I'm really excited to be giving a talk down at COAST in LA in a couple of weeks! You should hop on by if you're in the area. I'd love to meet you!

Corny biography that I had to write ;) :
Gianne Souza is a graduate student studying biomedical sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Her innate interest in genetics combined with a childhood love of fishkeeping led to the start of a fascinating betta-breeding journey. Although only seriously breeding bettas for show since moving to San Francisco in 2011, the close proximity and support of the California Betta Society  (www.cbsbettas.org) allowed her to quickly expand this newfound hobby.

Gianne is currently serving as the president of CBS and is also a certified judge for the International Betta Congress (http://ibcbettas.org/2012). She will share her experience line breeding Betta splendens for show. More information on her exploits can be found at ingloriousbettas (www.ingloriousbettas.weebly.com)

I finally got up off my butt and wrote up the CBS Fall 2014 IBC show report. It can be found in the Show Reports section.

Happy Holidays everyone! Sorry for the long absence. I still have to put up the CBS fall show report >,< I also neglected my last two spawns and got very low survival rates and no ventrals in one of them.  I will have to re-do them once I get back from winter break. Unfortunately, occasionally burning out in a hobby (especially one as demanding as fish keeping) is a regular occurrence that happens to all hobbyists. There is no shame in admitting it!

I am also thinking of cutting back further to just working with metallic crowntail plakats. This is a really exciting new form for me and has a long way to go. Their popularity is skyrocketing in the European show circuits, and my goal is to eventually make them competitive with other forms here in the US. Many thanks again to Jamie King for giving me my starter stock! It will be difficult to let go of my red and yellow traditional PKs, but I think working with only one form and color is the best thing for me to do right now.

Lastly, I am also introducing Google adsense onto this site. We'll see if the ads are too distracting or not. Times may be getting a little lean in the future while hunting for new job prospects, so every little bit will help. Along the same lines, California Betta Society lost quite a bit of money on our last show. We will be exploring fundraising options in the near future to help kick start our next show!

Check out the Show Reports section for the latest and greatest in the betta show world! The 2014 IBC Convention was a complete blast and I was very sad to see all of my wonderful betta friends leave. Until next time!

The IBC Convention is setting up today! Some of out attendees are out enjoying the Monterey Bay Aquarium, while others are setting up the masses of beanies and fish. There are 536 show entries!! Excited for this big show to start!

I forgot to post in the blog that I re-worked the Show section on this site to include a "How to send bettas to a show" page. I am absolutely thrilled with the number of new breeders starting to show this year! After answering so many questions on how to send fish to a show on facebook, I decided to take matters into my own hands and create a centralized location containing all the steps that I go through when sending a fish to a show. I hope this proves helpful to many people, and smooths the process of sending in those first precious bettas!!

Check out the new page in the Showing Bettas section!

I had a really wonderful time apprentice judging down at the Golden State Bettas show! Check out the full show report in the Show Reports section!

I'm really excited to work with these fish!! Some of these are also Larissa's (near the end). A pair of CTPKs are already in the spawn tank...hopefully they spawn soon :) I also built a simple light box which really helped improve the quality of my photos (especially with the blacks).

Jamie is a really wonderful breeder and betta friend. I was very glad to meet him and to also have some wonderful conversations with him!