Betta (Siamese Fighting Fish) Spawning:

I do love my tropical fish and one of my favourite species is Betta Fish, also known as Siamese Fighting Fish. They normally have beautiful colours. The photo above is of one off my males.

I love this particular fish and wanted to breed with it.

The Betta's have a very interesting breeding ritual. First the male will chase the female, quite aggressively, but further in the process, they embrace lovingly, while the female spawn and the male fertilise the eggs. The video shows this process.

As the eggs drops from the female, the male and sometimes the female as well will chase after the eggs, collecting them in their mouths and then continue to deposit them in the bubble nest, which the male built previously.

After all the eggs are laid, the male chases the the female away and tend to the eggs and later the tiny fry. When fry drops from the nest, he will fetch them and put them back in the nest.

When the fry is free swimming it is best to remove the male, to make sure he does not eat them.

Because they are so tiny, I feed them micro worms (in this case Walter Worms) and boiled egg yolk, that is pressed fine and suspended in water.

In the last video you can see a tiny fish eating.

The spawning took place on the 8th of August and the video off the fry eating was taken today (27 Aug 2024). It takes about 2 days for the eggs to hatch, thus this baby is 17 days old.