Breeding Bettas, Siamese Fighting Fish,  Part 8 – Tending to the Bubble Nest

This is the job of the male Betta and entails looking after the eggs while they hatch and then looking after the fry right up until they are free swimming (swimming horizontally and able to leave the nest). So once the male Betta has driven the female away after spawning or it becomes apparent that they have finished, you can then remove the female. Try and lure the female to the other end of the tank, away from the bubble nest and then carefully remove her, being careful not disturb the bubble nest at all.

The for the next few days it is all up to the male Betta to look after the bubble nest and how my two male Bettas performed this task were very different indeed. So firstly with my second spawn, it did mostly go to plan and most of what I’d learnt, I’ve documented in my article about Bubble Nests (next article) but this article is more about my first spawn and what I learnt from that.

Therefore my first spawn started off pretty much going to plan. The fry hatched after two days and there were quite a few tails dangling from the bottom of the nest. Now during this first spawn the male wasn’t kept as busy as the male in the second spawn, retrieving falling eggs and fry and I suppose that simply came down to the fact that there weren’t as many eggs but he was doing a good job maintaining the bubble nest anyway.

So by the end of the second day I decided to give him a feed as he hadn’t eaten for about three days. Now some breeders won’t feed the male at all until he’s removed from the tank as they believe that feeding him will encourage him to eat the fry as well. Others on the other hand believe that if you do feed him he won’t get hungry and this will stop him from eating the fry. Knowing what I know now after my second spawn I don’t think it matters. If the male is that way inclined he will probably do it antway, regardless of whether he’s hungry or not.

During my second spawn I didn’t feed the male at all. He was in the breeding tank for 6 days without eating and he was really, really busy. He was constantly collecting fallen eggs and fry day and night and his work ethic was second to none. In fact he really didn’t like being removed from the breeding tank after his job was done and thrashed around in his recovery tank like a crazy fish try to get back into the breeding tank as he felt his job just wasn’t finished.

After watching the work load of my second male I tend to think next time I’ll go for 10 cm water depth. During his time from spawning all the way through to tending to fallen eggs and fry he must have made 1000′s of trips to the bottom and back. So if it is a big spawn the male’s workload can be very high so decreasing the water depth can make a huge difference in reducing his work load.

Therefore getting back to the issue of Dad eating the fry, I tend to think that with the workload of this male and the fact that I didn’t feed him at all, he must have been hungry and yet he just kept doing his job and there was never an issue.

So this turned out to be a very good result. Unfortunately though this wasn’t the case with my first spawn as the story I’ll tell next is how it all started to go wrong through a series of bad decisions and once again, inexperience.

Once all the eggs had hatched it was easy to see there were quite a few fry hanging from the bottom of the bubble nest and the male had been doing quite a good job of looking after them. That night I decided to feed him and then left him happily tending to a bubble nest full of fry. The next morning though, when I returned most of the bubble nest had disappeared and there were only a few fry left. Straightaway I then suspected he’d been eating them so I removed him and then went searching for fry.

To my dismay though, I could only find about 10, and half of them were hanging around the inlet to the corner filter which I still had turned on. Now this is where inexperience starts to come into play and instead of turning the corner filter off (which should have been obvious) I elected to leave it on. Plus being inexperienced as to how much food to give them I decided that more would be better than less so rather than risk polluting the water with lots of uneaten food I decided it would be better to leave the filter on.

So, that was that, the male appeared to have eaten most of the fry and it appeared as if I only had a handful left. Therefore I left the breeding tank and went to contemplate what I had done wrong and what to do next.

A couple of hours later I then returned to see how many fry I could count and guess what? I couldn’t find a single fry, not one! I then looked around the corner filter and checked the inlets and inside I could see some small dark dots partially concealed by the filter wool. The conclusion was obvious, I just made another mistake by leaving the filter on and worse still it appeared as if the last of the fry had fallen victim to the filter.

I then searched the rest of the tank for quite some time but couldn’t spot one single fry, at all. It was then that the reality really hit me. In just a few hours I’d managed to wipe out all my fry with a series of mistakes I probably could have avoided if I done my research a little better and hadn’t been so quick to act.

I really did feel very disappointed so I went away to assess where I’d gone wrong. Firstly I shouldn’t have fed the male (as I said above, now after my second spawn I’m not sure if it would have made any difference but I won’t do it again in the future), secondly I shouldn’t have used a corner filter (I was advised to use a sponge filter but decided on the corner filter because I already had it) and thirdly I should have turned the corner filter off.

So the result was beyond question, my fry were all dead but for some reason I left the heater on and decided I’d check again in a few days to see if any had survived. Two days later I checked again and unfortunately I still couldn’t see even one. Therefore I decided to admit defeat. I turned off the heater and removed the Java Moss from the tank and then decided to siphon the water from the bottom of the tank.

The Bristlenose Catfish had left quite a bit of waste on the bottom as well so I started by siphoning this out first. Now as I got to the stage where I’d removed most of the waste and about half the water from the tank I then discovered one fry. One, single, solitary baby Betta fry………..all by himself. Well this was interesting, I was then faced with the decision of whether to raise this single fry or continue cleaning the tank and just start again from scratch.

Now I suppose I could have just placed him in a jar which might have been an interesting exercise but as it turned out what I was about to do was about to become very obvious. As I stood there contemplating my next move I then spotted another fry and then another. Eventually I then discovered that there was still about 10 fry  left in the breeding tank. All of a sudden with the Java Moss removed and most of the Catfish droppings removed it was much, much easier to spot the fry.

So the solution was then obvious. I then decided to replace all the water (along with the waste unfortunately) back into the tank as I figured that there was a fair chance that I’d also managed to siphon out quite a few fry as well. Plus, being late autumn, the water in the bucket was getting cold fast and the water temperature in the breeding tank had already dropped to 24 C (75 F) . Therefore, very gently, all the water got tipped back into the breeding tank again, the heater got turned back on and the Java Moss got returned as well.

Therefore this was an interesting lesson to learn. In just a few short minutes I’d gone from being disappointed with my first attempt at breeding Bettas to relief at having been given a second chance so I was very happy indeed, even if it was only 10 fry that had survived.

So now you’re probably wondering just how many fry had actually survived. Well initially my count was 10. After 1 week, I could then count about 20 and then after three weeks my tally then went up to about 30. So how many fry actually got siphoned into the bucket and then survived getting tipped back (ever so gently) in the breeding tank? Well I honestly don’t know and could only count 10 that were left in the breeding tank but you can bet there were probably a few more. Whether there was 30 in there I doubt it, so it appears as if some actually survived their journey, through the siphon hose, into the bucket and then back into the breeding tank and there is a fair chance that there were quite a few more that got siphoned and didn’t survive their round trip as well.

Therefore it makes sense that there were quite a few fry in the tank before I started siphoning it and they were difficult to see due to the java moss and the catfish waste.

So it then begs the question, did the male Betta actually start eating the fry or had the majority just left the Bubble Nest as they do naturally when they start free swimming and were they all just hiding in the java moss with some falling victim to the corner filter? In other words did Dad get falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit?

Well it’s hard to tell, but can I just say this. My second spawn I estimated had up to 350 eggs. Way more than the first and after the fry left the nest I could easily see quite a few of them swimming around. I couldn’t see 350 though, or even 100 but they were still there swimming around in small groups so it was obvious that quite a few either hadn’t hatched or there were a lot swimming in the java moss making them very difficult to see.

Therefore for all you new breeders thinking of taking up this hobby. Understand this right from the start. Newly hatched fry are very, very small and depending on your eyesight they may be hard to see or even invisible. So if you wear glasses make sure you’ve got them on and if you don’t it mightn’t hurt get a magnifying glass so you can see them more clearly.

The other interesting observation I discovered was this. My first Betta pair were not fully grown and were not as large in size as my second Betta pair which were more mature and what I observed was that the eggs from my second spawn did appear to be larger than the eggs from my first spawn so it stands to reason that the fry from my second spawn were larger. This of course is why they were much easier to see swimming around in the tank just after they left the nest. Therefore if your Betta parents are small in size then expect them to have smaller fry that can be very difficult to see. So it may be a case of just being patient and waiting for then to grow in size.

So my conclusion of what happened to the fry is this. I’m happy to give Dad the benefit of the doubt and say that initially my first spawn just didn’t have as many fry as my second, some of the fry fell victim to the corner filter and then quite a few fell victim to my incompetence with the siphon and bucket. As to whether I’d feed the male for my next spawn while he’s tending the Bubble Nest I tend to think not. After all when you find something that works once I think it’s best to stick with it, at least until you’ve tested it some more.

So just before we go any further here’s a point worth mentioning. You will have to leave a light on for the entire time the male is tending to the bubble nest because as I said he will be on duty day and night for the entire time. The second point I’d like to make is most references suggest a water depth in your Betta breeding tank of 10 to 15 cm (4 to 6 inches). I used 15 cm on both occasions as my theory was the more water the harder it would be to pollute, so therefore the water quality would be better. I will write about this some more but I tend to think with the workload of my second Betta male I’ll go for a water depth of just 10cm next time and then after the male is removed slowly add water over the next few weeks until the fry are larger enough to see well enough for siphoning to begin.

Breeding Bettas, Siamese Fighting Fish,  Part 9 – The Betta Bubble Nest

Possibly Related Posts:

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