5 Months Later

The babies are 5 months old now, and I expect they will all be in their new homes within the next week! I have many people here in Kodiak anxiously awaiting their new family members :)

I have just returned from a 3 week vacation to Florida. Fortunately, I had a very trustworthy house sitter while away, so the babies did okay while I was gone. I actually took 3 fish with me all the way to Florida! One nice thing about betta fish is that they are really great travelers! They made it through security and didn't have a single issue for the 21 hours of planes and airports. I took Neptune and 2 babies with me; one Mustard Gas like his daddy and one multi-colored female. Neptune is now living with my brother, and actually has some tank mates! A couple of tetras and a dojo loach, and he's getting along splendidly with them! I'm so proud. The female is living in a 30 gallon tank in my mother-in-law's classroom with a pleco, a crayfish, and 2 minnows. From what I have been told, she likes hanging out in the hollow log with the crayfish. The MG male is with my friend Lisa, with a space all to himself. I'm told he's very curious!

I came home to what seemed like completely different fish! The only one I still recognized was the blue-green female that I am planning to breed to Casper. And there was one very big surprise waiting for me; I have 3 marbled bettas! I was NOT expecting that AT ALL! They are piebald marbles, meaning their heads are "bald" flesh colored, and their bodies have spots or "marbling". 2 are males and 1 is a female (as far as I can tell!). The female is cute because she appears to have a mustache. One of the males reminds me of a panda, because he is black and "white", but the white is actually the "bald" coloring. The other male is my favorite, maybe of all of the fry; he has the piebald head and a few bald spots on his body, but is mostly black with black and blue fins that end in almost a butterfly effect (cellophane or clear coloring on the edges). BUT he also has yellow spots in his fins! He will be living in Neptune's old tank until I decide whether or not I will keep him.

Now that this batch of fry are all grown up and "leaving the nest" it's time for me to start thinking about my next breeding! Once I saw my marbled fish, I really wanted to breed him! But I still want to breed Casper to the blue-green female because they should produce some nice blue colors, and of course everyone loves the blue bettas! So now I am thinking about breeding 2 more pairs 1-2 months apart. It will be a lot more to keep up with, so it's something I will really have to think about. I will also need a 20 gallon grow out tank. Lack of a decent sized grow out tank was the biggest problem I had with this batch of fry. Hopefully I can find one locally that isn't already inhabited! If I do breed the marbled one, I think I would breed him to Neptune's sister, Esmeralda, to maximize my chances of getting more marbled coloring. From that pairing, I would expect mustard gas and marble coloring.

And now, the pics! Enjoy!

Blue-Green Female aka "Casper's Girlfriend". Her color is a little washed here

Marbled Male #1 aka "Sir Awesome Fins", flaring at his brother 

Sir Awesome Fins again; better view of his awesome fins

Blue Male

same blue male, but better lighting and he's flaring here

Marbled Female, aka "Mustache Fish"

Marbled Male #2 aka "Panda Fish"

Mustard Gas Female. She looks like her Aunt Esmeralda when she's fully colored

Mustard Gas Male who now lives in Florida! Photo courtesy of my friend Lisa:) 

Growing Up/Going Home

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:

"Froning" adjusting to his new environment

"Tail Dipper" Displaying deep blues with dark red wash (definitely a male)

"Gem" before his true colors (deep blue) came out

I think this is a female...not sure yet! Looks a lot like mommy though

Another shot of the handsome "Froning", compliments of his new owner

10 Weeks: Meet the Fry!

It's been a while since the last update! The holiday season snuck up on me, as it tends to do, and I simply didn't give many second thoughts to updating on the development of the fry. It has also been very challenging capturing any pictures of them, and blog updates just aren't as fun without pictures! 

For a while, their growth seemed to be very slow. But within the last 2 weeks they  have really developed nicely! I have 2 fry that are the largest of the batch and are showing some very interesting coloring. I believe 1 to be a female and the other to be a male, but time could prove me wrong. I've been calling the female Gem and the male Froning (10 points if you get that reference!). 

I am estimating I have 30-40 fry. There have been very few losses! I did lose a baby a few days ago due to a tank cleaning accident. It started to get sucked into the tubing as I was cleaning, but it managed to get away. Unfortunately it suffered an injury and I found it dead on the bottom of the tank a few hours later :( 

Most of the babies are still coming into their colors, but a few of them are almost fully colored. There are some 'wild' colored babies, some blue/green babies, some with red fins with black edging (I'm not sure what their full color will be yet) and, most surprising to me, there are some full mustard gas! This came as a complete shock to me, I was not expecting to see any yellow coloring in this batch! I guess that means mommy has some yellow in her line!

While they are very close to being ready for new homes, they are not quite ready yet, so unfortunately will not be Christmas bettas. But within another 2 weeks I expect most of them should be ready to go. I am also waiting until they all develop their colors so I can decide which babies will be used for future breeding. I will probably keep 1 male and 2-3 females. 

There are a few babies that have deformities or minor swim problems. I thought about culling them when I first noticed it, but when I realized they were still eating and interacting with the other fry normally I just couldn't bring myself to do it. And now that they are larger and getting their colors it's REALLY hard to think about doing that! One of the babies with swim problems has very pretty colors, and kind of a funny personality. We call her Tail Dipper, because her tail dips when she's in a neutral position.  

World, meet the fry (well, some of them):

Gem before her colors started showing

Gem, almost fully colored

Gem (left) and Tail Dipper (right). It's blurry, but the only pic I could get of their full colors!

Tail Dipper has a very pretty blue body

Froning hiding out in the plants. He is VERY shy

Froning again. He has a very pretty green coloring

Baby Pictures, At Last!

I can't believe it! Babies will be 4 weeks old this weekend! They are much bigger these days; I am able to sit at the table and see them darting around in their tank! And when I get close, I can even see a bit of iridescence on some of the larger fry! Very exciting times, these are:)

A quick update on Mom and Dad: Rain was finally reunited with the other females today. I rearranged their tank to avoid any territory issues, so the other gals haven't made a big deal about her sudden reappearance. But they are all fighting over the new little cave ornament I added. It's actually quite entertaining to watch! So far Ruby seems to be "Queen Of the Cave".

Rain's fins have healed up nicely, but will never be quite the same. They grew back sheer, so she still looks like she has big gaps in her caudal and anal fins even though she doesn't (anymore).

Neptune is back to building bubble nests and being his happy, curious self. He always swims up to greet me when I check in on him. He's such a nice fish.

As of today the fry tank officially has a fully functioning sponge filter! Because I needed to keep the water level so low, I wasn't able to have the pump going on the filter, but this afternoon I felt that it was time to raise the water level and get the pump going. So far the fry seem perfectly fine with this change. They actually seem to enjoy the new, deeper water level.

And now, without further ado, the baby pictures! Please excuse the tiny, annoying white dots that are everywhere - those are snail eggs from the nerite snail who is supposed to be cleanup crew, but is making more of a mess than the fry! (Don't worry, there won't be any baby snails; nerite snail eggs can only hatch in brackish water)

Baby Betta Swarm!

Week 2!

Made it through the first two weeks! The fry still look like little tadpoles, but some are clearly much larger now. Others are still so small they seem like they've hardly grown since day one! The losses (as far as I can tell) have still been very minimal. I've been trying to get a good picture of them, but  they are too small and fast for my camera to focus on.

They had their first water change today! I don't think they are quite ready for water changes yet, because I sucked up about a dozen babies in the process and had to spend the next hour carefully fishing them out of the bucket with a pipette and returning them to their tank. I will probably spend the next week or two removing waste with the turkey baster like I've been doing, and gradually filling the tank up so that I turn on the sponge filter.

I've been estimating that there are around 50 fry, but after today I'm thinking there could be a lot more! There are bound to be a few more losses over the next several weeks, so only time will tell what we end up with!

1 Week And Counting

So far, the babies seem to be doing very well! They're being fed twice a day right now on powdered fry food. This weekend I will be able to start feeding them from the worm culture, which I'm probably more excited about than a normal human should be ;) They're teeny tiny and very cute! I'm really looking forward to watching them grow and see what kinds of colors and patterns develop from this pairing.

I have only had to remove one dead fry so far. It's reassuring that I'm not seeing multiple dead fry at the bottom of the tank each morning. The fry are always active when I check in on them, darting around and checking out random objects in the tank. They also seem curious about me when I'm watching them. They turn their tiny little bodies and look at me like, "Are you my mommy?" And I reply, "why yes, yes I am."

fry watching.

Day Six: Free Swimming