betta gender, when can you tell

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DepotFish

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Oct 6, 2005
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Wisconsin
I'm planning on breeding my older female next week. She's getting on and right now has a full belly. She's show quality and very flashy so I'd like to breed her before her time is up. I know all about the breeding process, my question is how long does it take to tell males from female babies? This girl has very long fins and the only way I can tell she's a female is because she's got an ovipositor and shes layed eggs before.
 
Beta fry grow very slowly. It usually takes 30 weeks for them to develope any color or finnage, and that's in the best of conditions. As with many species, achieving a spawn is much easier than raising the fry. Betas are one of those species that require the most work to raise.
Not only because you'll be constantly cleaning the mason jars needed to grow out each male, but because they are very susceptible to pnuemonia as their labyrinth organs develope. You must keep the water and air temp the same (about 80F).

Even the experts have some difficulty in sexing the fry. Individual fry are removed to their own jar once any start showing signs of aggression. Good Luck and please keep us posted.
 
With betta's fry that grow togeather and stay in the same tank. They will not fight. It's been proven by more then one breder. These bettas are only 8 to 10 weeks old and notice the fins and color. Sexing of them is really easy by looking at the tail and anual fins
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Again with frys that grow up togeather the fighting is zero. The colors will start to come in on the fry at 40 days and with in a week of that the tail fins will start canging to the sex of the fish. With bettas if the water is keep so bad that it's caused stumck problums with the female. The female will turn into a fullie fuctioning male. So no mater how here keep the onething. That must be kept up is there water. Other wise you want have no females to breed to later.
 
Agreed 2-3 months is usually long enough to tell males from females. You will get some males that look like females occasionally and vise versa.
 
Most of the fry will be sexable by the end of the 2 month. In most cases it's always the dorsal fin wil be the big give away on the sexs. Then the til, the hardest one to tell male female is the anual fin. Til they hit 3 1/2 to 4 months this fin will look the same.
I have also noticed that in the females the frist thing to show up making them sexable is horazontal lines in the side They all have them to a point but the females is always 5 times darker then the males. Now I have crown tail fry going on 35 days old and they are the totl oppsite of the vail tail.
 
My female has long fins though, people mistake her for a male, she even puffs out her gills when she's being dominant over her tankmate. I know she's a female though because she has an ovipositor, she's layed eggs before, and she has stripes. I think it will be difficult to sex these fry. The reason I want to breed is because it will be easier to breed females than to try and find some in the store that get along. Thanks for the confidence in knowing that they shouldn't fight much when raised together. What's this about water and not having females? I want as many females as possible. I intend to keep all the girls I end up with.

UPDATE: I got a male now. I was hoping for a superdelta or a double tail yellow male, but I got a nicely finned royal blue veiltail. The breeder that supplies my favorite store was from the south and was affected by the hurricane in some way or another and bettas are on hold for a while. Either way I expect nice looking babies. He's young, but he's learning to make a bubble nest, he's got a few bubbles started under two pieces of styrofoam. I had a few choices in the tank for making a nest under. He hasn't decided which he likes best.
 
With female if they are keep in really bad water setting and have to compete for air with the others. the female's will change into fully fuctioning males
 
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