my female has been acting weird for a few days now, and today i got home from work to find she'd dropped eggs everywhere, and was continuing to do so!! aarrgghh! after a brief panic, i decided to let the male into her side of the tank and see what happened. he's been very happily building a huge impressive bubble nest every night, so i figured i'd put the two fish together and see what happened...he went over and flared, trying to impress her i guess, and she didn't attack him or anything, which is nice(!). she started dropping eggs again, but he didn't wrap himself round her or anything, just hoovered up the eggs. at first i thought he was collecting them to put in the nest, but now i reckon he was just eating them <_< i've separated the two of them again, and now the female is just hangin out at the surface dropping MORE eggs, and the male is back to swimming and patrolling his half of the tank...

so, was this a mating attempt? if so, what went wrong? was he eating the eggs, or was he collecting them? i'm so confuzzled..........

Well, sometimes its hard to tell if he actually eats them or not. If your betta keeps collecting them without ever swimming up to the nest and pushing them in, then he most likely had a big snack! Since he most likely didnt get to fertilize the eggs (I understand you put him in with the female AFTER she started to drop eggs?), it could be that he is not that attached to them as if he had fertilized them....
I am sure it was a mating attempt, and it doesnt allways work out at the first try. Some females are swimming away from the male for hours and hours to come, until they suddenly decide that it is time to be affectionate. While some males are very aggressive toward the female before they actually start the mating process.

Anyhow, its very hard to recognize eggs in a huge bubble nest, maybe they are in there, and you just cant see them yet. Although if they are not fertilized, there will not much be going on afterwards. If they got fertilized, you will see some tiny fry hanging tail down from the nest after a few days (depending on the temperature).

It took me quite a few attempts and tests to figure out if and how it is the best of conditions to bring the male and female to successful mating.....
Let us know how it turns out!

well...i guess something was wrong anyway. i got home last night to find the female dead at the bottom of the tank

i don't know why she died. as i said, she was dropping eggs way before i removed the divider between her and the male, and i had replaced the divider before going out, so i know the male didn't kill her. she still had eggs inside her when she died too (i squeezed her to find out - gross i know, but i just wanted to figure out why she died).

she was about 2" long, so could she have just been an old fish? i know bettas only live to be 2 or 3 years old so....? maybe her dropping eggs was just part of her dying.

it's sad anyway. i've now lost both my original bettas (one male and one female). i'm not going to get any more. just going to keep ice-man alone in his tank. he's happy - he's now got nearly 3 1/2 gallons to himself(!).

I am very sorry to hear about your betta, Alex!
I can imagine, that there could have been an eggbinding problem going on, just like it can happen with goldfish, because usually female bettas only drop eggs on their own, without the initiative of a male, if they cant hold them any longer.
I have a really huge female, to whom I cant find a equally sized male, and she turns awfully fat on me every now and then. I just keep her a day or two with another male, just so she can have a chance to get rid of her eggs, even though the male is way to small to wrap around her, but it helps her quite a bit.

Maybe in time, you will get another betta....They are such special little fish! From the way it sounds, it was not your fault at all....