# Planted Breeding tank success!



## junebug (Aug 5, 2013)

I keep several species of wild betta, all in well-planted tanks, due to the acidic water they require to stay healthy. This is actually one of the reasons I got so into planted tanks, because I wanted to breed and also maintain good water quality without the labor of huge daily water changes (I am physically incapable of doing this anyway, so yay for plants)

Well, I am proud to say, that in addition to several guppy and endler spawns (no water changes required in any tank, yay plants) I have had a pair of Betta rubra spawn in their specially aquascaped tank. I set the tank up specifically to be the perfect spawning setup for this species. They are a mouthbrooding betta, native to streams consisting mainly of mountain snow runoff (fairly cold water for a tropical fish)

I keep my quartet in a 15 gallon tank set up as follows: Large driftwood x2. The malaysian piece has probably 7-10 hiding places. I've covered much of it with java moss and flame moss to provide a hiding area for fry (they are raised in the tank with wild species of betta as opposed to removing the parents). The second piece is a large hollow black cedar, forming a bit of a tunnel, as a spawning medium option, so eggs aren't lost in the substrate or plants.

The substrate is red flourite with a heavy black sand cap, to prevent egg loss during spawning that takes place outside of the log. I also have two rocks in the tank, one being a decorative rock with red stripes, the other being a large chunk of black lava rock.

This particular species can be kept in pH as high as 7 (should be noted that for spawning, the pH should be 6 or lower), so there was some possibility of being able to cycle the tank. Given that I can expect up to 100 fry from a spawn once the males get large enough, I wanted as much room for BB growth as possible, so the lava rock is situated near one of the sponge filters I have running in the tank.

Plants include Java moss, Java fernlets, flame moss, Brazilian Pennywort, radican swords, red tiger lotus (which is melted/eaten by an evil snail, but I'm hoping it comes back), Italian Vallisneria, Echinodorus Angustifolia, nesaea red, and probably a few other cover type plants that I have forgotten. I'm going to be adding a few more plants very soon as well, including Cardamine lyrata and cyperus helferi. Possibly more, I'm not sure yet and it depends on how big the plants I've ordered end up being.

I'll update with pictures of the tank once the new light arrives and the male has released his brood (or swallowed it, but I'm hoping for a lucky first spawn) so that others might be able to learn from the tank setup, should they be interested in wild type bettas.

Also if anyone here is interested in keeping wild type bettas and would like to purchase domestically raised breeding pairs, please let me know. I keep B. Uberis and will soon have B. imbellis, each in their own fully planted tanks. I should have juvie groups available in the next few months of at least two species (probably rubra and imbellis as coccina complex are hard to spawn and will require a bit of experimentation on my part). I would be happy to create threads based on those tanks as well if there is any interest in what seems to work for those complexes of wild type betta.


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## junebug (Aug 5, 2013)

Here's a picture of the tank


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

Wow I have not had Bettas for years now. But in the 1990 I was very active in IBC. At one point I was up to 200 bowls of Bettas in my fish room getting water changes every day. At that time I used to show in the IBC and also had several wild types besides plakats. Namely pugaats, imbelis, smardinas, plus another I cannot think of the name of but they were smaller and deep red in color. Forgive me for the spelling on the names but it has been a while and I barely remember there names any more.

If you decide you any for sle when the weather is warmer givve me shout I would be interested.


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## junebug (Aug 5, 2013)

I will have an ad in the for sale forum here when I have some available for sale  The rubras so far are great fish, hardy and fun. It turns out I actually have two strains, one from Lake Toba and one from the Aceh province, Lake Toba being the strain that Perugia described in his initial discovery in 1893, so I'm pretty excited about that!

Anyway so far all is well with the spawn, daddy is doing a great job and hasn't shown any signs of swallowing the brood 

I'm actually going to be conditioning the pugnax complex species I'm keeping to see if they'll spawn next, so it's entirely possible I'll have some of them soon as well


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## junebug (Aug 5, 2013)

Just an update, papa Fred is still holding. He spends most of his time either inside the driftwood or resting under the Brazilian Pennywort (another reason for me to love this plant). So yeah if anyone is breeding paternal mouthbrooding fish, mine seem to like the big leafy plants to hide under


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