Breeding Betta Fish: Taking Care of the Babies

When breeding betta fish, it can be a rather difficult and time consuming process and you need to be dedicated and willing to put the effort in for your betta fish to breed with each other. You will know when your betta fish are ready for each other because they will do the embrace which is when the male betta fish wraps his body around the female betta fish, almost as though he is hugging the eggs right out of her.

As the female betta fish releases her eggs, the male betta will use his sperm to fertilize them and then he will begin his fatherly duties right away and care for the young. As soon as the male betta begins to scoop up the eggs with his mouth and put them into his nest then you should use the opportunity to scoop the female out of the tank and put her back into her own tank because that is her role done!

Watching the male betta fish take care of the eggs can be quite fascinating. Over two days the male will tend to the nest and scoop up any eggs which fall out of the nest and return them to the surface again. After two days you will begin to notice the small fry emerging from the nest. They do need to stay in the next for at least 36 hours so that their gills can develop and the male betta will continue to scoop up the babies and bring them back up to the surface. Usually around two days after they hatch the fry will begin to swim independently and you should remove the male betta from the tank because he could end up eating all of the young!

Breeding betta fish can be an amazing experience and once the fish have bred and the babies have been born then you need to start taking care of your baby betta fish. It can be quite difficult breeding betta’s in a tank environment because baby betta’s have small mouths and feed on the small microscopic beasts which live naturally in ponds and aquariums can run out of these quite quickly but you can breed the food that they need. You can do this by taking a large jar and filling it with some tank water and then put some grass or straw into the jar and then all you have to do is place the jaw on a sunny window sill. This will take about four days and once the small organisms are ready then you should scoop some of the water off of the top and then add it straight into the tank which contains the baby betta, instant betta food.