Breeding Scarlet Badis

[Odd Duck]

Don’t forget the theory that females are both drabber and smarter so they hide better and are less likely to be caught for import.

I’ve not quite lost my mind yet so I won’t be paying $100.00 per female but I wouldn’t mind getting a nice trio to see if I can manage to breed and raise some.  😉 

[Ben P.]

@memorywrangler usually my strategy when I want to breed a fish is to buy a group of 15-20 and choose my breeders from those.  So with badis if you buy 20 unsexable young ones will you still get basically all males?

[memorywrangler]

On 10/3/2023 at 9:32 PM, Ben P. said:

So with badis if you buy 20 unsexable young ones will you still get basically all males?

I’ve never seen juveniles for sale.  They’re quite drab.  My impression, and I could be wrong, is it most people buy a scarlet badis to have a pretty little red fish in their nano planted tank.  And they serve that role very well!  Fully developed, dominant males are quite striking.

But, yes, From what I’ve seen, if you went to a fish store and purchase 20 Scarlet Badis, it is very likely that all of them will be male.

The way I have gotten females, is to go to the pet store and stare at the tank for a long time looking for fish that have no red on them whatsoever.  They might be females, or they might be “sleeper males.”  So, you take them home and grow them out for a little while.  If they develop color they are male, if they develop eggs they are, female.  Then several months of searching across two local fish stores, I managed to find four this way.

[Ben P.]

@memorywrangler first, I'm very curious as to what your male to female ratio will be when you get some fry out of them. Second, I wish African cichlids were that way, so much more money could be made 😂

[memorywrangler]

Quick update:

From my original group of ~34 fish, I sold all but 3 on a combination of Vivvy, eBay, and Aquabid.  My conclusion:  selling fish online is not a simple or quick task.  I got about $10/fish for them.

Of the several I kept, one has finally colored up as a male:

He's about 2cm long, and we are currently at just about exactly 3 months post-spawning.

To recap, I had three females.  I lost two of them for unknown reasons, which is stressful.  Further adding to my concern is that the female doesn't seem to be interested in my big male (and father of current crop).  There is some spawning behavior but so far, no eggs.  Here's that male (note the very parallel stripes).  His stomach is a little sunken despite abundant food.  Maybe has a parasite?:

 

Picked up this little male 2 weeks ago because he had some interesting non-parallel stripes:

Here's what he looks likes after gorging on brine shrimp for 2 weeks:

Interestingly, he's only slightly larger than the fry that is just coloring up.  I also find it interesting that the fry also has non-parallel stripes.  Maybe it's a juvenile marking thing?

So maybe I'll trying spawning this guy...

 

 

[gettrey]

Edit to add: OP, the amount of info you put in this thread made it one of my most valuable finds on the Scarlet Badis. Thank you! Jumping on here to try and keep this thread going. I've gotten really interested in these awesome little fish. I love there behavior. I've got a pair which I think is actually 2 males, 1 being sub. The sub has a little blue on his lower fins. Unfortunately all local shops are almost 2 hours away from me so I don't go window shopping too often. I'm at the mercy of ordering online and asking for females. Does anyone paying attention to this thread happen to have likely females that they would be interested in selling?

Edited March 15 by gettrey