Today I went out and bought 2 bettas, a male and a female, my first time ever seeing a female betta. I was wondering how old do they have to be to breed them? The female looks so tiny compared to the male but thats how they all looked. The female is around _______ and the male (just his body) is around ______________, give or take a couple _. Is that a normal size difference or is the female a baby still?

What size tank would be good to try to breed them in? I just bought a 5.5 gal, is that good? Does anyone have pics of what your breeding tanks look like so I can get an idea of what should all be in there? You can just tell me but I would like to see some pics anyway

I used to have a betta years ago and thinking back now I realize that I knew nothing about them

for breeding you will need a large growing on tank to raise the young and lots of beanie boxes, or similar, to keep the males in while growing their fins. is it a veiltail you have as i have heard that home grown veils arent easy to get rid of and you need to find somewhere to sell the young on to. just a couple of points i thought you might like to know. if you do decide to go ahead i wish you luck as its fascinating watching the breeding behaviour.

I actually have no idea what kind I have now. The pet store that I went to today only had this kind though. He looks like the ones that pet stores always have tons of. I'll go see if I can find one that looks like him online and find out what he is.

Oh and I have quite a few of those boxes and bowls and things like that to put the babies in. How many eggs, on average, does the female lay?

Yup thats what mine is, a veil tail.

OK well my female died . I have no clue what happened, she was fine last night and when I woke up this morning she was dead. She was beautiful too, a white body and bright red fins.

I wasn't ready to breed them yet anyway but it still would of been nice if I could of had her live long enough to try.

Aw, I am sorry your female betta died. Sometimes the stress of the move is just too much for them, or they were sick before you bought them.

Yesterday morning my mom went out and bought me 2 more females. I really hope these ones live, for some reason Im having really bad luck with bettas. I've had 2 die within 2 days of getting them within the last week

That was nice of your mom Good luck with these two. Maybe you just got a couple of unhealthy ones last week.

Hi Sorry to hear about your bettas. Tell me,what are you keeping them in once you get them home? Are you using matched temp water,and a water conditioner to get rid of chlorine/chloramines/metals,etc? Are you putting them in a tank together as soon as you bring them home?

I have my male in a 5.5 gal by himself, no filter or anything right now but I do clean it every 2 days. I use prime for every water change and always make sure the temp is matched. My females I had in a 1 gal bowl together but they didn't seem to get along even though they were together in the store, so I have them each in their own 1 gal bowl.

I have their bowls near the males tank and he has started making a bubble nest, it was so cute

I give up with bettas.

I noticed yesterday morning that both my females got tail rot so I treated them with bettafix. My male had some kinda white bump on his opercula (think thats what its called) so Im treating him with bettafix too. I got them all from the same store but he could of got whatever that is from me when I used the same thing to transfer them .

I cant believe I killed that many fish

Oh yeah and this morning my males left side (where the bump was) is all swollen and Im so scared for him

Sorry you are having so much trouble. I have had luck treating my bettas with Jungle Fungus Eliminator. It treats both fungus and bacterial infections.

One thing that I have found that helps prevent holes in fins and fin problems with my bettas is to make sure that I age the water used for the water change for at least 24 hours. My water comes out of the tap at a lower ph than it is after it sits for a while. The ph fluctuations really made a mess of my betta's tail. Since I have been aging the water, this hasn't happened.

Thanks for trying to help but my last betta was dead by morning

If you decide to get more bettas in the future, I would try another store. A year or so ago there was a fellow on the forum that had troubles similar to yours, but he switched to another store and got healthy bettas.

Another thing is to ask the store when their shipment of bettas arrive, and then buy them that day. Especially males that are going to be kept in cups.

I am so sorry about your bettas. I know how upsetting it is

The day I got them they had actually just got them in. That store gets the males shipped in tiny little bags with about an inch of water in them, its so sad. They keep the males that they dont have bowls for in the little bags floating in the water of other tanks, when they turn on their side (the bag) the bettas have even less water, they can barely move.

I dont plan on getting bettas for a long time, it hurts to even look at any right now

Please don't be too hard on yourself, though. Unfortunately bettas go through a lot of stress before we even bring them home

Sorry to hear that you lost your Betta's Silver...I have lost a few myself in the last 6 months to where I don't think I'll be keeping Betta's anymore. I'm down to ten now,and one of those guys are really old,& probably won't be around too much longer. It's funny how one little fish can hurt so much......