Sharing your bettas with your friends ensures that if something catastrophic were ever to happen to your fishroom, there is likely to be some related fish out there that you can recover. It's also so exciting to see related fish show up at the shows and say, I know where that one came from! Sharing bettas with other hobbyists is a huge part of why the hobby is so much fun!
My dear betta friend Stacy F. took some amazing photos of her new babies :) They just recently had a successful spawn! I love it when I can be a betta grandma! With her permission I am posting her amazing photos. The blue female is the female that I spawned most recently. The male also sired a spawn at Yvonne C.'s house before being sent over to Stacy's. The copper female is the female that Stacy used.
Sharing your bettas with your friends ensures that if something catastrophic were ever to happen to your fishroom, there is likely to be some related fish out there that you can recover. It's also so exciting to see related fish show up at the shows and say, I know where that one came from! Sharing bettas with other hobbyists is a huge part of why the hobby is so much fun!
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San Francisco has been insanely dry the past couple of years, due to an incredibly severe drought. I hope that changes soon! This past January was the first in a hundred years to have ZERO rainfall. My friends started calling it "June-uary" because of the beautiful sunny days.
Despite the bonus of being able to walk around in a T-shirt, I held off setting up spawns until a storm front was guaranteed. Luckily, a low pressure wave hit a couple of days ago, and I set up two pairs of CTPKs. Both of them spawned within 24 hours, and the males seem to be caring for the eggs and fry. I'm always a little nervous when the males are in charge (a fact that spans both fish and humans....) I spawned in glass tanks this time, so I was able to take some good pictures. Hopefully I can create spawn logs once they hit free-swimming in the next couple of days. 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. Spawn CTPK color 031814 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!
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 I'm pretty sad that it appears my first spawn of black traditionals got eaten up by the CTPKs...this time I am going to make sure that they have their own tank! At least until they are much larger and can fend for themselves. I wonder if they are slower growing? I am hoping that this spawn (Spawn 072914) is successful! I will be using a different female this time, a (not-so-little!) spitfire by Andrea Topo Queirolo (Italy). She has a looong body, and a caudal that opens to 180 (although not in this photo) with only primary branching. Although there is a large gap between her caudal and dorsal, and her caudal peduncle could be stronger, I love her long appearance. I personally like the look of traditional PKs with a longer, snakier body than the more stout show PKs, but it is listed as a minor/major fault in the IBC standards that traditional PKs should not have too long of a body and resemble their wild counterparts. Sometimes I breed to the standard, sometimes I don't! It's all about what you want to accomplish!
Sorry for the long suspension in activity! Lots of life issues going on, plus gearing up for the IBC Convention! Hopefully I will return with a full show report to share with you all. I am also playing with the idea of moving to a new place...however the prospect of packing up all the fish and tanks is kinda freaking me out. I'm currently in the process of going through my possessions and throwing out superfluous items. Add to that the RIDICULOUS rent prices in San Francisco and Berkeley, and it's going to be a tough call. We'll see what happens!
One of the juveniles from Spawn 020114 has some interesting webbing reduction. It almost looks like a young CTPK! Hopefully the edges get smoother. Sometimes the growing rays project out past the edge of the membrane, but eventually become even once the juvenile matures. This crowning looks rather prominent though. Sorry it took a while for me to update! I have two new spawn logs to share. Both spawned on 4-20, so I have "high" expectations for these two! Click on the green links to their spawn logs which have much more detailed information. Very excited for the outcome of this spawn! There is even a chance of CTDTPKs :D
Indian Almond Leaves = Less Water Changes? Due to the extreme drought in California, I decided to take a tip from my awesome betta friends Larissa and Minh and try to use a lot of IAL to extend the time between water changes. My fish seem to thrive in these conditions - lots of bubblenests, flaring, and egging up! Our extremely soft SF water (negligible kH and gH) allows the pH to plummet to <5 with the addition of IALs, and supposedly the low pH binds the ammonium into a non-toxic form. It also effectively sterilizes the water. Few fish are able to withstand these extreme conditions, but this is exactly the habitat that most bettas hail from. So far, I haven't done water changes in 2 weeks and the fish are doing great!
I decided to create some IAL extract to ease the transition during water changes. The idea is that I can take a small amount of super concentrated extract and add it to the new water, immediately lowering the pH and preventing pH shock. I read several articles on IAL (I will do a short literature review of them in the future - very interesting research being done!) and decided to both boil and water extract the IAL. I boiled a ton of IAL leaves in a stainless steel pot for about 4 hours, replacing the evaporated water every time it got half empty. This way, the water became almost black. I got out about a gallon of black water. I then sealed it in a jar with even more freshly ground up IAL added to it, to extract further the compounds that may be damaged by boiling. (I do not think that boiling disturbs the extract's ability to lower pH). I tested it out when I did a small water change on some of the fry, and it really colored the water up well with only a very small amount. I was able to match the color of the spawn tank water very easily. I need a better way of measuring pH to ensure that the extract is able to drop the pH as well. Hope you're having a betta day! |
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