About a month or two ago, I separated out a pair of F1 Betta sp. cf. rutilans green from the others, and put them into a smaller 'breeding' tank. This pair has somehow managed to successfully spawn in the main tank, and the poor male with his mouthful of eggs was being constantly harassed by his siblings. To be honest, I never expected this experiment to result in viable fry. Not only were the breeding pair well over a year old (probably closer to 24 months), but past treatments with some rather harsh chemicals made me wonder if they would even be capable of producing fertile eggs. Surprisingly, the very next spawn resulted in fry, as did the several successful spawning attempts that followed. Because I wanted only a small number of fry to work with, it wasn't long before the pair was moved back to the main tank, and my attention turned to raising the dozen or so fry left behind in the breeding tank. As you can see from the photos, some of the fry are more developed than others. There is one particularly small fry, who somehow holds its own against older siblings, in spite of not being much bigger than the grindal worms I put in for them. My main concern was that this group of fry would be infected with oodinium through their parents. However, at this point in time, they seem as physically healthy as any of my other fry, and I doubt it's going to be all that long before they outgrow their current tank.
This species seems to have a particularly aggressive streak, and I'm already seeing aggressive posturing and chasing between some of the bigger fry. Based on my experience with the F1 group, and even the F0 pair, a steady increase in aggressive behaviour is to be expected, particularly as the fish reach sexual maturity. These are some photographs of my F1 Betta miniopinna and their parents. This pair came from Hermanus Haryanto at the start of the year. Although I do also have a second pair from Joty Atmadjaja. As these photographs show, this species is very similar in appearance to Betta persephone. They used to be an extremely difficult species to source, but of late, they seem to have made a re-emergence in the hobby. Admittedly, they are not one of my favourite species from this complex, but they are one that I have been after since I started keeping wild bettas. Their colouring also does make them unique in this complex of predominately red fish.
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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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