Every single one of my past spawns, has been considerably male-heavy. I'd probably estimate that for every two or three males, I'd be lucky to get even a single female.
Unfortunately, because most hobbyists only want to buy breeding pairs or trios of fish, such a heavily skewed sex ratio can make it difficult to move on surplus males. As this had been my experience with previous spawns, I was expecting to see much of the same when I got my new stock in towards the end of last year. Surprisingly, the reverse seems to have happened. Both my Betta sp. apiapi and Betta hendra pairs seem to have thrown almost all females from consecutive spawns. Understandably, this could change because many of the fish are only young and haven't fully coloured up. But based on my current assessments, I would not be surprised if I only had a couple of males present in each group. I also have a number of juveniles in my Betta brownorum tank that still haven't been correctly sexed, so I will be eager to see if this trend continues. What I am particularly interested in, is finding out what environmental factors have influenced this sudden shift. I have made some recent changes in my husbandry practices, such as maintaining a slightly cooler water temperature, and easing back on the frequency of water changes. I also started using aqua soil as the substrate in all my tanks, and I am wondering what effect this is having on the pH (if any). I'm hoping to purchase a digital pH meter in the next couple of weeks along with KH and GH test kits, so that I can get a more precise picture of what is going on with my water. It would be great if in the future, I could manipulate the conditions in my tanks to provide a sex ratio as close as possible to 50:50.
Tim
18/2/2014 07:48:24 am
Several pieces of scientific literature I have read using livebearers points towards raisin temperature to increasing the ratio for males.
Ashlea
19/2/2014 09:18:23 am
I do believe temperature has some influence on the sex ratio of these fish. My cooler tanks seem to provide me with a larger number of females. However, even my coolest tanks never gave me a 50:50 split.
Attila
4/3/2014 03:53:54 am
Hi Ashlea,
Ashlea
5/3/2014 06:25:13 pm
Thanks for the information Attila. I know some fancy splendens breeders mention age of the pair having an affect on gender. I do think temperature and pH also play an important role. Comments are closed.
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AuthorLocated in Melbourne, Australia, I currently keep and breed a number of species from the coccina complex. Archives
November 2017
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