japenese fighters... next step please help

[m013y]

Ive just witnessed my bettas mating nd he was catching eggs. Ive watches them all day and they have finished.

Ive took out the female and he is gaurding his nest.
How long does the fry take to hatch?
Ive heard 24hr lighting is advised?
Do i continue to feed?
Do i take out the nest?

Any info would be great as i am new to betta breeding. I may have done the wrong thing by taking out the female but i heard this is when they most likly to be attackd. Thanks for ya time

 

[Andy Sager]

Ive just witnessed my bettas mating nd he was catching eggs. Ive watches them all day and they have finished.

Ive took out the female and he is gaurding his nest.
How long does the fry take to hatch?
Ive heard 24hr lighting is advised?
Do i continue to feed?
Do i take out the nest?

Any info would be great as i am new to betta breeding. I may have done the wrong thing by taking out the female but i heard this is when they most likly to be attackd. Thanks for ya time

For starters, Congrats on getting your Bettas to breed
To answer your questions:
Yes, it was a good thing you removed the female as more often than not, the male will drive the female away and if she can't get far enough away, he will kill her.
Hatching usually is in about 36-40 hours at 78-80 degrees. Warmer water will speed up the hatching but I have found it also hurts the fry. Cooler temps will cause a delay in hatching but if given a choice, I would rather a slower hatching time then a quicker one.
I usually leave my males in the breeding tank until the day before the fry are ready to start free swimming (which is about 3 days after hatching.) As long as the male does not have a history of fry eating, I leave my males to care for the fry.
I do not feed the males until they are out of the tank of fry. I have been doing that for over 40 years of breeding these fish. Some people do feed their males while they are caring for the fry but most of the time, I have found that they would not eat the food and it rotted in the tanks or the food resembled the fry so the males became fry eaters. A well conditioned male can go the whole breeding time without food.

Lighting is a 50 /50 thing. I usually only use whatever natural light is available.
I have not found the lighting to be an issue in the successful hatching of Betta eggs. (I've had hatches in tanks with very little light.)

My preference is to leave the nests alone. Unless you have a number of spawns that were spawned within a day of each other and you want to raise together, I'd leave it alone.


If you have any other questions, feel free to pm me. If you'd like to see some of my breeding Bettas, check out my albums in my profile page


Hope this helps...

 

[m013y]

Thts pretty much answered all my questions but have raised a few more queries lol
He seems to be guarding them very close. He hasnt movdd from the nest so i think hes tending to them as aposed to eating them. In this tank i have a a large plec and a small catfish.

Would these cause a problem for the fry when they hatch?
At what point do i segerate the fry from each other?

Just wondering whether to move the fry once hatched or take the male and plecs out? Or is it a case of just letting nature take its course?

Thanks again for your help its been the most helpful i found so far.

 

[Andy Sager]

It's been my experience and have always recommended that Bettas be bred in a tank by themselves so I would get the catfish and pleco out of the tank immediately. They are a danger to the fry.
As for the male, he is showing normal parental behavior because if he were eating the fry, he would have abandoned the nest once the fry were gone. (and that's usually in 1 meal )

What's interesting about Bettas is that you can raise an entire spawn together to adulthood as long as they are never separated. Brothers won't harm sisters and there will only (usually) be some fin damage between brothers. HOWEVER, once separated when they mature, all bets are off. They can not be put back together (or rarely is that successful.) Depending on the breeding tank's size, when or if the fry need to be moved, you should move them all at the same time. Be aware that there will be some of the fry that will grow faster than the others and it is believed that these fish are releasing a hormone to stall the growth of their siblings so you will need to do large volume water changes to reduce this hormone level in the growout tank.

I will say that with the males, if you are trying to get the fins to grow out faster, you will want to separate them when they have reached a good body size. What I've seen some breeders do is to put the males in a 1/2 or 1 gal jars by themselves to discourage body growth but incourage fin growth. This will all depend on how much work you want to do in changing water whether you want to do this. (You'll notice in one of my album pictures that I built a flow through system where I could containerize the males but have a large volume of filtered water to reduce water changes. I don't have time to change 100+ bottles )

Lastly, as for moving the fry, Betta fry tend to be sensitive to water movement so I would not be moving them in their first week of free swimming. Make sure they are eating and growing. I usually introduce a small amount of air (via a sponge filter) at about 7 -10 days old. At 3-5 weeks old the fry should have developed their labrynth organ at which time I would then prepare them for moving. (make sure you have a tight cover on the tank so that there is good humidity in the air above the water for when the fry start breathing air. This is when more people lose their fry. )

I think I have you covered. Any other questions, feel free to PM me.

 

[m013y]

I cant thank you enough. Thats brilliant. Thankyou