The fry are now 3 months old. By this point I was expecting to be overwhelmed with fully grown fry trying to bite each other's tails off, but most of them are still rather small. And determining gender is turning out to be a real challenge! I was convinced that a few of the babies (Gem, for example) were female, but turned out being males!
Gem went to his new home last weekend, and Froning went home almost 2 weeks ago. So far they are the only babies who have left the "nest", but I'm hoping to rehome a few more of the largest ones before the end of the month!
Now for the depressing part of betta breeding...I did have to cull some of the fry. *sigh*. I felt like such a terrible person, but it's just a harsh reality of breeding. You end up with a large number of fry and there will inevitably be ones with deformities. I had about a dozen with either severe spinal deformities, or swim bladder issues that prevented them from swimming properly. I have some other fry that are missing, or have very small ventral fins, but they are getting along just fine so I am leaving them be. I was hoping I wouldn't have to cull any, but when it came down to it I realized I just didn't have the space to continue housing them all. I have two 10 gallon tanks I'm raising them in, which is less than ideal, but I couldn't get my hands on anything larger in this small island. And if I'm being completely honest, I was hoping that a couple of 10 gallons would suffice, but next time around I would definitely make sure to have a larger grow out tank. I also think it would have prevented some of the deformities I ended up with.
Here's what some of them are looking like now:
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| "Froning" adjusting to his new environment |
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| "Tail Dipper" Displaying deep blues with dark red wash (definitely a male) |
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| "Gem" before his true colors (deep blue) came out |
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| I think this is a female...not sure yet! Looks a lot like mommy though |
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| Another shot of the handsome "Froning", compliments of his new owner |
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