This whole project started when a fellow MAS member and friend of mine, Scott Nordahl, offered me a pair of Betta tussaye. He had spawned them few times but the fry always died. Some batches lived as long as eight weeks. With other batches he had others problems such as the male eating the eggs, the eggs fungusing, or the eggs not hatching. We talked about various things that he could be doing wrong such as pH, hardness, water depth, and other factors but everything seemed OK.

Although I have spawned several Labyrinth fishes, I have only spawned one betta, the Betta splendens. He seemed to be doing everything right and I really thought it was probably just the pair (actually a trio, one male and two females) that they were not producing quality eggs and fry. He had been working with the fish for some time and was just getting sick of failing with them and thought he would give someone else a chance to succeed.

Scott was putting them in a local betta show and said that he would give me the pair after the show. It turned out that the female won best of show. I found out from him that both the male and female had won best of show and other awards at numerous shows. Great! Talk about putting the pressure on. Now I would be getting a pair of show winning fish that were having problems producing good fry. I was a little reluctant to even take them not knowing if I could keep them in good condition and get them to spawn.

I accepted the challenge, picked them up after the show, took them home, and put them in a 10-gallon tank about a third full of RO water. The pH was about 6.8 with general and carbonate hardness around 1? dH. I got out Linke's book, Labyrinth Fish, The Bubble-Nest Builders and was shocked to see that the Betta tussyae were found in waters with a pH value of around 3.62. The other thing I noticed was that they were found in water with a temperature of 75?F. I looked around on the web for information and found they did best in temperatures of around 70-72?F. I was keeping them around 78-79?F.

After a few days observing them, I noticed that the female had a big chunk out of her tail. I immediately put in a tank divider to separate them. When Scott the only thing I could tell him was, "not good". The female had a chunk out of her tail and had lost a lot of her color. But he had news for me. It seems that he had a few eggs from the pair that he had put in a dish. He left them in a cooler place and had one egg hatch and it was doing fine. He suggested that maybe I should try a cooler temperature. I told him what I had found out about them regarding temperature and that I was reducing the temperature slowly and was going to try to keep them around 72-73?F and see how things worked out. I was a little reluctant since the fish had been kept in warmer temperatures and didn't know how they would react. They had been doing so well for Scott at the higher temperatures but then again, he wasn't getting the fry to survive.

After a couple weeks of keeping them separated, reducing the temperature to around 72?F, and trying to get the pH lower, I removed the divider. The female seemed to have her color back but the tail was not completed grown back yet. I would keep a close eye on them.

During the first days he built a nest under half a styrofoam cup, and within a couple more days it looked like there were eggs in the nest. The eggs were there in the evening but when I looked in the morning, I couldn't see any. I must have been wrong and there really weren't any eggs. Nothing happen for the rest of the week so I decided that if there were really eggs and he ate them or even if there weren't eggs, nothing was happening so I would separate them for another couple of weeks and try again. Two weeks later, the same thing happens. One night I thought eggs in the nest and the next day nothing, not even the nest. I promised myself that the next time I would take the parents out when I thought I saw the eggs in the nest and see what happened.

After being separated for two weeks, he build a nest and a couple days later I thought I saw eggs in the nest again. I had a tank ready for the parents and took them out of the breeding tank and put them in the new tank. The next day I looked and there were still eggs in the nest. I wasn't crazy after all. There really were eggs the other times also. But, every day it looked like there were fewer and fewer eggs in the nest and I wasn't seeing any sign of fry. I started out with what I would guess to be about 24 eggs in the nest. When all the eggs were gone, I found a fry hanging on the side of the glass.

I found a couple of more fry in a few days. They looked smaller than what Scott had suggested so I started feeding them APR and vinegar eels. Scott had fed them newly hatched baby brine shrimp from the start but I thought they looked too small but did put in some baby brine shrimp also. In a week or so I was able to count 7 fry. I am not sure where the newly hatched fry were hiding but since the only thing in the tank was a sponge filter, I am assuming that they were hanging in, under or on the filter and I was not able to see them. By about the fifth or sixth week, there were 13 fry.

The adults are not heavy eaters and the fry did not appear to be heavy eaters either. However, around the sixth or seventh week, the fry looked like they were eating quit a lot. I added black worms to their diet (I feed the adults black worms, frozen brine shrimp and when available glass worms). The fry seemed to grow slowly at first but started growing faster about the same time their appetites increased.

I wasn't working with the parents and was more concerned with the fry. I assumed that the parents were either not spawning or if they had built a nest and spawned, that he had probably eaten the eggs. However, when I was cleaning their tank (about eight weeks after I removed the parents to their new home), I moved a clump of Java Moss and noticed a fairly large juvenile only slightly smaller than the ones in the other tank. It looks like they were still spawning and still eating the eggs since there was only the one juvenile. Maybe others pairs take better care of the eggs and fry, but as for this pair, it appears that he can't tell the good eggs from the bad.

Now after 12 weeks, I BAPPED 4 fry at the February MAS meeting. And, thanks to Scott, my experiences with the Betta tussyae were successful.