# My breeding bettas were interrupted



## gabrielle09 (Jan 23, 2012)

Okay so I got called into work today and I've had my bettas in the same tank since last night hoping to get them to breed. I've checked them every half an hour to make sure that things were going smoothly and this morning my male attempted an embrace about four times that I had watched. I had read that sometimes males can fail at the embrace the first couple times so I decided to keep them together a little longer since there were no eggs yet and they were still responding to each other. After I left for work I asked my boyfriend to go into our room and check on the bettas to make sure they were still okay and I guess he decided to move my male into my soroity tank. OMG!!!! My question is what do I do? The pair was in the middle of mating do I have to start all over again? My boyfriend says he doesn't think there are any eggs in the bubblenest but if there are do I put the male back in the tank to take care of them? Will he look after them now that he has been removed from the process? And if there are no eggs will putting him back in the tank with the female be a bad idea or will they be able to pick up where they left off? Also I am really concerned about my male being in my soroity tank and I told my boyfriend to remove him right away he is a very aggressive crowntail and I have some very aggressive females in the tank and I'm afraid they will attack him or vice versa. My boyfriend says that so far everyone is leaving my crowntail alone so he is not going to take him out of my soroity tank ahhhhhh I really want to go home and rescue my babies!! And no the females don't fight amongst themselves...they love each other. It's very cute to watch them bonding. They are in a densly planted tank with three mollies and a platy and they all get along so well I was quite surprised because I read if the betta females were not related they would not like each other.  Anyway back to the main issue what do I do about my breeding pair and a boyfriend who is not fish savvy...I may get him to walk the plank and swim with the fishes lol


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## tpocicat (Aug 8, 2011)

Since I've never had this happen, I don't really know what you should do. If it happened to me, I suppose I would try and put the male back with the female and see if they would continue to get along as before. If they start to fight, you could start all over again with conditioning them.
Do your best to teach your non-fish BF about fish care, especially betta care.


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## gabrielle09 (Jan 23, 2012)

Thanks a lot I'll try that and hope it ends up okay.


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## tpocicat (Aug 8, 2011)

You're welcome. I once had a male in my sorority tank by accident. I bought a blue/white marble HM "female" on Aquabid. Turned out to be a male PK! All went well until he bred with one of my females, of course I took him out as soon as I found out, nothing I could do about the eggs since they were in my soroity tank.


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## gabrielle09 (Jan 23, 2012)

Yes I had a similar thing happen when I ordered two halfmoon females from Thailand. I had them in the same tank with a divider and the one girl got her mating stripes. Turns out that I received one female and a very young male. I still don't know what to name him since he is no longer a girl.


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## fraviz (Jan 29, 2012)

Is this considered a 'blue balls" Betta????  just kidding... hope you can educate your man....


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## gabrielle09 (Jan 23, 2012)

Well I tried putting the bettas back together after they had been separated and it was not a good idea. Perhaps it will work with other fish that are not so temperamental but definately did not work with my crowntail. My male became extremely aggressive towards my female so they had to be separated. A whole month's worth of work conditioning them and now I have to go back to the drawing board sigh. Thanks for the advice though it was much appreciated.


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## BettaBreeder (Jan 26, 2012)

Did you check for eggs in the bubble nest? It could be that they were done spawning and that now he's trying to protect the eggs from the female...

Just a thought.


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## gabrielle09 (Jan 23, 2012)

Yes I checked for that right before I pulled the female out. When I checked on them the bubblenest had holes in it and was broken into pieces. It had been a huge thick thing before but no longer so I figured I would start over.


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## BettaBreeder (Jan 26, 2012)

Aww, too bad. I've been trying to breed some, (my first time) but so far my efforts have failed...I'm re-conditioning mine now and will try again in a couple weeks. 

Wish you luck with your next try!


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## gabrielle09 (Jan 23, 2012)

Thanks for the good wishes. It's my first time breeding them too. This was my third try. I'm hoping my fourth will bring better results. I already have patient buyers waiting for the babies. Thank goodness I have friends that are willing to wait. Good luck to you too I hope your breeding goes well.


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## BettaBreeder (Jan 26, 2012)

Haha, sounds about like my situation.  Minus the buyers...but I'm sure I'll be able to get them. It sure has taken a lot of research! I thought Betta breeding was "easy".


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## gabrielle09 (Jan 23, 2012)

Yes that was what I was told but the person who told me has done it before numerous times and says that I won't be good at it until I've been doing it for 10 years or more. Why couldn't bettas be more like guppies? You just throw them in a tank and let them go to town lol  I guess if bettas were more like guppies it would take all the fun out of having them. I love their simplistic complexity. My favourite ones right now are my halfmoons their fins are gorgeous. I also love my dragonscale plakat. They were jems I found at the petstore.


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## gabrielle09 (Jan 23, 2012)

Oh sorry I spelled gems wrong...I have a betta female I named Jem after Jem and the Holograms. You gotta love Teletoon Retro LOL


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## BettaBreeder (Jan 26, 2012)

Haha, yeah 10 years! Well I've had about 10 years of fish keeping experience, does that count? 

Yeah halfmoons are really pretty! I want to get those next, I figured I'd start out with some "cheaper" ones first. The ones I have are in my avatar.


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## Oldfishlady (Mar 1, 2010)

If you conditioned them properly to start-you shouldn't need to wait but about 3 days to try again....I would separate them both to small containers-neither in the spawning tank and feed really good for 3 days-allowing them to see each other for about 5min each day-then add the male back to the spawning tank after a 50% water change-temp 80F-then add the female to the spawning tank in a separate container-release her after a few hours if they are responding to each other-male dancing for her and starting a nest and the female trying to get out to follow him in a head down position...

Good luck....


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## gabrielle09 (Jan 23, 2012)

Thanks for that advice oldfishlady it's much appreciated and I like the fish in your avatar bettabreeder are those the only ones you have or do you have more? The halfmoon in my avatar is one of 13 that I own and still counting, I love bettas, I can't resist going into a petstore without buying one. The only bad thing about that is that the petstore bettas don't make good breeders. Has anyone ever ordered anything from aquabid? I'm a bit leary to order online without actually seeing the fish in person. And if you have used aquabid how healthy were the fish that you recieved? And is there a better place to order fish from besides aquabid?


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## BettaBreeder (Jan 26, 2012)

Yes those are the only Bettas I currently have, I had a pink pair, but they both died (separate times) last year. I would like to have more, but I don't have the room for another pair right now. I'll probably end up selling these after they spawn....if they ever do.  And getting either more of these or a different kind of fish to raise. I really like Angelfish and Discus, but I know they are even harder to raise.

Thanks for the advice OldFishLady, I'll see about trying that.


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## tpocicat (Aug 8, 2011)

I'm so sorry. Breeding bettas can be very frustrating sometimes.


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## BettaBreeder (Jan 26, 2012)

Yes I know it can!  Like right now, I really wish I could put my female in with my male in the raising tank, because he has the biggest bubble nest I've ever seen! Imagine a ten gallon tank with a divider in the center and then half of one of the sections has a bubble nest about half of the size of that! So it's about a quarter the size of the whole tank.  I put the female into a cup floating in the males side of the tank, to see what would happen, but all I saw was the male flaring at her every few seconds (and then he goes back to making his nest) and the female darkened in color and you could see lengthwise stripes on her for a few minutes (not vertical though).

She appears to be basically ignoring the male...so I'm not sure what I'll do.


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## tpocicat (Aug 8, 2011)

Horizontal stripes usually mean the betta is stressed. She just may need a little more time.


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