A while back, I lost my Betta brownorum male from Joty, after he was attacked by the female. I was particularly upset, not only because he had been a favourite of mine, but also because he had possessed such rich colouring and spectacular finnage. I've owned a number of Betta brownorum in the past, and none of the males compared to my one from Joty. I don't particularly like hybridising different strains/localities when it comes to my wilds. A small amount of inbreeding does not really concern me (I'm sure inbreeding is common amongst isolated populations in nature), so rather than replacing the male with whatever one I could get my hands on, I decided I would retain a son to use instead. However, while the form of the biggest male offspring is developing well, I am rather disappointed in how his colour is coming through. It is much more washed out than that of the original male's, with what I can only describe as a distinct lack of vibrancy. I was hoping the red would deepen as he matured, but it seems to have stayed about the same. At the moment, the only positive going for him is that he has a nicely-sized lateral blotch. Although I don't selectively breed for colour when working with my wilds, I still had hoped that the male offspring would have been on par with their father in terms of colour and quality. With that said, there are still a couple of young males that haven't coloured up yet, so it will be interesting to see if any of them come close to the original male's colour.
I thought I haven't taken many photos of my Betta persephone group recently, and as they got a water change yesterday and some rooibos tea added, the males were eager to put on a show for me today.
The other day I decided to move my Betta sp. apiapi tank up onto the top shelf. Because it's only a small tank, I decided that I'd drain out 3/4 of the water and then just move it from the sideboard and up onto the rack. This saved me having to try and net everyone as there is quite a large group of fish in there. The tank fits nicely beside my Betta persephone tank, and I'm hoping that with the abundance of natural light that comes through the clerestory window, I won't have to use any artificial lighting overhead. The original pair spawned earlier today, so it seems like they haven't been at all phased by the move. Some of the sub-adults are so close to spawning size now. Be exciting if I could get an F2 generation going so soon. I was thinking with the large number of juveniles present in my Betta hendra tank, that the original pair would show more reluctance to spawn. However, several days back, the pair gave me the privilege of watching the entire process from start to finish. The eggs hatched today, and as usual the male is very dedicated to their care and protection. Neither his mate nor his juvenile offspring dare to venture anywhere near that side of the tank when he has a nest to defend. The biggest of my Betta miniopinna fry have started taking freshly hatched artemia and grindal worms. While I have not witnessed the pair spawning since I stopped treatment for external parasites, the male almost always has a nest, and spends much of his time inside of the film canister. Of course it is in such a location that I can't get a good look in - these fish never make anything easy!
Unfortunately, it looks as though my treatment for ich in my Betta brownorum tank did not work. While there are no longer visible parasites on the female or the male sub-adult, I found a juvenile with a couple of distinctive spots on her head, and so I will be turning up the heat in their tank for a further couple of weeks. I suppose at least it is not the dreaded oodinium. Also, it turned out that my Betta sp. wajok are indeed both male. Therefore, the replacement female offered by Hermanus will be a very much welcome addition. No wonder my pair were so resolute in their refusal to spawn. Otherwise, there hasn't been much else to report from my fish room. I've been meaning to write up a couple more informative posts, but have been suffering with a bout of writer's block. Also as most of my tanks are in rather atrocious condition, there has been a severe lack of photos. I intend on giving them all a good clean this week, so there should be some further posts soon. Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I have been busy, and to be truthful, have not had much of a good run of luck in my fish room lately. It appears both my Betta brownorum and Betta miniopinna fish have picked up external parasites, and I am trying to treat this without compromising the health of the fish in either tank. I have a large number of Betta miniopinna fry, and a prospective future breeding pair of Betta brownorum present and so at the moment I am hoping to avoid using harsh chemicals/medications. I have had to separate my Betta sp. wajok pair completely. Hermanus has very kindly offered to send me a female full of eggs on the next shipment into Oz, and I am hoping that this will encourage spawning behaviour.
On the other hand, my Betta sp. apiapi, Betta persephone and Betta hendra are going well. The fry and juveniles I have from these three species are maturing nicely, and a majority are now showing enough size and colour to be properly sexed. My group of Betta sp. cf. rutilans green are showing no sign of oodinium infection, and I do sometimes catch a pair spawning. I've had my pair of Betta sp. wajok for almost a month now. While my pair of Betta miniopinna that arrived at the same time have been frequently spawning, my Betta sp. wajok seem much more reticent. Before today, the fish I believed to be the female of the pair, rarely coloured up. I did once catch her showing some faint vertical barring, but most of the time she displayed prominent horizontal barring and very washed out colouring. Unlike my other breeding pairs, the male and female rarely interacted. Often the female would remain out of view at the back of the tank, while the male was up the front.
Because this was proving extremely frustrating, I decided to make changes to their tank in the hopes of encouraging a spawn - or at the very least courtship. I dropped the water level down to 15cm, and increased the amount of tannins by adding rooibos extract and IALs to the tank. Peat moss was also added over the aqua soil substrate, while earlier this morning I picked up several pieces of 'Mekong River Driftwood' from a store in the city. Unfortunately, while my plan worked in that both fish have coloured up fully, it seems that the male is now being rather savagely pursued by the female. You can see almost half his caudal is missing in the above photo. Since then, his anal and ventral fins have also been badly torn and at this point I am considering separating them as I only recently lost my Betta brownorum male to his hyper-aggressive female. All of my current breeding pairs were spawning within a week or so of arriving. I was rather excited to have the opportunity to work with a new 'species' in my fish room, and was hoping that these fish would prove as easy and eager to spawn as the rest of my stock. Therefore, if anyone working with this species has any suggestions as to how I can get my pair to spawn, I would very much like to hear them. Also, if anyone is able to correctly sex these fish from the photo above, please do let me know. I was hoping a spawn would answer my question, but at this rate the male isn't going to have enough body parts left to reproduce! My group of Betta sp. cf. rutilans green seem to have completely recovered from a previous oodinium infection. However, with an improvement in health has come an increase in aggression, particularly as it appears I have at least two receptive females in the tank. In fact I actually caught a pair embracing the other day, though no eggs were produced due to the pair being constantly interrupted by their male siblings. This group has always shown high levels of conspecific aggression. Because oodinium can be triggered by stress, my plan is to maintain as low stress an environment as possible. Already I have the group in a larger tank than they were previously, but you can see from the above picture that this hasn't done much to help.
Because I am not planning on working with this species further - besides maintaining this current group to the end of their lives - I thought it would give me an opportunity to create a biotope style tank that mimics more closely than any of my other tanks, the type of environment these fish would inhabit in the wild. Hopefully this will be taking shape over the next couple of weeks, and I will be posting up photos as I go along. Every single one of my past spawns, has been considerably male-heavy. I'd probably estimate that for every two or three males, I'd be lucky to get even a single female.
Unfortunately, because most hobbyists only want to buy breeding pairs or trios of fish, such a heavily skewed sex ratio can make it difficult to move on surplus males. As this had been my experience with previous spawns, I was expecting to see much of the same when I got my new stock in towards the end of last year. Surprisingly, the reverse seems to have happened. Both my Betta sp. apiapi and Betta hendra pairs seem to have thrown almost all females from consecutive spawns. Understandably, this could change because many of the fish are only young and haven't fully coloured up. But based on my current assessments, I would not be surprised if I only had a couple of males present in each group. I also have a number of juveniles in my Betta brownorum tank that still haven't been correctly sexed, so I will be eager to see if this trend continues. What I am particularly interested in, is finding out what environmental factors have influenced this sudden shift. I have made some recent changes in my husbandry practices, such as maintaining a slightly cooler water temperature, and easing back on the frequency of water changes. I also started using aqua soil as the substrate in all my tanks, and I am wondering what effect this is having on the pH (if any). I'm hoping to purchase a digital pH meter in the next couple of weeks along with KH and GH test kits, so that I can get a more precise picture of what is going on with my water. It would be great if in the future, I could manipulate the conditions in my tanks to provide a sex ratio as close as possible to 50:50. |
AuthorLocated in Melbourne, Australia, I currently keep and breed a number of species from the coccina complex. Archives
November 2017
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