# King Bettas



## OzarksLady (Jun 6, 2011)

I went to PetCo yesterday to buy some supplies for my two boys. No I didn't come home with more Bettas but did see some King Bettas. My stars and garters those boys are huge! They had a $12.95 price tag on them.


----------



## Nexangelus (Apr 29, 2011)

OzarksLady said:


> I went to PetCo yesterday to buy some supplies for my two boys. No I didn't come home with more Bettas but did see some King Bettas. My stars and garters those boys are huge! They had a $12.95 price tag on them.


I have yet to see a king betta in person. I've remained loyal to the LFS I work at and have never set food in a PetCo or PetSmart, but I'm seriously re-considering that given our limited (good quality, but limited) selection of bettas. 

Obviously these companies don't stand for high quality fish, but are they well maintained in these kinds of establishments? What kinds of bettas do they generally stock? 

I admire you for not buying a betta while you were there. Wish I had that kind of willpower!


----------



## Tisia (Mar 15, 2011)

kings always look way too big in those tiny cups. I think kings are generally like half giants, the actual giant bettas are even bigger



Nexangelus said:


> I have yet to see a king betta in person. I've remained loyal to the LFS I work at and have never set food in a PetCo or PetSmart, but I'm seriously re-considering that given our limited (good quality, but limited) selection of bettas.
> 
> Obviously these companies don't stand for high quality fish, but are they well maintained in these kinds of establishments? What kinds of bettas do they generally stock?
> 
> I admire you for not buying a betta while you were there. Wish I had that kind of willpower!


maintenance generally varies store to store. petsmarts in my area are much worse about betta care than petcos, but I know some people have mentioned the opposite about the stores in their area. petsmart is generally more limited in their stock, I've only seen VTs and CTs, though some people have mentioned they've heard of dragon and HM tags showing up at petsmart. Petco generally carries a much wider selection of tail types


----------



## OzarksLady (Jun 6, 2011)

The store I was in is located in Mesquite Texas. The fish looked pretty good. I did find one dead one. But the water was pretty clean and the fish looked lively.


----------



## MaggieLynn (Jun 24, 2011)

whenever i am in petco me and my bf check out the bettas and the king always scare me for some reason.


----------



## MikiMaki (Jun 23, 2011)

I read an article about them and how Petco isn't naming its source for them so we'll never know truly what kind of betta it is, but the speculation is that they're just plakats selectively breed to be big. That was just one article though.


----------



## plad556 (May 14, 2011)

You can go to petco.com and buy kin bettas on there but shipping for me was 30 and i did not have that


----------



## BlueEyedBettaBoy (Jun 17, 2011)

Petco generally takes better care of their bettas than petsmart. Petsmart and walmart also use that blue water while most petcos (if not all) have a spout of room temperature water and do frequent water changes. Again, it varies store to store. At my Petco we carry half-moons, deltas, double tails, veil tails and crown tails. Only ct and vt females. I just recently heard from a groomer in another store mentioned seeing a plaket but he wasnt the best looking.


----------



## TonyK (Apr 4, 2011)

Kings are a Plakat. I really like them but, I prefer short tail Bettas. I did pick up King this past Tuesday from Petco. I was there last Sunday and saw the one I picked and another King that hadd a blu body with an orange head. I should have just got them both on Sunday. I wanted the orange male too but, he wasn't there. I hope he went to a good home.


----------



## Thunderloon (Feb 6, 2011)

Kings aren't plakat, they're round-tail and mixed halfmoon-DT.

I've got an odd boy, he's a pygmy king. He's wide and powerful but not much bigger than a standard roundtail. The difference is he eats fourteen pellets a day and doesn't gain weight.

He's got a halfmoon's topfin, its huge.

Its within the genome of many of them to become larger, so they're just bred for size.


----------



## TonyK (Apr 4, 2011)

What is a Plakat? I look on Aquabid and the Fighting Plakats look just like the Kings.​ 





Thunderloon said:


> Kings aren't plakat, they're round-tail and mixed halfmoon-DT.
> 
> I've got an odd boy, he's a pygmy king. He's wide and powerful but not much bigger than a standard roundtail. The difference is he eats fourteen pellets a day and doesn't gain weight.
> 
> ...


----------



## 1fish2fish (Sep 10, 2009)

Thunderloon said:


> Kings aren't plakat, they're round-tail and mixed halfmoon-DT.


Uhhh.. what? Where are you getting this from?


----------



## Thunderloon (Feb 6, 2011)

Petco's breeder was trying to make giant Halfmoons, their Halfmoon strains are tainted with DT. My boy Sherbert was a HM(DT), he had a dimple and two main caudials that were all part of one fin, the structure was clearly DT while the result reached 205° spread with a 26° rearward slope of elliptical form.

So Petco's supplier was trying to sell HM Kings for a while but they weren't HM and they had to have "half moon" described to them. They no longer list them in the store. They wanted $43.00 for em.

My Kingsley's top fin is huge, but not the standard fin of round-tails or Plakats. So while there may be some Plakat in him someplace, his direct lineage isn't Plakat, its a deep breeding program that has some of just about everything but VT/Dvt in it.

If you notice in most the pictures of the plakat the tail rises up at the rear and the top fin is very stiff. I don't see many kings with stiff top fins.

Vegetable stew with beef isn't beef soup. The Kings aren't Plakat, they're Kings. Kingsley was in my sorority when he was young and even though he was bigger than all but Cherries, he didn't attack a single girl, I had to take him out because the girls kept throwing fits and chasing him. A plakat would have eaten the whole tank... He puts on a big flaring show but when I wave my CT-on-a-stick at him he hides.

So what we have from Petco is Betta Muttus that breed true to a larger size and are called Kings. 


There's another breeder that my LFS gets some kings from... hell I had one girl I named Blue-too who was the largest female I've ever owned. She was over 2cm tall, 7cm long and still only about 13mm wide. I got Blue-too from my LFS and the breeder he uses still sends fish that are very large. Shame is they're also ugly blech colors. Didn't have a useable camera back then, wish I had.

So what we have at Petco is a low/non-plakat "King" that are a result of independent breeding.

Kingsley's top fin, as do most the Kings at petco's, sweeps back and not directly up when flared.


----------



## 1fish2fish (Sep 10, 2009)

Again huh?? Your basing your information on conjecture and the fish you've owned..

Just because Kings are mixed doesn't make them not pk. If they have short fins they are pk.. Simple as that. If I mix CT with VT with DT and decide to call them seahorses it doesn't change what they express phenotypically. So if my seahorses have significantly reduced webbing they are CT no matter what is in their background.

It sounds like the one you had was a poor example. I've owned and seen some very nice king pk.


----------

