Bettas ~ VT x VT ~ 10/30/07
10/30/07 - Started this side of my website. I am going to try to raise a batch of bettas, already have people interested in them once they are born, so no worries there:) I have a blue male in a ten gallon with live plants, but no gravel. There are 2 styrofoam half cups in there and a regular filter which will be changed to a sponge filter once he decides to start his bubble nest. The females are ready with eggs, just waiting now for him to start bubbling. My white female looks to be the largest/full of eggs, so I think it’ll be her to go in. We’ll see!!!
11/3/07 - Welp, nothings going on with my male in the ten gallon, so I’m going to change up a few things tomorrow. First since it’s a gravel-less tank, I’m going to put a few potted (clay pots with gravel) plants in there and lower the water level. Everything I’m reading says to start with the tank about half way full and add water every day to simulate the monsoon season. Then I got a little breeder tank. Once it’s all set up and running again well, I’m going to place one of my females in the breeder tank where he can see her, but no touchy. That too might get him moving to make his nest. Then lastly, I’ve won some of those Almond Catappa leaves off EBay that I’m going to add to the water. So we’ll see what happens!!!:)
11/5/07 - Alrighty then, all of the below (but for the leaves) is up and ready. He right away started flaring at her (and she at him). So we’ll see what happens next:) I’ve got pics of the tank and 2 of them on the fry section for anyone interested.
11/9/07 - Well weird day yesterday as far as these fish go. I let the female go in the tank and kept up watch for part of the day. Really she showed no interest at all in him or the nest and he just kept chasing her around…not nicely. Then he kept flaring at her and going to the next and flaring some more. She would follow him to the next then, but never stick around. they kept this up pretty much all day, but she never got really interested. So I took her out and put in my white female. Now her, I know is ready as I can see the eggs inside her. She went right to the next and proceeded to rip the thing apart! she would flap her tail right through it and actually move the cup. The male stayed well away from her! lol So finally last night I put her in the little breeder floating thingy and took out that male and put in a different one (The one my mom said is her favorite:)) I’m sure it’ll be a few days now before he’s in the mood so we’ll see what happens:)
11/11/07 - I did a major water change in this tank. Had the hose (we’re on well water, no worries) on low and the suction hose taking it out at the same time till we’ve got crystal clear water. Put my mom’s favorite male back in with the half cup and the breeder container. I’m not going to put in a female till I see him starting a nest. It looks like he’s already doing that, but want to see if he’s really going to build a nice one. The leaves should be here soon, so that’ll help:)
11/12/07 - Last night the male blew a good bit of a nest. So I’ve placed the blue female back in the breeder container. He is now making the nest with a great deal of frenzy:) Hopefully by tonight he’ll have a good thickness to the nest and tomorrow I can let the female loose in the tank.
11/13/07 - Well just before I went to bed last night I found that the female jumped out of the container and was in the tank. So I decided to leave her there overnight to see what came about. About 9ish this morning I see them in a wrap. I started to video what was going on to see if I could catch the actual spawning. They wrapped several times with nothing happening. SO I had to go deal with house and home things a bit. Came back around 11 and there are eggs!!!:) They are still wrapping and I have caught it on video (soon to be uploaded to youtube)…they just did again just as I’m typing and the eggs are falling!:) WHOOT! the dad come down and catches them and blows them up into the bubble nest. The female when she can is eating the ones he misses…lol. But all in all there are a good number of eggs up in the nest already! AND IT STARTS!!!
Side note…perfect timing! my microworm culture just arrived!!! *jumping up and down*
1:45 pm I took the female out. I think she’s done now and dad’s taking care of things as he should:)
11/15/07 - K there be babies! They’ve started to hatch. They have the same little sticking to everything that the baby angels do, but these are half again as small and pure white! It’s awesome! Dad’s going nuts as his nest sort of fell apart. So most of the fry are on the floor of the tank. Now this I don’t like as his tank’s none to clean (I didn’t want to disturb him doing water changes) so I’ve gotten a clean jar and with an air hose syphoned a good number of the fry out of the big tank into the jar. I’ll keep them in there till they are free swimming. Tomorrow I’m going to be getting a new 2g and a 5g tanks. I’ll set up the 5 to hold the fry and be able to clean out the 10 with Dad. The microworms should be ready … strike that, I see them climbing up the sides right now, so they are ready for when the fry are in about 2-3 days.
Now I came across and awesome site on bettas. I’m going to link it to the side menu. It’s called Betta Talk (http://www.bettatalk.com/) darn awesome if you ask me! First she’s very funny to read which I totally appreciate. She’s said a few things that have hit me, so after this batch, if all goes well, I may save up a bunch of bucks and buy a couple of pairs from her and go nuts with them. Anyway, I tried to send her a fan mail saying thanks for her site. It came back to me not being able to send. So if by chance someday she sees this…THANK YOU FOR YOUR SITE! YOU’RE AWESOME!!!
12/4/07 - Welp this sort of fell apart. First the dad freaked finally when the babies wouldn’t stay in the nest and the jar thing didn’t work. So back to square one. *sigh*
Here are pictures of the whole thing -
http://www.bettas.signsofyourtimes.us/bettaspawnblog10-30-07.html