Here is the truth about how many babies to expect.
There are basically two kinds of betta breeders, well,,maybe 3. One of course is the serious hobbyist. This is the person that pays special attention to bloodlines, quality, and show quality. These people usually seek the perfect betta. Quantity is never an issue, they may raise just a few, or a dozen to be groomed for perfection. These people have terrific strains,,,,,,usually. If you go to aquabid dot com you can see some examples of these listed for sale.
The second kind of breeder is less common in America, a few people try but are not focused or organized enough in the beginning and get distracted, discouraged, and ultimately give up. This is the breeder who sees dollar signs. Riches.
A third type of breeder might be the one that just likes to see fish multiply, has read this or that about bettas and has a go at putting a pair or two together to see what happens. I would venture a guess and say that most fail, usually for the simplest of reasons, whether it be lack of food for the fry, lack of water quality for the fry,,or just lack of ability in getting a pair to successfully lay eggs. Some,,do succeed.
But back to your question. How many. When you use the store bought bettas that are available today, and I am talking about the standard imported variety, you should be able to have 100 to 200 hatch. It can be considerably less,,,or in some cases considerably more. My record was 880 babies hatched from one female.
Lets go with the 100 hatched babies. And by hatched, let's assume we are talking about after the initial one or two day mortalities,,post parents removed, and eating baby brine shrimp.
My bettas always had a roughly 50/50 split of male and females. I think any deviation from this is just a chance result of losing alot of fry and being left with what is left over. But give nature a chance and you will be near 50-50.
So right away out of a hundred fry you have 50 males. Ten or so of these males will not grow the long fins that you see in the store tanks. They have fins that are more of the natural length,,short. They may be colorful, they may look nice, but they will be short. This leaves you with 40 or so prospective sellable males. Out of this 40 you can count on around 5 or 6,,possibly more, that just never develop nice colors. They stay grayish, or very dark, certainly not the lovely fish you see in stores.
So out of a hundred you may get 35 or if you are lucky 40 really nice sellable males. You will have an excess of females, they are easy to sell.
Now, before I get tossed for throwing out these low numbers, remember, we are talking about the standard store bought import. These are mutts. They are mass produced in the far east, they breed kazillions of them over there, they throw away bunches and the ones you see in the stores are what's left. This type of breeding is dirty business. Cheap labor, long laborous days, and nothing but the fish are tended to day after day after day. These people do not go to the mall, they do not go to the movies, they don't hang out with their friends downtown,,none of that.
I have seen film of these places and one that stands out was a breeding facility where the fish were being raised in what looked like small liquor bottles. The entire floor was covered in them, side by side, the workers were actually walking across the tops of the bottles there were so many.
They can spot bad fish early on and these are disposed of, only the future sellable ones are kept.
If a serious breeder here in the USA could take a hobbyist strain and go to work then there would be a considerable less demand for these fish.
I banked on 50-75 males from my broodstock per spawn. I spawned from 10-12 pairs at a time, I usally raised out 500-700 males twice per summer. I raised mine in groups in 55 gallon tanks, they were raised together. These were NOT show fish. They would not win any ribbons. But they were healty, locally raised, pretty fish. And stores stopped buying from the wholesalers at the time. I sold fancy guppys, angelfish, and bettas, and a few varieties of tetras and barbs at the time. All were bred by myself.
You could breed yours and count on 30-40 males. You could certainly get SOMETHING for them if you tried, but at the very least you could have a 20 gallon tank in your living room with a whole group of male bettas together. A nice sight, and a nice prize for your effort.
By the way, people have asked me about keeping males together. It can be done. If they are raised together it is easy. Once a fish has been isolated and kept alone it becomes much more aggressive. Domestic bettas are not that aggressive. Also, when you have any aggressive fish, and you put a dense population of them together, it reduces the aggression by leaps and bounds. A couple of examples of this might be nippy fish like tiger barbs, or an extreme example like the mbunas of africa. Both of these do superb in large groups while keeping less than half a dozen usually results in fighting or death.
Hope all of this helps.
Bill
not what i was expecting would of happened. his entire bottom fin th ebig pretty one has holes all over it and is missing several sections from it. Thanks for the help i knew i shouldnt do it i just wanted to try it so bad to see all tose cute little bettas swimming around. Thanks for reminding me how much work it is.
