Betta fry questions.

[Flyin Jawaiian]

Aloha guys, I have a quick question I think I’m just overthinking or possibly not but I’ve been reading online for betta fry that are newly hatched and free swimming, are newly hatched baby bring shrimp too big for the fry? I’ve been reading people say only after a few days then the fry can eat them but I already have a bbs hatchery and don’t really have the extra room right now to set up more micro cultures what do you guys recommend?  Planning on breeding my black orchid male and elephant ear femal this weekend and just making sure I have everything prepped before hand. 

[Fish Folk]

Honestly, you can probably feed baby brine shrimp sooner than anyone will say. But to play it safe . . . 

(1) Have live plants in there. Floating plants like water lettuce, duckweed, wisteria, etc -- all can help provide context for infusoria (a general term for various bacteria-eating micro organisms) to live.

(2) You can feed vinegar eels. Vinegar eels are easy - they live forever. We feed these as first foods. You'll need to acquire a culture first, then keep it in vinegar (with the mother) that you can buy at a natural foods store. Use Sodium bicarbonate to keep the vinegar from crashing your tank pH.

Here's a nice read on feeding from Inglorious Bettas. She's a great teacher!

For what it's worth, my favorite Betta Breeding series was made by Dexter's World, from the Philippines. He's a cheerful guy, and makes the process a lot of fun to watch. Here's his whole video series on breeding bettas . . . (get your popcorn ready) . . .

 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Fish Folk

[Daniel]

Newly free swimming Betta fry are on the small side, too small to eat newly hatched baby brine shrimp. But, if you follow @Fish Folk's advice, you will be okay.

In a well established aquarium with plenty of plants there are always lots of rotifers and paramecium and such. This will get some of the Betta fry up to the point where they can eat baby brine shrimp. If space is a problem you very likely do not want a high survival rate of the fry anyway.

Having a few dozen new bettas might be better than having a couple of hundred new bettas.

I look forward to following your progress on this.

[gardenman]

And if you're raising bettas, you're going to be holding them for a while as fish stores only want more adult bettas rather than juveniles. And the males need to be separated fairly early to keep aggression down, so they're not the ideal fish to raise if you've got limited space. Fish like guppies, mollies and the like can go from babies to sellable fish in a month or two without needing to be separated. Bettas you're more looking at four to six months with each male in a separate container. They aren't the easiest fish to bring to market size. Simply Betta on YouTube has done lots of shows on bettas and betta breeding.