# The F Word



## preternaturalism (Nov 21, 2013)

Introductions.

I spawned bettas successfully numerous times when I was in my early teens, got the fry past the yolk sac stage, then had them die off. This was before there was much info on genetics or fry rearing via the internet so all I had to go off of was a sparse handbook I had picked up in the lfs, not terribly helpful for troubleshooting. I'm almost certain now that those lost batches were caused by lack of daily water changes which the adults would tolerate but the fry wouldn't, and/or overfeeding bbs. With the abundance of information accessible today, I'm fairly certain I can make a go at actually growing fry to adults.

I'm a full-time chemist, so I don't have as much free time as I'd like, but I do have the funds to set up and care for the fry.

The goal here is to wind up with a stable line of dumbo feathertails. I know, right here, I'm going to tweak a whole lot of people into jumping in with that's-not-right, feathertails-always-give-you-xfactor-spawn-always, dumbos-aren't-symmetrical, these-fish-will-never-be-showable, and that's okay. Feel free to speak your mind. Just know that I don't care about show standards except so far as they make good building blocks for new varieties, I'm determined to push forward with this as far as the DNA will let me, and I'm not squeamish about culling.

Now, stock!

All these fish were bought off Ebay, bred in Thailand. I'm going to see if I can get information on the breeder from the importer, but it's not going to change my eventual goals, just potentially give me more of a history to look at. The pictures are off of Ebay as well. I'll try to take more once the fish arrive.

Males first. I can't tell if this guy got his tail bitten or if he has some natural lobes going on. If the former, no big deal, if the latter I don't mind. Normally I prefer the very clean-edged HMs, but in this case, feathertails look a lot more stunning with some receding webbing between "plumes", so I'd hope to retain the trait and accentuate it as far as possible. Maybe even introduce crowntail genes at some much, much later date.

He's not flaring completely, but I can tell his anal fin's longer than I'd like. This is a recurring problem, unfortunately. Rose and feathertails tend to have slightly shorter to much shorter tails, and while I'd like to keep it to "slightly," that may not be possible and one way of retaining a pleasing shape would be to reduce the length of the anal.

He may have lopsided pectorals. I'll have to wait and see.









This guy. I don't love the look of his overall fin shape, but he does have the feathering and considering the cost I saved getting him shipped with the others/not shipping from Thailand/getting his sister for practically free after haggling on price, it wasn't a terrible deal and I think there is the potential to get something rather striking. Again, can't tell if he's been bitten. Either his tail was chewed up top or the overall tail shape will need some attending to. Doesn't have the horrid scale smudging of some rosetails. He's supposed to be a giant. I don't really believe it.

















This girl. I'm reconsidering on the decision to purchase her but she's shipped and I've paid so no dice. It's more of a mental slap over the head than anything. Supposed to be the sibling of the white male. She's not really flaring so can't say for certain, but I don't think I love her tail shape. The dorsal's pretty and again, the anal's too long. If she throws fry that look like the white guy, though, I'd be happy.









This girl. Sibling of the black/white feathertail male. I do like her tail for the most part, her dorsal is a poor sparse little thing, and her anal, way, wayyyyy too long. She looks as though she has sturdy fins though.









I'm going to attempt two separate spawns, then cross the fish with each other and possibly back. Do you think I'd have better luck breeding the whites with the darks, or initially breeding white on white and dark on dark, picking the best formed from each, then crossing with the other color? I'm a little hesitant to do the latter because of the issues rosetails have with inbreeding, but one could argue that weeding out fry once _before _diluting out the x-factor might reduce the occurrence in later generations.

(I know there are people who think that if you inbreed rosetails you're heading inevitably for worthless, sad x-factor fry, but generally speaking genetics don't work that way, and whatever x-factor is, it isn't dominant. Recessive genes can be eliminated, it's just more difficult because you can't see them. Maybe it's a dominant pair of genes that needs to occur together, but those can be split out, then. Maybe it's a combination. Either way I can think of no insurmountable mechanism, _unless _environment plays a very large factor in creating x-factor rosetails, and from the results people get it does seem to be genetic.)

In addition to these four, I'm almost definitely going to need at least one HM female with a long tail and a nice, _short _anal fin, preferably as horizontal as possible. Possibly another feathertail male as well, but I'm not dying for one and the cost of importing from Thailand means I haven't jumped on any yet. Does anybody know who would be a good breeder to watch for that type of female? I've been fumbling around Aquabid for a month or so but I haven't gotten the hang of each breeders' tendencies as far as shape.

Feel free to critique on any and every point you desire, I don't bite and neither will I crawl into a corner to cry.


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## valen1014 (Jan 20, 2013)

What kind of chemist? :hmm:

I don't know nearly enough about betta genetics to properly comment except to say that they are all beautiful, and I wish you good luck!


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## indjo (Jun 6, 2010)

First of all, welcome to the forum.

I guess you know what you're getting yourself into. SO I don't need to remind you. For the record, good roses can have balanced fins - I have had several in the past. I'm guessing that the unbalanced fins of your whites isn't caused by rose-ing. 

Excessive rayed bettas tend to look as if it had lobes or folded fins. You can tell for sure when you see it in full flare. If possible, I'd suggest that you get a feather female and cross it to a regular or EE. I truly believe females pass on more of their fins compared to males. So hopefully you would have more feathered fry. I have no idea how to avoid the x-factor. I ended up culling the whole line because I couldn't "clean" it out after several generations (I didn't know about roses at the time). Now that I do, I try to stay away from them.

Again, if possible, I'd say keep the colors separate - white to white and copper to copper. Specially the white, because it is hard to achieve a totally clean white once you mix it with other colors. Your main goal is to get feathered EE - IMO constantly breeding roses will eventually give you feathers. But this is highly dependent on luck, you will need that specific mutation in the roses. Or in other words, I don't know how many generations it will take to get feathers.

Just be ready to cull everything and keep them as pets.
GOOD LUCK.


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## Ilikebutterflies (May 19, 2012)

+1 Indjo

In my experience of breeding black gold, copper to white(platinum) will get you gold, white to white will get you white and copper to copper will get you copper and possibly irids. Not gold fish gold but jewelry gold. You will have a hard time breeding back to solid white if you do mix them. 

I suspect caudal fin rays are somewhat of an extension of the spinal column and very unlike the other fins. The rose tail/feather tail are somewhat of a deformity or mutation that more often than not turn out mis-shapen. I'm fairly sure that's why breeders warn against it. You may get one or two decent fish out of hundreds much like breeding double tails. Supposedly you get better quality double tails by breeding double tail phenotype to double tail genotype then you would if you bred double tail phenotypes. The same could be true for feathertails and it is standard practice to breed feathertails to 6-8 rays to make decent feathertails. I wouldn't breed to 2 rays (as you mentioned crowntails) because it tends to be somewhat dominant. Maybe if you want to introduce reduced webbing into the mix a half sun be a better bet than a crowntail. The dumbo gene is also fairly recessive so you will have to go a few generations in before you get back to dumbo if you cross those fish.

I'm not entirely certain you can achieve a stable line just because you have to breed and breed to get what you want but once you think you have things stable the DNA seems like it starts to want to work backwards and re-align things-then all the sudden you are getting a reduction in the number of rays, the caudal starts rounding off more and more, the fins seem like they are getting shorter and shorter, etc. so you have to infuse new blood but that's a crapshoot because you don't know much about the new gene pool.

Anyways, it sounds like a good project as long as culling doesn't bother you. It's not unheard of to have to scrap the entire spawn.


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## SorcerersApprentice (May 31, 2012)

I don't have anything to add except good luck! Feather tails are certainly pretty and it sounds like you're going into it well-educated, so I wish you the best!


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## preternaturalism (Nov 21, 2013)

valen1014 said:


> What kind of chemist? :hmm:


Specialty coatings.

Indjo, I read other posts by you talking about how difficult to was to eradicate rosetail, but I didn't realize you wound up needing to scrap the whole line. I'm sorry to hear that. :-(

That's sage advice on looking for a feathertail female. I didn't realize they had more impact on the finnage than the males. I have a difficult time judging female fin types, though. Is there anything specific to look for to spot feathertails? The ones I've seen aways tend to look like half-moons to me, because it seems they don't hit the point where they branch out from one ray like the males. I like the idea of eventually crossing with a half sun as well.

By getting a stable line, I don't necessarily mean one that will never turn up bad fish (though I'd like that and will certainly attempt it), so much as one where it gives fairly consistent results with different crosses or inbreeding as long as you know the genetics of the parents, a little closer to how DTs are now. Right now it seems feathertails are a toss of the coin as to whether you'll get x-factor fish, and how many. Feel free to correct me if I misunderstand.

The fish came today, all in more or less good health. The females look quite a bit more attractive than I had expected. I'll take pictures once they've settled in. The males, let's just say there were a few...discrepancies between the advertising and the animals. I'm just hoping they get sorted out quickly.

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and well-wishes. :-D


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## BettaBoy51 (Nov 13, 2013)

Those bettas are gorgeous really like them


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## indjo (Jun 6, 2010)

preternaturalism said:


> Specialty coatings.
> That's sage advice on looking for a feathertail female. I didn't realize they had more impact on the finnage than the males. I have a difficult time judging female fin types, though. Is there anything specific to look for to spot feathertails? The ones I've seen aways tend to look like half-moons to me, because it seems they don't hit the point where they branch out from one ray like the males. I like the idea of eventually crossing with a half sun as well.


Most feather tail females I saw do not show feather like fins. They do have rather zig-zag caudal edges (not smooth round "D" shape). The easiest way would be ordering a female from a feather spawn. 

I forgot; I do not recommend inbreeding rose/feathers. Though the x factor might be recessive, but it can still be fixed to your line. Once that happens, you will always have them for at least 4-6 generations (cross breeding). You will not have 100% x factor and it get less as you constantly introduce new genes, but it troubles me to know they carry that x factor.


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## preternaturalism (Nov 21, 2013)

Well, the females are still beautiful. Both the males had issues. The white's photo was quite a bit outdated; he arrived with a very badly overgrown and lopsided left pectoral (not like the picture; it looked like it had beeen shredded then grew back - over half the length of his body in long strands), and his eyes are just starting to cloud over. I'm hanging onto him for personal reasons. The copper feathertail male has bad swim bladder disorder. He can't swim down from the surface and is always nose up at the top of the tank. Seller insists the fish was normal with him but his pictures look the same and despite claiming he has others of the fish swimming normally he hasn't shown any. Hmm. I'm rather peeved about that but Ebay should back me up.

Indjo, from your description it does look like the copper female is a feathertail, unfortunately she'll be nigh impossible to breed to a normal male due to size. The pair of them do look like half giants. I suppose I'll have to keep an eye out for nice "apache" feathertail males on aquabid and try to grab sibling females.

So, the current situation is a near-bust. Luckily I'm patient (when it comes to unexpected setbacks, not so much with impulse buys, sadly).


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## Myates (Aug 2, 2011)

A shame that breeding the dumbos and feather/rosetails will lead to eventual culling of most of the spawn the more you breed/inbreed them to get your goal  Both types are deformities and will result in most being too deformed to find homes for or to allow to grow older. So please consider the warnings.. you may understand that there is a thing called the x-factor, but until you start having to kill so many babies due to it and finding that not many are wanting deformed fish (not to mention you will have a much shorter selling audience as no breeder will want them).. I would reconsider and doing just normal dumbos.. You can create RTs in normal HMxHM spawns without having to purposefully create the deformities.

Just my opinion - I wish you luck in your breeding and such though and I'm sorry about your troubles.. why I tend to avoid buying fish from Ebay, those tend to be the fish that people can't sell on quality sites such as AB.


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## preternaturalism (Nov 21, 2013)

Myates said:


> Both types are deformities


I don't like seeing that word applied to mutations which in many cases allow for healthy fish. If dumbos are "deformed" surely half-moons are as well. If you can get some healthy fish with rosetails, then there has to be some way to pin it down and make it predictable, unless whether x-factor issues show up is affected tremendously by the environment and only requires the presence of whatever genes allow it. Like frizzled chickens. You _never _breed those together because you can get brittle, shredding feathers in the next generation. But breed one to a smooth-feathered chicken and you can get half healthy frizzle chicks, half smooth chicks. Or if you do have a full frizzle with brittle feathers, breed them to a smooth-feathered chicken and all their chicks will be healthy frizzles. The "x-factor" isn't "gone," but it is absolutely manageable.

I'm not going to breed the feathertails I got because the poor male has swim bladder problems that don't look likely to ever go away. I'm not messing with that. It's a shame, his sister is bright and alert as can be. She's even fairly friendly, she'll swim up next to my fingers when I pull out old IALs and she has her own little bubblenest going.

I'm not afraid of culling, and I do have a shop willing to take bettas off my hands; not really focusing on profit so I'm not really focusing on the market either. I don't have the slightest problem with adopting out unsuitable adults for the cost of shipping/pickup. I just want to see if it's possible to get a reasonably stable line of feathertails (preferably dumbo ones, but I'd let that go). Looks like it's back to trawling Aquabid.

Thanks for the well-wishes!


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