Home › Forums › Betta Breeding › Spawning & Raising Fry › Bad luck with pairing bettas?
- AuthorPosts
Hi all, I’m a new member looking for advice. I’ve kept bettas for most of my life, and since recently finding the IBC I would love to join in with breeding my own bettas and seeing how they do in shows. My only problem is that…I can’t get them to spawn.
In the past two years I have tried four different pairs and only one (petstore-bought VTs) produced any fry, and that was only after I think five attempts. I’m currently attempting to spawn two HM pairs (one a IBC-member-bred male and petstore female, the other a pair from a non-IBC breeder) for the nth times and once again they’re doing the same thing as always when I get them in the spawning tanks: the male has built his nest, he’s dancing, the female is showing appropriate reactions and barring, everything looks very promising so I put them together and…the male abandons the nest and they just spend the next several days (however long I feel I can risk leaving them together) doing absolutely nothing productive.
I have scoured the internet looking for hints and I’ve made adjustments for each attempt. Tank size, plant types and numbers, water depth and temperature, sponge filter speed, amount of Indian almond leaf in the tank, amount of salt, the age of the pair, the time spent conditioning the pair, the foods I condition them with, how long I leave the female in her ‘glass hut’ before releasing her, leaving the pair together longer, letting them see a ‘teaser’ male or female, covering the tank so they can’t be seen, having a humidifier running in the room… I’ve tried pretty much everything I’ve read, with the one exception of conditioning using live foods as I have limited space in my house for storing such things, and I’m having a hard time finding the worms I’ve seen suggested.
I am beyond frustrated and to the point of wanting to give up. It’s extra aggravating because when I was in high school, I literally just picked two royal blue VTs from the pet store, threw them together, and immediately they spawned. Is there some big secret that I’m missing here? Or do I just have the world’s worst luck picking out pairs? Does anyone have any advice as to something else I could try?
-
This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by
Brittany T.
Hi Brittany,
Hope it’s not to late. Doesn’t seem to be much activity on here which is a shame.
I see you have been trying several different setups and combos. Great thing to do. Sometimes pairs need a little extra help. You have tried pretty much most of what I would do. In the absence of live foods to condition your pairs, have you tried frozen? Something like frozen bloodworm or frozen daphnia? They would only take up a tiny portion of your freezer. That may help. Another thing I try with hard to breed pairs is releasing the female for a 10-15 min run with the male a couple of times a day until I start to see some promising behaviour. For “shy” pairs, I also make my tank pretty dark with tannins and cover the tank with a towel so they don’t get distracted by movement outside of the tank.
Unfortunately sometimes, a pair just isn’t compatible.
I hope you have had some success since posting this or have found some advice before now.
Thanks for the reply!
Yes, I do give them frozen foods as part of their conditioning. Bloodworms and brine shrimp seem to be the only ones I can find in my area. Haven’t seen frozen daphnia but I’ll keep an eye out or see about ordering through my LFS.I sometimes keep pairs I’m wanting to try together in a divided tank for a while beforehand. Figured they would be getting each other’s hormones in the water? I do see a response in the females for sure. I haven’t tried putting them together for short runs though, that is something I can do next time.
I do put Indian almond leaf in the tank so it usually gets to a light-medium tea color, and keeping spawning tanks covered is standard procedure for me because I have curious cats who will otherwise sit on top of the tanks and try to bop the fish through the glass.I did have success recently, with a pair of petstore royal blue VTs I bought in a fit of rage, to experiment with to see if I could pinpoint what’s going on.
They pretty much took one look at each other and boom! Babies. ARGH! In an ironic twist of fate, we had tornadoes blow through my town last week, which knocked out power for a day right as a cold front moved in, so the temp in my house dropped well below what week-old fry can tolerate and I ended up losing all but 2-3 of them. DOUBLE ARGHI’ll be honest, I had a period of about 12 months where any pair I tried putting together refused to breed, no matter what tips and tricks I tried. It almost made me give up bettas altogether. Then, out of the blue, everything went right and I was doing nothing different.
Sorry to hear you lost your fry. Unfortunately there was nothing you could have done. The main thing is you are safe.
I mainly use frozen blood-worms when conditioning. I have perhaps one failed spawn out of every three attempts. I mainly breed during the warmer months these days, as I have a better success rate and less can go wrong if heaters fail.
I hope you keep trying. One thing I didn’t ask…do you card your pairs when conditioning?
I don’t usually try breeding in colder months exactly for this reason, but it had been an unseasonally warm winter up until that freak storm last week. Oh well. Learned my lesson on that one.
I have not tried carding them, no, so that’s another thing I can add to my list.
-
This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by
- AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.