How long until fighter fish lay eggs and how do the eggs look?

Answer 1

Breeding fighting fish (bettas) is not a simple matter of combining male and female. If you do this, you will never get eggs, but you are likely to get seriously injured or dead fish. Before you even attempt to breed, you need to condition both fish. This means feeding them double what they would normally get using very high quality foods, preferably frozen or live although I have had success conditioning with Hikari betta biogold (their usual feed, the best there is, fed at double quantity). This needs to be done for at least two weeks. When the fish are conditioned, set up your breeding tank. It needs to be at least five gallons, and can be a plastic container (this is what i always use). Put a large glass jar at one end. Fill the jar and container with water to the same level. Use some plastic plants or ornaments to provide shelter for the fish, and then float half a styrofoam cup (cut lengthways) on the surface. The male will build his bubblenest underneath this. Don't forget the heater. Introduce the male to the main part of the tank, and the female to the glass jar. This way the male can see the female, who should be looking very round, but cannot get to her. He should start building a nest. Usually, but not always, he will choose to build underneath the styrofoam cup. The female, if she is ready to spawn, should become quite excited, shimmying back and forth. Vertical bands will appear on her body. When the male's nest is complete after 12-24 hours, let the female out. This should be done cautiously and you should always be there to supervise, checking on them every minute or so. After this, it's a matter of luck and the pair when you get eggs. Some will spawn straight away, having gotten quite worked up during the nest building. Others may take days. In this case, put the female back in the jar at night and whenever you cannot check on them frequently. Cases of bettas beating the crap out of each other when trying to spawn them is not uncommon. In some cases, the pair will never 'click' and may never breed. When they do breed, the female will swim, head down, under the bubblenest. The male wraps his body around her and squeezes tightly, forcing the eggs out and fertilising them. You will see small white spheres about the size of a pinhead falling from their entwined bodies. These are the eggs. The male will let go and pick up the eggs and put them in the bubblenest while the female floats under the nest, looking very dead. This process will be repeated until there are no more eggs in the female. Then the male will chase her away. If she is not removed with in a few minutes he may kill her. The eggs in the bubblenest are small, white or yellow dots. Occasionally some of the eggs or wrigglers fall out of the nest and the male will pick them up and put them back. However, sometimes the father eats his eggs. If you think he is going to, you should remove him and lower the water level to about an inch. The eggs should hatch on their own.