

Answer 7

This site will tell you everythihng! http://www.bettatalk.com/breeding_bettas...

22 hours ago - Report Abuse

Answer 8

may be he`s not chasing her to kill but maybe he`s chasing her to produce some sperms for the eggs to produce babbies(i am not sure)

Answer 9

it take no very long at all. only a matter of seconds.

Answer 10

This site will tell you everythihng! http://www.bettatalk.com/breeding_bettas.htm