TROPICAL BUBBLE NEST BUILDERS

The Siamese fighting fish is probably on the flashiest fish to be in your fresh water aquarium. That's why I chose him to start off this series. The Betta Splendens or Betta was one of the first tropical fish that my wife, Joan, and bought in our first year of marriage (1952). We put it in a bowl, as advised by the pet shop owner, Bill. Filled the bowl over half full of water, put in the Betta and placed the bowl on a shelf near the TV. It wasn't long until we discovered we were watching the Betta more than the TV. It's long flowing fins and bright red color was a real attraction. This first fish led us to opening a small tropical fish stoe many years later.

We purchased a female Betta to give the male some company. We bought another bowl, on advice from Bill, and put the female in that bowl and put her bowl next to his bowl. Kind of romantic. Well, as soon as the male saw the female he began putting on a show for her (like most males.) Then he began blowing bubbles on the surface of the water. In a day or two he had quite a nice pile of bubbles floating on the water. We went back to the pet shop and told Bill what was going on. He smiled and told us what we were seeing was a male bubble-nest builder building a bubble-net for the eggs he hoped to get from the female.

Bill told us what to do when we returned home. We watched the male do his building until he seemed about finished, then we introduced the female. This, of course, was what the male was hoping for. He danced around her showing off his fins. It seemed that the female was more interested in checking out the nest then in the antics of the male. At long last the female must have said that she was ready. She swam up under the nest and the male wrapped his body around hers and began squeezing. As the eggs came out and floated down, the male would swim down, pick them up and "spit" them into the nest of bubbles where the bubbles supported the eggs. This continued for some time until there were no more eggs coming from the female.

We were told to remove the female when the breeding was finished as some male Bettas would kill the female. After watching the whole procedure it would seem to me that the female would be the one to do the killing. As soon as the female looked like she had recovered from all that squeeing we dropped in some extra food for her. Now the male had his job cut out for him. He had to keep replacing the bubbles that burst because when they burst, the eggs they were supporting would start to drift down to the bottom of the bowl. The male had to keep catching those eggs and blowing them back into the bubbles. This looked like it went on day and night.

It wasn't too long before we noticed what looked like tiny black hairs hanging down from the bottom of the egg nest. The babies were hatching! They were like little strings hanging there. The male had to keep making bubbles to keep the babies in the nest. Once in awhile a baby or two would fall out of the nest and the male whould have to catch them and spit them back into the nest. Better than TV.

Because male Bettas were unpredictable, they might eat the young. So you had to separate the male from the babies when they became free-swimming. We were told to hard boil an egg, mash the yolk into some water, making a yellow infusion. You added a few drops of this into the bowl where the babies (fry) were now living. If you looked closely you could see little yellow tummies. They were eating and were now on their way to adulfishthood. Because there is no way to sex these fish, you have to wait for 3 months or so until the fins of the males begin to grow long which indicated the males. The males had to be put into individual containers because of their fighting. Soon we had bowls and jars of male Bettas all over the house. Bill had figured out a way to get young bettas from a local source for free. At least that what we did.