Breeding Bettas, Siamese Fighting Fish,  Part 11 – Raising the Betta Fry

For me this is the fun part as it is enjoyable watching your Betta Fry grow and develop and eventually evolve from tiny dots that eventually form into the shape of an adult Betta. Having said that though it can become quite labor intensive if you let it as you are now their prime carer and how successful this stage becomes will be entirely up to you.

Therefore I tried to streamline this process as much as I could without taking shortcuts and as a consequence I had some wins and I had some losses so as I write this article my first spawn is now 9 weeks old and my second spawn is 6 weeks old. So how are they both going?

Well as you’ve probably already read I originally thought than none of my first spawn had survived but when I discovered they had, I could only count 10 fry. As they got larger though, they became easier to see and now I estimate that there are now about 45 healthy survivors. After the fry from my second spawn left the bubble nest they were larger in size than the first spawn and very much easier to see. In fact the bottom of the breeding tank was just covered in them. They were everywhere. At one stage I think I counted about 200 fry but they are quite difficult to count when moving around so I counted quickly and as a consequence you find you miss a few as you count so this is a conservative estimate.

Over the next 4 weeks though they did appear to slowly reduce in numbers and one morning after siphoning the bottom of the tank I counted about 150 fry. Now looking back now this reduction in numbers is probably normal as some fry will die naturally either because they are malformed, not very strong, don’t have a very good immune system or for whatever other reason. Nevertheless it is probably safe to assume that this is probably normal and just “natures way” so to speak.

Over the 4 week period though I had noticed that they were slowly getting less and for some reason didn’t quite seem to see it that way. In fact I started looking for reasons and then assumed that maybe the Mystery Snails were eating them during the night. Quite often I observed the snails moving along the bottom of the tank feeding like a bulldozer with the fry in many instances moving out of the way, just at the last moment. Therefore I assumed that maybe during the night the snails were running over the sleeping fry and some of the fry were falling victim to the snails.

As a consequence I started taking the snails out of a night and then placing them back in during the day. This didn’t seem to have any effect though and by week 4 I decided to remove the snails for a few days to see what would happen. Therefore the fry were then left in the tank all by themselves. Now this actually coincided with something else which was to play a part in what was about to happen next.

My original Microworm cultures were starting to get old and difficult to harvest from. I had started some new ones but for some reason they were taking forever to get going. Plus my brine shrimp eggs were getting old and the hatch rate was getting less and less so right about the time I removed the snails from the breeding tank my food resources were starting to go bad as well.

Therefore on the Saturday morning I cleaned the bottom of the tank and replaced about 30% of the water and then placed just one snail back in the tank. I then tried to feed the fry some Microworms but none were climbing the side of the container so I skimmed some from the top of the culture which included taking some of the mixture as well. There didn’t appear to be many microworms in this mix though so I then decided to feed them brine shrimp eggs that still hadn’t hatched.

So now I was in situation where I was under pressure to feed my hungry fry but my food sources were going bad and as a consequence I decided on that day that several smaller feeds would just have to do. The only problem was the quality of the food wasn’t very good so what the fry were getting were brine shrimp eggs that were past their “used by date” and microworms that contained more of the culture than the actual worms. Therefore you can probably guess where all this is heading.

Yes that’s right……..disaster. The next morning I came out to feed my fry and the first thing I noticed was there were noticeably less fry. In fact it was very noticeable. About 100 had perished overnight and now there were only 50 left. Unfortunately though that wasn’t the end of it. The next day there were only 10, the following day 6 and now for the last few weeks it has remained steady on 5. This was very disappointing indeed.

Now the interesting point was the first morning after the fry started to perish I siphoned the bottom of the tank, replaced most of the water and only found the remains of two fry. Out of the 100 missing fry nearly all the remains were missing. The mystery snail had cleaned the bottom of the tank and taken away any remaining signs of those fry.

So I suppose it begs the question, did the Mystery Snail devour 100 fry in one night? Well I tend to think it is unlikely. Fry will get out of the way of a feeding Mystery Snail and for this to occur in such a large scale, out of the blue, is not consistent. Plus the next night I lost about 40 fry and then 4 fry and then finally 1 fry and then it stopped. Also, my first spawn was also subject to 2 Mystery Snails and there hadn’t been a problem with any missing fry at all in that spawn.

Therefore the most obvious conclusion was that it was the quality of the food, combined maybe with overfeeding, (as they there were quite a few unhatched brine shrimp) that was the cause. So when it comes to food it is important to ensure that you plan ahead so as to avoid a situation similar to what I was faced with. To go from 150 fry to just 5 in a matter of a few days can be very disappointing especially if you’ve bred a pair of Bettas that you feel have potential to produce some interesting fry so hopefully I’ve given you some insight into how to avoid making some of the mistakes I did.

Next up I would like to write about fry food, how I eventually got it right and some interesting observations I made.

Breeding Bettas, Siamese Fighting Fish,  Part 12 – Feeding Your Betta Fry

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cleaning the Betta Fry Tank
• Breeding Crowntail Bettas
• Do Bettas Take Breaks While Spawning
• Breeding Bettas During the Cold Weather
• Microworms