Journal: How to breed Betta Splendens

[Keeg]

This journal is the beginning of another successful breeding project from a method I have created over the last couple of years. I have made this from the help of my brother and father, learning from my mistakes, as well as taking a few tips and tricks from videos from the internet a long time ago. 

Please note breeding bettas takes time and dedication as well as responsibility from you, you must have patience and determination in order to experience one of the best moments in fish keeping and in my opinion, the natural world. Some people may disagree with my methods but that's alright, everyone can have their own way of doing things

[Keeg]

The First Step: proper care for 'betta' health.

 

The male betta will naturally build bubble nests to attract females. They will build their nest when they are healthy and happy. The male should be active and healthy and a bubble nest is a good sign of this. I personally keep my bettas in smaller tanks as to provide as many spots available for more fish as well being able to move the tanks around (more on that later). The tank sizes range from 1-3 gallons (4-11 Liters) , each is supplemented with around 1inch (2.5 cm) of black sand, coarse enough to stand when damp and out of water but fine enough to the point where the little sand castle you made crumbles when submerged. The tanks are heavily planted with 1-3 anubias nana, a bundle of pearl weed, 1 marimo moss ball, a few stems of octopus plants floating or planted, maybe 1 rams horn snail (the kind normally fed to puffers), and giant duckweed that covers half of the surface of the water. I get my water from a well and it runs a little hard. Thats it, no filter or heater. I live in northern Washington and the house temperature does perfect for them. For filtering, I just do water changes. I feed flakes, blood worms, pellets, and mosquito larvae when they're in season. A photo below this post shows an example of a 1g set up for a male betta. A lot of people say this is too small, but this is what I do when keeping them in order to breed and separate after. 

 

For female bettas. They will be healthy when they are actively swimming and are plump with eggs. You can tell when she's plump when her underside is slightly bulged and she is thick (viewed from above) when compared to males of a similar length. I keep all my female bettas together in one large tank as they can be housed together, I do use a heater in this tank as they are lower to the ground just as a precaution, I also have a bubble filter running in the tank. In addition to this, I have a bunch of java moss growing in there and a few anubias plants just floating in there. They are fed usually just flakes and occasionally some blood worms. The second photo of this post shows the female betta set up, do note the tank appears dirty but I only clean two sides of the glass of algae.