# Flowerhorn Betta?



## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Random web surfing had me stumbling over these pictures of what's being called a flowerhorn betta. What the heck is this? That growth can't be healthy. There's also some where the growth is colored.


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## trilobite (May 18, 2011)

Lol those are culls with tumors....


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Why the heck are people advertising them like they're something special??? And how could anyone buy them? I thought it was photoshopped at first! Then I wondered how long they could possibly live with a growth on their poor little heads. One went for $60 on aquabid a few years ago! I know there's some bad practices in all animal breeding but this is absolutely ridiculous.


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## trilobite (May 18, 2011)

Fo the dough! A "rare" type with a fancy name is going to attract alot of buyers who dont know any better.
Its such a shame to see what people will do to increase the price tag on a betta, from encouraging/breeding for tumors, short bodies, finnage too heavy the poor thing cant even swim etc... all the way to the extreme where they cut off the back half of the fry to make "cute" shaped fish.. 
theres a lot of cruelty in this hobby thats for sure. All just to make a few extra dollars from the ignorant

...Id hate to think what became of the rest of the spawn who would have developed tumors on other parts of their body instead of the head...


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Cut off the back half of the fry?!?! What the heck is wrong with people??? And how could that be cute??? Healthy is cute. Mutilated is not cute. It scares me that a fish with a tumor on its poor little head could potentially sell well enough for bad breeders to try and make it a normal occurrence. 

When you look up "flowerhorn betta" a fair number of videos come up of flowerhorns eating and/or fighting bettas, so I assume the type of people who would breed bettas to have tumors would be the same type to make those awful videos.


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

They look like the flower horn cichlids ... Poor little fishies! No no no! Torturing an animal for profit is not right


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## kitkat67 (Mar 10, 2015)

sickening, like those keychain turtles in Asia


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

How in the heck did anyone even come up with the idea of putting a live animal in a tiny plastic bag like a keychain? You have to have some serious issues to think that's ok. It's like people sit around thinking about what new way they could come up with to torture animals. If you wouldn't do it to yourself, don't do it to an animal. Plain and simple. 

I also stumbled upon the "bullet betta" which essentially has a very short, fat body and no caudal fin. It's just straight up dorsal and a long anal fin. What's most disturbing is that there were people who saw this poor fish and wanted one. The ones that do have caudals don't look any better off than the ones that don't! They either look like a balloon with fins or have too much fin for the microscopic body!


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## kitkat67 (Mar 10, 2015)

oh, my God, is that where they cut the back half off???


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## trilobite (May 18, 2011)

Kitkat, yeah thats the one :-( Same thing happens with "heart" cichlids...Even when putting the cruelty factor aside, it just looks so horrible and trashy, no idea how anyone could think thats normal/cute/cool/worthy of $$$


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Ok seriously who decided cutting up fry was a good idea? Wouldn't that have a pretty high mortality rate anyway?


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## astrummortis (Aug 15, 2016)

And there goes my faith in humanity for the day. Time to get off the internet.


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## Klnkatie (May 22, 2016)

Ewww. I saw one of those "bullet" bettas and I thought it was a natural deformity someone was trying to make a buck on. I had no idea people actually cut them up. That's horrifying.


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## LittleMan (Jan 16, 2016)

Holy cannoli.
Geez sabrinha, good grief, where on earth did you find these pics?????
....and who the heck is selling these tortured betta???

So sad, truly animal cruelty. Just terrible.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

@LittleMan it was pretty much just bad luck! 

It started with looking for light colored plakats, then I found the California Betta Society and was looking at the pretty bettas on their Facebook page. Someone had posted a picture of one of the "Flowerhorn Bettas" and said people were actually trying to buy it. I thought it was photoshopped but did a quick search just to make sure. Nope. Not photoshopped. There was actually one that sold on aquabid a few years ago. I ended up on forums with people talking about them and a couple people mentioned "bullet bettas" so I had to see what that was. Now I know way too much about the dark side of betta breeding.

I also discovered that the bullet betta is easily achieved by breeding two double tails together apparently. The babies are then sold as a rare type of betta. It's horrible.


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

They aren't actually cutting the fish They look stunted, I doubt any fish would survive the mutilation needed t get that shape


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## LittleMan (Jan 16, 2016)

Eeeeewwwww it's all bizarre

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## Nova betta (Dec 5, 2014)

those bullet bettas really remind me of ranchu goldfish.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Another nickname for the Flowerhorn bettas is actually ranchu betta


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## Fenghuang (Dec 28, 2012)

I'm not sure if those "betta bullets" are the result of cutting the back end off of fry... Could be 50/50 mutilation or mutation/stunting, I think. But I know that is how they get "heart" blood parrot cichlids. They cut the caudals off of regular young BP and as they grow (if they survive... Fatally rate would be high, I suppose), the dorsal and anal fins can grow overlap and or even fuse together over the wound.

When I was younger, we got some juvies from an uncle. He was really excited to give them to us, thinking they were some really rare special species (what the LFS told him). Must have paid a lot for them too, but he didn't know any better. We ended up getting two BPs which were normal and kept them together. Thinking back now, the five which had their tails removed never quite thrived in comparison to the normal pair. They also had other physical issues (trouble eating because of malformed mouths, swim bladder issues, etc.), most likely from poor breeding. We had them for a few short years, but I think they would have lived longer had they not been purposefully put at such a disadvantage. 

Some people suck.


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## XTashX (Jan 7, 2016)

Some people are disgusting when it comes to animals. Half the reason why I am an animal (not a people) person.


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## Oceana (Jul 23, 2016)

well this is horrifying


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## oceanSpirit (Aug 24, 2016)

This is disgusting. Just like those two headed Arowanas that were floating around the internet


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

Wow... Poor bettas... Reminds me of a YouTube video series called "Adam ruins everything" and he talked about dog breeds and how inbred some breeds are. 

My friend's friend bought a dog from a breeder and she had to sign a contract that stated she won't breed the dog to any other dog except the breeder's dogs. If they find out, they'll charge her and/or neuter the dog. She paid $5000 for the dog too. It's pretty crazy what people will do to get a particular looking pet. 


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

mingking said:


> Wow... Poor bettas... Reminds me of a YouTube video series called "Adam ruins everything" and he talked about dog breeds and how inbred some breeds are.
> 
> My friend's friend bought a dog from a breeder and she had to sign a contract that stated she won't breed the dog to any other dog except the breeder's dogs. If they find out, they'll charge her and/or neuter the dog. She paid $5000 for the dog too. It's pretty crazy what people will do to get a particular looking pet.
> 
> ...



Personally I wouldn't have bought that dog... Any way. People do nasty things to living creatures to make a dollar, with dogs it's inbreeding, cropping and docking. Fish it's selling deformed, (horribly)inbred, diseased creatures as something special. We really need to get it through society's messed up views that animals aren't here for us to toy with, they aren't cruel experiments to make money on. If people would just STOP buying the poor animals the breeders would stop creating them


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## kitkat67 (Mar 10, 2015)

What really annoys me is that people buy like five half-dead bettas from Petco and try to treat them and then adopt them out. You are not rescuing them. You are just giving Petco more money and more incentive to keep stocking their fish and not give a damn about them. It's just a cycle that you are helping continue instead of stopping it.


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

I'm always at a dilemma with that idea, of saving animals from corporate or bad situations like puppy or kitty mills. On one hand, a life is saved. On the other, you're not stopping anything or really changing anything in the grand scheme of things. 

My city banned puppy sales in order to deter pet stores from buying from puppy mills. I think that's a good idea but we can't be sure if the puppy mills are going out of business or if they've taken their business elsewhere. But it's definitely a good step forward. 


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## MysticSky22301 (Apr 16, 2016)

I only buy healthy bettas from Petco, some of them actually do ok with their animals. It's just that so few big cooperation's care about quality it's really sad. I can't imagine a company founder who prided themselves on their work, walking into a store and seeing the conditions in many of the stores now! I would cry!


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## mingking (Mar 7, 2016)

I'm sure that was the initial idea, but once the money started pouring in... The idea changed unfortunately. 


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

I'm always torn about where to get a betta from. On one hand I want to help an animal in need, but on the other hand I don't want to support animal abuse. I also can't afford to buy a betta online since the shipping is killer. If the betta arrives dead not only would I be out the cost of shipping, but I would feel like I'm responsible for the death of the betta because I forced it through the mail. There doesn't seem to be a way to win. 

It's easier with dogs and cats because of shelters and rescue organizations. I will NEVER buy a cat or dog, only adopt. Sadly places like that very rarely take in fish. If I could head over to the SPCA to pick up a new betta my life would be set


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## Platy lover (Aug 25, 2016)

This is just sad... Reminds me of the tattooed, dyed, and scoliosis fish(balloon). My LBBS actually has around 9-10 healthy Bettas, so I'd be ok getting the sick ones. I wouldn't be ok getting any if it was 6-10 or less though.


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## lita43 (Jul 22, 2016)

That makes me sick cant imagne what that bettas has to go throug

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