Siamese Fighters.....get talking chatter-box

There really is not enough chat on siamese fighters going on nowadays.

Sooooo......how about a betta chat-box thread.

For the buyer: there are still loads of sub-standard cheap-and-cheerful but nontheless nice fish out there; but there are also some very nice strains coming around now and then.

For the breeder: why not take an opportunity to do a bit of selective breeding and potentially bring to the world a new strain. You may not make any money....but it would be great to have your name cited in years to come (but that is all about luck....skill is about 10% of that potential success).


My latest purchase is a pair of White Platinum Plakats Half Moon fighters. (here's a link to a picture as I have not taken any yet bettafishstore.com/vmchk/Halfmoon-Plakat...MPK/flypage.tpl.html )

I'm quite eager to see what comes from the spawning of this pair....I am unlikely to get 100% white platinums, but one never knows.
The first breeding will give me an indication of the genetics of the parents, but the genetics of the Platinum whites is not a simple affair as the Opaque gene (which is not a colour gene) is only partially dominant in its effect and the Copper underneath may have some interesting effects. The Opaque may be masking other colours; the copper may be modulating other colours.

Once that first batch (oh yes, I'm being optimistic) has given me an indication of what is behind the colouration, then the duff colours can go (but they will still be quality fish) and the selected individuals will be for future line breeding.

If these are successful and I get some nice white platinum offspring in the first batch, then I'll give a few to Xeon as I think I snapped them up even though he was probably wanting them and he is also a betta breeder.

I have been keeping, breeding and studying the genetics of these things for a good part of 40 years.
As a scientist with an interest in genetics, the great thing is that the rapid growth tells you at an early stage what type of colours you have in the offspring.
But as a fish-keeper, there also comes a stage in the youngs life when they cannot be kept in a nice big community. !!

What a pity you can't have one big community of siamese fighter males, or even be able to plonk them in any old community tank. But, there you go: take the good with the bad.

Here's a few pictures taken this week of a few of ours.....and don't anyone say "clean the glass before taking a photo" (I have water to look after instead, and these are not competition entry photos)








ian

great post ian and some lovely pics. look forward to reading of your progress re breeding project.

I agree they are beautiful fish and its a real pitty that ya can not fill a tank full of them
would surly be a great looking tank.
Here is a picture of my fella
Must get a picture of my other one at work for you tyson

That's a nice blue, ceech.

I have 2 tanks with about 40 siamese fighters in each one at present.....they are only a month old and quite big, no fighting yet, but it is a tank of loopers with them jumping quite high out of the water to get food off me.
That would be wonderful to see as adults.....it ain't, though, going to happen as they are the overly-aggressive plakat fighters (short fins....and like little bullets). Their mum and dad are the fish in the last of my pics above.

....and Ceech....is Tyson the name of one of your fishes?

The blue fish there is Harry and yes tyson is the red one i have at work i will get a snap of him some of the days and put it up.Poor harry died a while back for no reason at all i was quite sad as he used jump out of the water to get food Tyson is not for now but i wont give up trying to get him jumping

Beautiful fish!
I have one blue, just like yours in the pic, (the other red died a few days ago - other thread in this forum 'ich') , but looking for females to start my own little spawning project...