How to Breed Chinese Fighting Fish

Chinese Fighting Fish, also called Bettas or Siamese Fighting Fish, are colorful blue or red fish with long, drooping fins that seem to "hang," barely moving, in the small bowls of water in pet stores. Kept in separate bowls because the males will often nip at the scales and fins of other fish, Bettas are not difficult to breed, but you must do a lot of planning and preparation before trying to breed them.

Things You'll Need

• Male Betta
• Female Betta
• 10-gallon aquarium
• Live aquarium plants
• Glass chimney
• Water
• Heater
• Aerator
• Brine shrimp eggs
• Vinegar eels

Instructions

1. Purchase a female Betta and a male Betta from a reputable pet store. For best breeding, they should be between 3 months and 8 months old. While they are in separate containers, feed them live foods such as live brine shrimp to prepare them for breeding. The female should be fat, showing she is full of eggs, before spawning.

2. Fill a 10-gallon aquarium with 5 inches of water that has a pH of 7 and is kept at a constant 82 degrees Fahrenheit during spawning but is reduced to 78 degrees during incubation of the eggs. (Keeping the temperature at 82 degrees during incubation will deform the young, and they will die.) The bottom of the tank can be bare, but you must put in some clean, live plants where the female can hide. Since Bettas don't like a lot of water movement, avoid using power filters and powerheads.

3. Place the female into the aquarium. After two or three days, put a glass chimney over the female in the tank so that she is swimming inside the glass cylinder. Add the male after the female is safely separated in the glass chimney. Watch for the male to blow a fancy bubblenest when he is ready to spawn. After he builds the bubblenest, release the female by raising and removing the glass chimney. Allow the fish to mate--usually 2 or 3 days afterward.

4. Remove the female from the aquarium after she expels the eggs and the male fertilizes them to keep her from eating the eggs. The eggs hatch one or two days later and will hang in the bubblenest for about 36 hours. The male will care for the brood, sucking up tiny fry that fall vertically from the bubblenest and spitting them back into the nest.

5. Start slow, gentle aeration when the fry begin to swim horizontally. Remove the male from the tank.

6. Feed the young fish some baby brine shrimp and vinegar eels five or six times a day for the first two weeks, but be careful not to overfeed them. (Uneaten food will make the water uninhabitable and the young fish will die.) After the first two weeks, feed the young fry some fresh, tiny brine shrimp at least five times a day.

Tips & Warnings

• Feed young Bettas a variety of foods: fresh/frozen brine shrimp, vinegar eels and mosquito larvae, and feed them often.

• Bettas are not keen on flake food, which does not provide them the best nutrition since they are meat eaters.

• Start with young fish, as Bettas live only about 2 years; while the females can spawn about four or five times during their lives, a male can breed 30 or more times during his life, beginning when he's only 2 months old.

• To prevent damage to the female by the protective new father, remove her right after she lays her eggs.

• Remember to remove the male when the young begin to swim horizontally.