# breeding bettas



## mthom211 (Sep 3, 2010)

I am yet to set up my 55 gallon NPT but when I do I want to breed some bettas in it. Will there be enough micro foods established after 2 months with shrimp and stuff. How many could i expect to survive in this situation?


----------



## Vietguy357 (Sep 20, 2010)

Is it just going to be shrimp and bettas or more of a community tank? Survival rate would be better if theres plenty of plants. I breed bettas before in 10gal and had about 1 to 3 survive everytime they breed. The tank wasn't very densely planted but did have some java moss


----------



## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

I've only ever bred them in 5 gallon tanks specifically set up for betta breeding (half full, sponge filters, hornwort, duckweed, guppy grass, and java fern, removed the adults and add infusoria, powdered egg, and greenwater). I've had like 80% survival that way.

In a 55 were you can't control everything as much, you would probably have at least a few survive just eating crud out of the tank.


----------



## mthom211 (Sep 3, 2010)

It would have endlers, cories, a pair of apisto's I plant to get a fry the same way and the bettas. I only want a few to survive since dad would kill me If I had to house a whole heap of male bettas in jars lol These ones are imported so I don't want to have to buy new ones every few years. They will also be pretty much impossable to find after the new quarantine l;aws.


----------



## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

I bred bettas in a 10x10 dorm room in college. There were jars, bottles, bowls, cups, and vases on every horizontal surface. It gets really time consuming, really fast.


----------



## mudboots (Jun 24, 2009)

In the Fish for Planted Tanks forum I just got a link posted on my "Pygmy Banded Sunfish?" thread to a place that sells various invertz and variety packs to get tanks started with a healthy invert population. I forget the link name, but since you now know where it's at...

Anyway, I plan on breeding small fish as well, using an organic substrate and lots of moss in the foreground to help support the invert population with small leaved, dense stem plants in the back to keep the invert colonies well spread in the water column. My goal is to have an easily sustainable colony of food for the fish (I'll add nutrients by feeding RCS that wil share the tank with the pygmy bandeds).


----------



## Trower (Jan 4, 2008)

Franco said:


> I bred bettas in a 10x10 dorm room in college. There were jars, bottles, bowls, cups, and vases on every horizontal surface. It gets really time consuming, really fast.


Agreed, I find Betta's to be very prolific, but once you have 25 of them or so, they take all your time. When I've bred them I culled them as soon as I could down to 5 or so per brood.


----------



## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

I bred them once. I had 400 offspring that I had to find homes for. They were eating Gordon's formula food by the pound! I gave away about 200 and flooded the local pet stores with the remaining 200. Never again!


----------



## Trower (Jan 4, 2008)

HeyPK said:


> I bred them once. I had 400 offspring that I had to find homes for. They were eating Gordon's formula food by the pound! I gave away about 200 and flooded the local pet stores with the remaining 200. Never again!


Wow you raised that many!! I culled off what I didn't have room for. Man I can't imagine 400!!


----------



## mthom211 (Sep 3, 2010)

mudboots said:


> In the Fish for Planted Tanks forum I just got a link posted on my "Pygmy Banded Sunfish?" thread to a place that sells various invertz and variety packs to get tanks started with a healthy invert population. I forget the link name, but since you now know where it's at...
> 
> Anyway, I plan on breeding small fish as well, using an organic substrate and lots of moss in the foreground to help support the invert population with small leaved, dense stem plants in the back to keep the invert colonies well spread in the water column. My goal is to have an easily sustainable colony of food for the fish (I'll add nutrients by feeding RCS that wil share the tank with the pygmy bandeds).


thanks for that, unfortunately I live in australia so I doubt I could get them shipped over. I might try pond scum though.....


----------



## mudboots (Jun 24, 2009)

Pond scum is an excellent idea; that's where most "seed stock" of little invertz is found anyway, so you can pretty much raise your own little food source.


----------



## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

Just go to a pond and scoop up some algae, dead leaves in the water, or aquatic plants and swish it into a container of clean water. Take it home, sort out the debri and predators and you are good to go.
Thats how I get my starter cultures of daphnia, copepods, and ostracods every spring. I sort every animal though using a pipette so that they arent mixed. It takes a bit of time but its worth it to have continually thriving colonies. 
For your tank you would just have to take out the aquatic insects and worms.


----------



## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

> Wow you raised that many!! I culled off what I didn't have room for. Man I can't imagine 400!!


I fed them first Paramecium that I reared in a plastic dish pan with lots of dried grass clippings and next microworms . The fry can feed on microworms from when they are almost too small to see until they are a half inch long. When they got big enough I started separating the males into jars, beakers, and whatever other containers I could find. But I was soon overwhelmed by more and more and I had to keep the rest together in a couple of 15 gallon tanks. Fortunately, they worked out a peck order and there were no damaging fights, just a lot of threats. When I found that out, I dumped in all the males in jars. The newcomers got into a few fights, but soon integrated into the peck order, and all was peaceful. It is a good thing that they are air breathers, because I had over a hundred in each tank.


----------



## mudboots (Jun 24, 2009)

HeyPK said:


> ...I had over a hundred in each tank.


Wow!


----------



## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

If you want to rear lots of betta fry, get a bare bottomed tank and put in microworms daily. They fall down to the bottom and wiggle there, staying alive for at least a day, maybe longer. The fry don't all grow up at the same rate. Some stay small while others rather suddenly get big. You remove the ones that get big, and more keep popping up for weeks.


----------

