# Interesting behaviour of eggy female



## thendeathsaid (Oct 3, 2013)

One of my females is really fat with eggs. There's an indian almond leaf at the bottom of her tank, and for the last two hours or so she's been wedging herself under it. Once in a while she'll just lie under it for up to 30 seconds, and when she emerges I can see that some eggs are on the bottom of the tank, which she then eats. 

Is wedging herself under the leaf and pressing against the tank floor her way of trying to squeeze the eggs out perhaps? Anyone see eggy females do stuff like this? 

Here's a video


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## thendeathsaid (Oct 3, 2013)

Okay now she's blown a tiny bubble nest and is putting the eggs up there! So cute (and kind of sad haha)


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## Optomist (Oct 22, 2014)

My female keeps trying to wrap my female killiefish.


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## thendeathsaid (Oct 3, 2013)

Pic spam coming. She built quite a good little bubblenest and put a lot of eggs in it!














































She's a lot less round now, of course, after getting all the eggs out. Poor thing! I wish I had the resources to breed her. And I'm also sad because I'm changing her water in a bit. Here's a video too


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

Awww, that's okay. Better her getting the eggs out than getting sick from holding them. They'll decay and pollute the water, too, if she doesn't eat them, so the water change is a good thing.


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

Oh, and I forgot to say. THOSE EGGS ARE STICKY. They get everywhere. They stick to everything. You'll probably have to clean your equipment after the water change is done. >.<


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## OpalBones (Apr 10, 2014)

Aww poor girl. She is really pretty, tho. Is she koi colored?


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## LittleBettaFish (Oct 2, 2010)

Some of the females have surprisingly strong maternal instincts. 

One of my wild betta females would routinely build her own small nest and poach fry/eggs from the male's nest. She tended to them as well as the male did, until he would come along and remove them back to the main nest. 

When you see this sort of behaviour, it makes me wonder if in the wild, there have been spawns raised solely by the female.


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## hrutan (Jun 25, 2014)

I know that some breeders have successfully raised spawns with the mother, when the father was a notorious egg-eater, dead, or otherwise unavailable. It makes sense, when you think about it.

From what I've read, in a wild setting the female would patrol in an extended radius, well out from the nest. If she was able to tend, and something ate the male, Mom would be able to step in and more fry would survive.


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## thendeathsaid (Oct 3, 2013)

Yes she's koi coloured. @LittleBettaFish that sounds so cute, them competing to raise the eggs. Do you have imbellis? I'm quite keen to get a few.


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## LittleBettaFish (Oct 2, 2010)

Nope I don't have imbellis. There are a couple of sellers with nice imbellis on AB. I got a pair of Betta stiktos from Pibk on there and they were really exceptional fish.


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## thendeathsaid (Oct 3, 2013)

Yeah, I've seen the ones on AB, but I haven't seen a female on offer yet. What's Pibk?

And the same female is already looking eggy again! She's not even in sight of any males, they're in a different room lol


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## Polkadot (Feb 10, 2013)

Ugh! This makes me glad I only keep male bettas.


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## thendeathsaid (Oct 3, 2013)

Okay she's gone back to trying to embrace the leaf and squeezing her own eggs out again. I find it really adorable!


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