My current set-up.

I've been bitten by the betta bug and currently have a spawn going (black orchid crowntail X copper crowntail). Trying to line breed bettas properly requires a lot of tanks, here's a few of them:

I have two 54 litre tanks for female bettas. I'm very unimaginative and decorated them with almost identical ornaments and plants

First:


Second:


One of my 25 litre spawning tanks (I have two of these):


One of my 20 litre tanks for male bettas (I have three of these) this one is currently empty because the resident is the black orchid CT that is spawning at the moment.



Here are pictures of the pair that are in the spawning tank:

Female. She actually looks more purple than green in real life.


Male.


I also have ten small glass cubes that are about 2 US gallons. I keep any surpluss males in these until I can sell them. They are all currently empty though.



Then on a non-betta related note, here is my 120 litre goldfish tank:

nice setups tanks look well keep it up.cheers ken

Best of luck with your project, set-up looks great............Tom.

Nice collection of tanks and fish spooky. I love the black crowntail.

Can i ask were the orchid comes from in the name black orchid crowntail? Is it because of the shade of black?

When you cross the black orchid crowntail male with the female copper crowntail what will the outcome be? I have never crossed Bettas before so i'm wondering what the outcome will be.

Darren.

Thanks guys!

platty252 wrote:

Can i ask were the orchid comes from in the name black orchid crowntail? Is it because of the shade of black?

I'm pretty sure that it's because of the blue that runs through their fins, although I might be wrong. They're also called black lace as well as black orchid, although it's usually the paler ones that are referred to as "lace" rather than "orchid".
Here's a picture of a black orchid half moon male, just so that you can see the blue that runs through his fins. This is not one of my fish, unfortunately.

When you cross the black orchid crowntail male with the female copper crowntail what will the outcome be? I have never crossed Bettas before so i'm wondering what the outcome will be.

I should get some coppers like the mother and maybe some black orchids like the father, but what I'm really aiming for are some black coppers like this fish:



I might also get some steel blues, like this guy:



Most of the fish that I used in the pictures are half moons so you'll have to use your imagination and give them crown tails.

very nice
ho many bettas do you have at the moment??
do you sell the fish you spawn???
all the bet ith the projet
blake

Nice fish and tanks,and an interesting thread.I'll be following this with interest.

Ah yes. Looking back at your original photos i see the blue in the rays of the fins.
I would be interested to see how you get on. Will you let me know. In particular what percentage show the colours crossed from the male and female.

Thanks for the info, Darren.

Blake123 wrote:

very nice
ho many bettas do you have at the moment?

I have six females (copper crowntail, black orchid crowntail, white platinum crowntail, royal blue half moon, white opaque half moon and red gold half moon) right now and three males (black orchid crowntail, black melano half moon and a white opaque half moon).

do you sell the fish you spawn?

If I end up with surpluss fry from this spawn they'll be for sale. It'll be three months at the earliest before they're ready. Not to mention that I've never spawned this male before so he might turn out to be an egg/fry eater.

platty252 wrote:

Will you let me know. In particular what percentage show the colours crossed from the male and female.

Sure, no problem. I'm planning on doing up a spawn log with photos so I'll catalogue all of the results and post them here in a month or two.

Great stuff spooky. Fair plat to ye'.

thats a fair amount of bettas
you could make a load of money outa that hobbie if you do it right
im acctually going to try to breed bala sharks when i save up the money (its only been recorded once by a home breeder, to ever get a sucsesful spawn )
if your selling, would you mind if i took one or two off ya
acctualy, where are you located, im in cork so thats my limit realy if im buying fish
regards,
blake

Blake123 wrote:

if your selling, would you mind if i took one or two off ya
acctualy, where are you located, im in cork so thats my limit realy if im buying fish
regards,
blake

If I end up with any surpluss fish from this spawn they'll be up for sale, of course you would be able to have some! I'm in Dublin but bettas stand up to being in the post quite well if you do it right (well insulated box, the fastest shipping option available and a heat pack if it's too cold).

ya no prob, im all excited now
you must pm me whenever, and we'll discuss payment
regards,
blake

Blake123 wrote:

ya no prob, im all excited now
you must pm me whenever, and we'll discuss payment
regards,
blake

Don't get too excited yet! It'll be quite some time before I have any fish ready for sale

I'll keep everyone updated on the progress of the fry anyway.

Bad news guys, the other half unplugged the heater for the spawning tank by accident yesterday when he was vacuming and I went from fifty fry to zero over night.

I suppose that I'm going to set up another spawn now. The male that I was using needs to recover so I'll have to go with a different pair and since people here were expressing interest in any extra betta babies I thought that I might ask what you guys think.

The male that I want to use is a copper Halfmoon:


Now I could breed him with the female copper crowntail from the last spawn or with a blue dragon halfmoon plakat female that I recently acquired.
A (bad) picture of the dragon female:


If I cross him with the copper female all of the fry *should* be copper with slightly spikey halfmoon finnage.
If I cross him to the dragon female I have no idea what kind of colours that I'll get in the spawn since I've never bred dragon bettas before, the fry should have halfmoon finnage.

What do you guys think?

Just to see what you would end up with i would go with the female dragon;)
Whatever you do keep the pics coming very interest thread, best of luck with your new venture


GB

Yeah, I was thinking that it would be more fun to see what I get from the copper/dragon cross. The dragon female is a better size compared to the copper male as well, being smaller than him while the copper female is about the same lenght as him but bulkier.

SpookyMuffin wrote:

Bad news guys, the other half unplugged the heater for the spawning tank by accident yesterday when he was vacuming and I went from fifty fry to zero over night.

Oh man...that cant have been pretty..

you'll have to get some yellow and black tape to put on the "dont unplug these" plugs!

neil0r wrote:

Oh man...that cant have been pretty..

you'll have to get some yellow and black tape to put on the "dont unplug these" plugs!

He's currently banned from going anywhere near the spawning tank to avoid a repeat of the incident

good pics and nice tanks.
good luck with project.

Intersting topic.
I'm not very good with genetics but in my betta breeding i've seen and read a few interesting things. One of the read things is that in betta are only four base colours: blue, red, black and yellow. They are based on how deep is the piment in the skin.
What i've seen about blue betta( I always liked blue) is that if I cross two dark blue I only get a few dark blue fry. But if I cross two steel blue I get all or almost all steel blue.
The last spawn I had(bluish purple male, and redish brown female) Was extremly varied. I had blue, red, green ,cambodians ...at list 10 types of betta with about 20% throw backs to wild betta colours(still very nice).
I don't know anything about copper so might be interesting if you whould keep us updated.
Best of luck in your project.

There are two main types of betta colouration. The blues and the reds. The blue line includes royal blue, steel blue, opaque whites, white platinum, black melano, black orchid, copper, green and probably others that I can't think of right now. The red line includes red, cambodian, salamander, yellow, orange.

When showing bettas it is usually seen as a fault if a betta from the blue line has a red wash or a betta from the red line has a blue wash. All of my fish are from the blue line.

Of course even if you buy a blue line fish that looks perfect you might still get some red wash showing up in the spawn if the breeder wasn't line breeding for colour. That is usually when you get spawns with all kinds of colours in them like you described above.

Where you got all this bettas? The ones i've seen around dublin they where all comon bettas.

Ordered them online from the UK and Austria mostly, through a friend with an import license. You can get them shipped in from Thailand too if you have a look on aquabid.com, the shipping is really expensive though and it usually takes a week for the fish to arrive in the post.

Fry are a week old today. I started weaning them off infusoria and egg yolk onto BBS yesterday and they seem to be taking to it well. There's more than 40 fry at the moment but we're coming up to the ten day mark when the fry have usually absorbed all of their yolk sac so any that haven't learned to eat yet are going to die off... Hopefully not too many.

Beginning to see two different colours in the fry. Some are still clear/brown but others are beginning to show iridescence and reflect the light, I'm not sure if they're going to grow up to be coppers or dragons at this stage, it'll be interesting to see anyway.

I don't have any pictures because my camera is shit and would never be able to catch fry that are about 0.2 inches, maybe I can get some in a week's time when they are a bit bigger.

Fry are just over two weeks now and eating BBS and ground up pellet food. There was a large die off at the ten day mark and we're down to about 25 fry.

Still no pictures, but some of the fry are beginning to show their dorsal and anal fins.

Keep us up to date on how your little fella's are getting on...really looking forward to getting some female bettas in my tank!

The fry are just over six weeks now, eating BBS, ground up pellets and chopped blood worms. There's still over 20 of them, still no definite males or females.

Now for something completely different. I just got my hands on a lovely pair of black copper dragons. The male is short finned (Halfmoon Plakat) and the female is long finned (Halfmoon), their fry should all be long finned. I'm really looking forward to breeding them and I just felt like showing them off:

Male:

Female:

*I'm posting from my PS3 so hopefully the pictures worked properly!*

The fry are now nine weeks old and have just been seperated from their father (as I want to breed from him again). I figured that it was getting a little ridiculous that I hadn't posted any pictures of them so I finally took some with my phone that don't look *as* shite as the ones that I've taken before.

Here is the largest fry, a female who has been affectionately nick-named "Giant Fry" since she has always been nearly twice the size of her siblings:



A comparison shot for reference:


And a picture of a few of the regular sized fry:


I know that the pictures are terrible, but it's the best I can do with the equipment available to me.

Clourwise they all seem to be metalic steel blues, each carrying one copy of the metalic gene. Meaning that if you were to make a brother/sister or father/daughter cross you would get some coppers in the spawn.
I'll post a picture of another breeder's (Joep of Bettas4all and Betta Territory) fish that shows the metalic steel blue colouration better than my crappy pictures do:


Their colouration isn't that thick yet but by this time next month it hopefully should be. That's the time when they'll probably be looking for homes as well.

So, there's still 23 of them and I'm probably going to keep ten or more for my own breeding program. There should be ten or so up for grabs.

This spawn was a bit of a dissapointment for me in terms of numbers (100-150 eggs only resulting in 20-odd fry) and gender ratio (as far as I can tell they are about 80% female). The new spawn that I'm setting up soon is between the father of these fry and my new female that I mentioned in my last post:
Male (Copper Half Moon)

Female (Black Copper Dragon Half Moon)


I'm hoping to get some coppers, copper dragons, black coppers, and black copper dragons as well as the expected steel blues. I'll update this thread if and when they spawn.

I would very happily take a male and a female off you if that's ok?

Those numbers are not too bad. I only ended up with 10 from my last batch of veiltails and they're all males. They're about the same size as your fry, just growing their fins now which seems to be so slow.

Interestingly I have one which is looking increasingly like a crowntail with little points developing on his tail which is weird as all the others and the parents are most definitely veil tailed.
I thought the veil tail gene would have kicked the ass of any other genes present in the parents but there you go.