My New Babies
September 17, 2005
My 12 new babies hatched on September 12, exactly six months after my previous spawn hatched. Their daddy is a royal blue double tail and their mommy is a royal blue delta tail. She is one of my girls from the previous spawn. So I should have around three turquoise, three steel blue, and six royal blue bettas provided they all make it to adulthood. They should all be delta tails, unless there are some suprises such as crowntails or double tails which seems quite unlikely. Anyway, here are the little ones at only a few hours of age.
October 1, 2005
My 12 babies are doing well. They have good appetites and are growing quickly. Just see the difference two weeks make in the pictures above and below. At one day of age (pic above), they were 2-2.5mm long. At one week they were about 5mm already (first pic below). At two weeks they were 7-8mm (second pic below). None appear to have serious deformities and I can already see a bit of colour on them :-)
October 4, 2005
Here are the little buggers at three weeks of age. They are already 8-9mm in length. I can see some blue on their fins already, but it is too early to tell who is going to be turqouise and who will be royal or steel blue. My camera can't capture these pale colours but I managed to get that so-so close up of one of the fry. You can see his orange full-of-shrimp belly and even one of the shrimp in front of him. The fry seem to eat about 50 baby brine shrimp at each meal and it takes them less than a minute to do so. These bbs must be very, very yummy.
October 13, 2005
Here they are at four weeks of age. They are 10-12mm long and even the camera can capture some of their colours. It is impossible to sex them, but I should be able to do that within two to three weeks. They are still nice to each other, but I'm watching for any flaring or nipping. Hopefully, they will turn out to be fairly peaceful like my last spawn.
November 11, 2005
At six weeks, all 12 fry are doing well. Their colours can now be seen quite clearly. Of course they come in the three shades of blue - turquoise, royal blue, and steel blue - but some are much darker while others have much lighter pastel colours. They are so darn cute, aren't they? :-)
November 25, 2005
Week seven was a very tough week for the babies and was marked by two major incidents. In the first, I overfed the fry. The little gluttons ate so much, they looked like little balloons that were about to burst. I was trying to switch them from baby brine shrimp to crushed pellets, so I would feed bbs in the morning and crushed pellets in the evening. They really didn't get excited about the crushed pellets, so I figured they had a few bites but didn't like the new food much. In a week or two they would get used to it and eat more. So I gave them plenty to make sure they knew it was there and then scooped the leftovers out of the tank 15-20 minutes later. As it turns out, they probably didn't even realize the pellets were food. On day four though, one must have realized that "Hey, this floating stuff is food. Let's pig out!" When I came back 15 minutes later, they were so stuffed they couldn't even swim upright. They were floating sideways near the surface yet still trying to gobble up any piece of food that came near. I scooped the little remaining food immediately and mentally prepared for the consequences. I never had a death due to overfeeding but I never overfed to a point where I ended up with balloons that were so stuffed they couldn't swim. Fortunately, everyone survived the night and their bellies had significantly deflated by next mornining.
