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Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)

Hi,

John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.

I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.

With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.

I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.

If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.

I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.

I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.

Thank you
Darragh Sherwin

Betta Splendens / Siamese Fighters

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22 Apr 2012 13:51 #1 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos)
Just woundering, beside Ian of course (because everyone knows :P)

Who else breeds or keeps more then a couple of the beautis ????

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22 Apr 2012 21:29 #2 by Andrew (Andrew Taaffe)
Hi
I've bred betta splendens a few times, at the moment I'm going to give some coccina a try
Andrew

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22 Apr 2012 21:45 #3 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos)
They reproduce the same way as the splendens, or vice versa :D

The best of luck, i'll might buy you a couple if u suceed :D


by the way, do you still have any splendens ???

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22 Apr 2012 23:54 #4 by igmillichip (ian millichip)
The coccina are around at the moment.....7 euro a pair for wild ones......that is WOW !!

Not the easiest of Bettas to breed, but always worth a try just for the sake of it.

But with coccina it is often best to keep them in a group and let the sexes chose their own breeding partner from the group.

ian

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25 Apr 2012 15:46 #5 by ghart (Greg Hart)
Bettaria,
What would you recommend as tank mates for Siamese Fighters.
They tend to be prone to attack by fin nippers.
Do you keep yours in a community tank.


Greg

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26 Apr 2012 11:22 - 26 Apr 2012 11:23 #6 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos)
No community tank for me :D i only have Fighters :D

and the only fish i have with my fry at the moment is dwarf corys...

the adults have their own space, as i intend to breed again in 2 months...


Apart from that, Community tanks u can put them with quicker fish, like rasboras or danios or cardinals, NO guppys or platty or Mollys, that only make them agressive.
If u put another labirynth fish like paradise or colisa its probably not a good idea as well, speacially with Paradise as they will destroy the fighters fins...

remember one thing they just have to be faster then him :D and they'll be ok ;)

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Last edit: 26 Apr 2012 11:23 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos).

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26 Apr 2012 17:29 #7 by ghart (Greg Hart)
Thanks for the advice.
It would be interesting to see photos of your Betta setup.
Have got a multi divided tank to separate the males.

Greg

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05 May 2012 23:09 #8 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos)
I only started FishKeeping two months ago in ireland...

LFS and Super Pet shops are 3 to 4 some 5 times more expensive then in my country (where i started fishkeeping the first time)

exemple -> My first tank (16Litres) costed me 35€ and its acrylic :D same size in proper glass in portugal would have costed me 15€/18€

So when two months ago i started searching for everything and my god, u need to work/live to feed the hobby :S , so i started searching the internet :D...

And most of everything i buy is via USA / UK / Portugal... Cheaper and so far no problems with the AnPost :D

I'm preparing a Asian Biotope Setup to accommodate my two females and 3 dwarf corys and juvies when their get bigger then the females mouth :D
And so i can actually enjoy them in an actual enviorment...

But males i keep them in Jars (2Litre/24ºC, Thai style)
I'm working to change this as well :S but again, i mailed a sponsor, and amazinglly they told me a 1Gallon tank (8"x6"x6") it would cost me 144€ :blink: :hammer: :pinch:

But my project is to get acrylic or glass 1 gallon tanks, to inprove their space and put micro sponge filters that i bought from states (3dollars each + free shipping) and i actually just found acrylic boxes that will be perfect as well their 1.25 gallon and will cost me 10dollars each plus 20dollars shipping...

Allready have hoze taps joints filters so in one month i'll have them preped, and hopefully (if anpost dont stop it) i'll have the Biotope setup preped as well...

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05 May 2012 23:28 #9 by igmillichip (ian millichip)
I generally keep my siamese fighters in a siamese fighter community system upto about 9months or a year (but only if the group started life together).

At about 6 months you have to take note of changes in alpha male dominance.....and when that happens then I have to start to separate the fish.

For multi-divided tanks, I use glass I buy from the 2-euro shop: it is 10x8 and 8x6 and 6 x 4 inch photo frames.....works out very cheap as you get 2 panes of 10x8 for 1 euro.
You can't make a stand alone tank out of the glass as it is too thin for that, but great for dividing.

Ian

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05 May 2012 23:28 #10 by ghart (Greg Hart)
Costs can be very high depending on where you look. It pays to shop around. God knows it is hard enough to earn the cash these days and it does save to look at anternative sources for what you want.
Well done on your cost saving.
Best of luck with the setup.

Greg

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05 May 2012 23:38 #11 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos)
@Ian

I was thinking to build my own bettanex v1.0 (got this idea from a friend in portugal)
something like these.





@Greg

And to help, i chose probably not the best espieces of tropical fish to have in ireland, as the choice is very limited or non :(
I'm trying to talk with Dani Pegley over and over again to see if he can do a small cut on the price so i can buy from thailand but its looking impossible :(

And i'm hoping to get a pair from Ian in a couple of months :P eheheheh

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06 May 2012 07:30 #12 by Andrew (Andrew Taaffe)
Bettaria

They reproduce the same way as the splendens, or vice versa.
The best of luck, i'll might buy you a couple if u suceed,
by the way, do you still have any splendens ???


I moved onto other genus a few years ago but am always interested and fancy harking back to betta breeding, which was why I picked up some coccina. I am still waiting to see how they pair up, I may get another pair to make it 8 in the tank :)

Alas our pet "Alan" ceased last week, my daughter was devastated so I'm going on the lookout for a nice crowntail or similar

Andrew

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06 May 2012 07:58 #13 by igmillichip (ian millichip)

Bettaria

They reproduce the same way as the splendens, or vice versa.
The best of luck, i'll might buy you a couple if u suceed,
by the way, do you still have any splendens ???


I moved onto other genus a few years ago but am always interested and fancy harking back to betta breeding, which was why I picked up some coccina. I am still waiting to see how they pair up, I may get another pair to make it 8 in the tank :)

Alas our pet "Alan" ceased last week, my daughter was devastated so I'm going on the lookout for a nice crowntail or similar

Andrew


The coccina are really nice fish......and 7 euro a pair is pretty good.
I have no magic dead-cert tricks for coccina to give you apart from feed well, good water, and let a pair form themselves from a group.

I'm going to try the eastern light effect with my coccina to see if that does anything to guarantee a spawning....but it may not work.

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06 May 2012 09:37 #14 by ghart (Greg Hart)
The setup you pictured looks amazing. :ohmy:
With regard to the limited Betta supplies in Ireland you should contact Alan as he is setting a new shop in Clane. see the forum article under "Aqualife-Its taken over 5 years of planning......."

He will no doubt be making new business contacts with the various countries that supply fish and he may be able to get in some very good Betta specimens. ;)

Best of luck.

Greg

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06 May 2012 09:40 #15 by ghart (Greg Hart)
Sorry did i say Alan :hammer:
I ment to say Drew.
Both guys worked in the Aquatic Village Brittas for sometime and I got the names mixed :silly:

Greg

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06 May 2012 10:00 #16 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos)
@Andrew

Sorry to ear about that... its allways sad...
Its very dificult to get the best out of the Splendens speicies in Ireland, but i liked very mutch the ones in Seahorse (HM and HMPK), i know PET PALACE as a +/- 3 to 4 month old CrownTail...

I have to visit FFF to see what do they have, might go there today :)
And i will be visiting AquaVillage to check what they have when serratus anounces the date for the great opening...

@Greg

Yeah i was like WOW when he said "36 Siamese Fighter tanks" and i allready made a few questions :D so yeah defenetly waiting for the MEGASTORE to open :D...
How mutch do you think that custom built Bettaria (yeah thats the name of it, and thats where i got my nick from :D) cost ??? (another tip, it toked 5 days (3 hours a day) to build)

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06 May 2012 10:36 #17 by ghart (Greg Hart)
Bettaria said..
"How mutch do you think that custom built Bettaria (yeah thats the name of it, and thats where i got my nick from ) cost ??? (another tip, it toked 5 days (3 hours a day) to build)"

Hard to guess this one. I recently spent just over 1,000 euros on a 5 foot tank including cabinet.I should hope the bettaria would cost less than that for the smaller individual tanks but then the filtration and structure behind it would add considerably to the cost at irish prices anyway.

Greg

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06 May 2012 10:36 #18 by igmillichip (ian millichip)
Have you tried off-cuts from a glass supplier.
As these tanks are quite small then you don't need to have perfect glass. Glass can also be a bit thinner....but placing silicon sealant on thin glass is not without its problems (so you don't want too thin a piece of glass).

As for my siamese fighters that are either in-line or planning to be in-line, I'm in the process of deciding which way to take the next breeding project.

I have some genuine piebald flesh/purple with black butterfly from a previous series of crosses; maybe thinking of taking a Platinum White sport I have and producing a line of Platinum White bodies with red fins and a blue butterfly edging; or trying to see what I get from a Black Orchid Crowntail crossed with either a Black HM or one of the platinum white plakats. Of course, these are not willy-nilly crosses as the genetics are calculated (but there is a limit to that).

ian

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06 May 2012 12:03 #19 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos)
@Greg

150€ with pump tubing evrything ;)
Of course its not a community tank, and this shows the importance of Betta fish in Portugal at the moment.
But the glass work an all great price.



@Ian

Tried a second sponsor and the price is 65€ :S so i'll put that a side for now and concentrate on getting the juvies to adulthood.
I'm trying as well to achive my favorite color (MG = Mustard Gas) mixed with my favorite string (HMPK).

HM/Long fin Bettas are not my cup of tea :D, but Black Orchid is defenetly my all time favorite color. I would probably try to convince you to put that in a HMPK :D allthough its a crowntail so it will take you probably F2 or F3 till you get a perfect gene HMPK/HM Black Orchid. Now the Red fin platinum would be defenetly a great Show Betta :D, you allready have a great perfect gene of platinums so how would you achive the red fin ????????????

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06 May 2012 12:29 #20 by igmillichip (ian millichip)
I have one sport in the Platinums showing red in the fins. Statistically, if that was a gene from one of the parents then it is would have occurred in more than one fish. So, that is the type of thing to look out for when selecting parents for future breeding of novel strains.

I also have Cambodian coloured Plakats......so the red fins would be easy to introduce whilst maintaining a non-red non-blue body colour.

All in all, I have about 12 or 13 colour strains of HM Plakats to choose from. There are a few additional colours that are really not much to look at.

ian

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06 May 2012 13:08 #21 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos)
that would be probably going back, mixing Cambodia with platinum, as cambodia is the stronger gene ???

Do you have any Dragon genes (Armadillo) ???

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06 May 2012 17:19 #22 by igmillichip (ian millichip)

that would be probably going back, mixing Cambodia with platinum, as cambodia is the stronger gene ???

Do you have any Dragon genes (Armadillo) ???


Cambodian is not stronger than Platinum because there is no Platinum gene.
The Platinum white phenotype is made by multiple genes, and some of them are by virtue of a masking effect.

Yes I have Dragon genes.....so I won't be breeding from them as they are not really my cup of tea.

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06 May 2012 18:46 #23 by Bettaria (Pedro Santos)


Yes I have Dragon genes.....so I won't be breeding from them as they are not really my cup of tea.



Any for sale :woohoo:

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