# Red Butterfly? Marble? CT x Melano VT



## Navarre (Mar 12, 2015)

This is starting a little late, but I thought it would be fun to start a thread about my first ever spawn.

Long story shortish, I had a melano female that I had tried unsuccessfully to breed with one of my males. He didn't quite know how to be a dad, so I wasn't sure if it was him or if she was infertile, although I was pretty sure she was fertile since she had other colors.

I wanted to be sure she was fertile before spending the big bucks on a nice black male, so I put her in with one of my Meijer "rescues", Ferdinand, who turned out to be a lovely suitor and father! :-D

Ferdinand:
Btw, I have no idea what color to call him, so if someone with more wisdom could chime in and let me know I will change the thread title to sound more educated! 










Please excuse the low water in any of the pictures. It's not super high in the first place, obviously, but I was doing a water change, so water was being siphoned out.


















Unfortunately just a few days after breeding, my female, Thraya died. :-( No idea what was wrong with her. I noticed she was acting a little funny the day before, but I was stupid and didn't take her out and treat her with _something.








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Spawned on 4/18 hatched on 4/20


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## Navarre (Mar 12, 2015)

I decided that first spawn or not I wanted to leave the male in with his kids. If I had known that Thraya was going to die I don't know if I would have made the same decision, but thankfully so far it is going great. Sometimes he'll take one (or ten!) in his mouth and swim a little ways and spit them back out, but I've never seen him eat one.

The fry at 11 days:


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## Nimble (Aug 31, 2014)

That female is not Melano. She's Black Lace, or possibly Super Black. If she was Melano, it is HIGHLY unlikely that you would have gotten eggs to hatch.

In either case, I'm looking forward to see what kind of nifty stuff you get out of this. The tails will probably all be a mess, if the female is genuinely a VT. But the colors should be interesting.


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## Navarre (Mar 12, 2015)

Nimble said:


> That female is not Melano. She's Black Lace, or possibly Super Black. If she was Melano, it is HIGHLY unlikely that you would have gotten eggs to hatch.
> 
> In either case, I'm looking forward to see what kind of nifty stuff you get out of this. The tails will probably all be a mess, if the female is genuinely a VT. But the colors should be interesting.


Well, I wasn't really sure how to describe it, but here is what other people told me: http://www.bettafish.com/showthread.php?t=543466

Yeah, I figured tails would be all over the place. But I am really looking forward to the colors. I know they aren't supposed to be showing any color yet, but I know some of the fry have black specks on their heads. :dunno:

Anyway, I will continue to post updates as they make changes!


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## sharkettelaw1 (Mar 6, 2013)

that female is most certainly not black lace. Black lace doesn't have intensity like that, and its not super black either, her intensity isn't dark enough. 1, not EVERY melano is infertile, 2. That girl has irids which makes her fertile. I've kept and bred more than enough blacks to know this.


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## Navarre (Mar 12, 2015)

sharkettelaw1 said:


> that female is most certainly not black lace. Black lace doesn't have intensity like that, and its not super black either, her intensity isn't dark enough. 1, not EVERY melano is infertile, 2. That girl has irids which makes her fertile. I've kept and bred more than enough blacks to know this.


Thanks! Any "official" terms on what color the male is? Besides red and a blue. :lol:


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## sharkettelaw1 (Mar 6, 2013)

I think he's a multicolor


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## Navarre (Mar 12, 2015)

sharkettelaw1 said:


> I think he's a multicolor


Thanks! I saw some dorsal fins today. They are two weeks, one day.

I know it probably wasn't the wisest breeding, but I don't think I'll have problems finding homes for them, and hopefully there will be a few that I can work with!


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## Navarre (Mar 12, 2015)

So the kids are about three and a half weeks old today--they will be four weeks on Monday the 18th. To me they seem kind of small--or a lot of them, anyway, but I'm not sure why. I've been doing water changes every day to every other day (Some days I just don't have time :-(). Maybe the every other day has slowed them down.

Ferdie is still in with them--I think he's bored to death, but I'm not sure how to entertain him--I would think that many kids would keep you entertained, but he just ignores them.

Their diet consists of BBs in the morning, Repashy Spawn & Grow all day, and then a couple or so times a day I give them Golden Pearls. The last day or two I've chopped up BettaMin flakes and some of the bigger ones have gorged on those. They don't seem to like the Golden Pearls that well, unfortunately. But they have the Spawn & Grow to graze on all day.




























Dad gets jealous, so I let him show off in front of a mirror and took pictures of him for a while. 









Eating their Spawn and Grow off the floor--in the middle is a guppy fry. I put some of them in there, and I think they taught the betta fry to eat off the surface more and the betta fry taught the guppies to eat off the floor. 

















Eating Spawn and Grow out of Ted Judy's feeding discs









Sorry for the picture overload!


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## Kisiel (Jul 30, 2014)

IMO if he's ignoring the kids and not doing much in terms of caring for them (such as cleaning/feeding/culling) you should remove him. There's just no point in him being there if he's not taking care of them! 

Your fry look fine to me, you're doing a good job. Have a look at this betta fry growth chart to see how big your fry should be each week - just remember that this is _only_ a guide and some will always be bigger or smaller than others!


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