I transferred my lovely (and dependable!) pair of burdigala into their new home, and of course they started cuddling right away. I got a spawn later that day and collected them for artificial hatching. I love these guys!

I also just put together a couple of new spawns (CTPKs and red traditional PKs) so fingers crossed!

I'm very happy with how these guys are turning out. For a while I thought that I had all females, but after they've been jarred for a couple of weeks, they make the change lol. 

I am *very* happy with this female turned male! I thought she was a really great female until he starting building nests and became very aggressive. I hope that the anal fin stays short. The curve of the body is powerful, although the caudal peduncle (as all my CTPKs are) could be stronger. I have several more females" in the grow-out that are this same shade of blue (in addition to the other male I jarred and photographed earlier). I hope to preserve this color for the future!

A bucketful of burdigala! About 40 young ones in the 20 gallon grow-out now. I combined about 30 that were artificially hatched with another dozen that were raised by the parents. Interestingly, the artificially hatched burdigala are VERY friendly - they come right up to the front and beg for food. The ones that were raised by the parents are shy, although not as shy as the parents. Luckily I caught them with a bunch of eggs in the film canister, so hopefully I have another big batch of artificially hatched ones on the way. These guys range from about a cm to 3-4 cm - not ready for new homes just yet! Although they are already fighting! Little stinks.

Set up a new 2.5 gallon "grow-out" for my little ones! I had no idea I had so many Heterandria formosa and baby Elassoma. A little green in the water but I think that really helps the tiny fry. The H. formosa were hilarious - lots of sparring with the new territory!! I am hoping that co-habitating the friendly formosa with the reserved Elassoma will encourage the pygmy sunfish to come out of hiding. The juvenile Elassoma already seem to be much braver with the formosa out in the open, and were begging for food with them today. The adults are nowhere to be seen haha.

I need to jar quite a few bettas in the near future, so my back-up breeders need to go :( Here are a couple that I am offering for sale:

Beautiful black traditional plakat all the way from Italy. Bred by Andrea Topo Quierolo. He was in several US shows this past fall and has at least one BOV Shortfin Male under his belt. I think also another first place in the competitive traditional plakat class. No female to go with him though, I want to keep the females I brought back. He is on the smaller side (right at 1.5") and will need a smaller female. He also doesn't like freeze-dried tubifex and will only eat pellets or live food. Asking $20. Will ship.

I've been incredibly lazy posting lately lol! Sorry for the neglect of this site. I've been meaning to take pictures of my up and coming bettas for a while. I admit to neglecting them a bit, so they are still small despite their age. However, my fish tend to live very long and virile lives, and eventually get huge, so I'm not bothered at all by their slow growth rate :)

Here are a couple males from Spawn 031814