Any betta lovers?

Hi everyone,

So besides horses, I love aquarium fish! Recently I have embarked on a new journey lol I am attempting to breed my bettas.

I have a marbled/butterfly blue plakat that I am crossing with my marbled lavender/pastel female veiltail.

This is my male, he actually has much more white marbling than the picture shows (darn flash).


And this is the closest picture I could on the web of what my female looks like . . . (I can't find my camera)



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Anyone else a betta enthusiast?

I love bettas! I used to have them. Not sure why I didn't get any more, I definitely would buy some again!

I've been keeping bettas for about 7 years. I currently have four... a 4+ year old huge female that refuses to accept that bettas are solitary creatures and schools with my tetra's and three females that live together and don't look or act like bettas at all really. I bought them as fry hoping they would color up but they're all brown with tails tinted with another color.

Here's the first(her head it black due to previous injury)

And two of the other three

That's very cool that you have a 4+ year-old betta!

I had one like her that lived 3 years in a 10g named Peaches who lived with five other females. She was tank! But not aggressive at all - liked to live in a community

I think females are my favorite actually, more personality lol

I am glad more people prefer females. I would rather have them than males.
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I've been keeping betas for about 6 years. My first died a few years ago due to (what I would assume is old age?) and I recently bought a new male to take away to university with me this year.

I've never thought about getting females as pet stores usually only sell males because of their colours.

Where did you buy your females?

I currently have a pair of Betta albimarginata:
Male:


Female:


Awhile back I was obsessed with bettas and had a few imported from Thailand:




I had a few "regular" bettas from local pet stores and such:



I also had a bunch of females I kept in a "sorority" but really don't recommend it be attempted in most cases. Here was the tank:


At one point, I had around 14 tanks running. Now I only have three: the 29g that the Albis are in (plus a few corydoras, some checker barbs and some rasboras), a 20g long that has "micro fish" (a few rasbora species, celestial pearl danios, corydoras habrosus) and then a 75g African mbuna (cichlids) tank.

Places like Petco/Petsmart do sell females but, like with males, there is A LOT of misinformation out there about them.

In most situations I don't recommend keeping females together but the pet store will tell you it's fine. Females can be just as feisty as males. I have attempted sorority tanks (all female tanks) but it needs to be a long tank with lots of room for territory and should be cluttered with plants and decor to allow a lot of hiding spaces. Females ideally should be added all at once after a fishless cycle... just about anything can upset the delicate balance of everyone getting along, unfortunately.

Females can also be quite comfortable. Here are a few of mine from Thailand:

I used to breed betas too! I only have one male betta now and a large aquarium of oranda goldfish. I don't really have the space or additional time to breed them anymore :(.

I have three! I don't have the best of luck with them...but I do love them. I seem to fight with fin issues constantly despite regular water changes. I've had one for 9 months now, and I noticed today he's doing funky things....I'm not sure what's wrong. Poor boy. He's a funny creature, always sitting in the plant box in the bottom of his tank and coming out for dinner. I hope I can figure out what is up with him to help him out. He's a red and white halfmoon (with a stumpy tail because he chews on it), and blue/purpley rose tail guy, and a blue butterfly big ear boy too. The big ear has fin rot starting, the rose tails fins look scraggly and the red one has his stumpy tail and whatever is going on with him. :s I wish I had better luck because I just love them.

Beautiful fish everyone!!