Fighting Fish

Introduction

The fighter fish (betta fish) is a popular species of freshwater aquarium fish. It is originally known as Siamese fighting fish and popular in US as ‘Betta’. This word is derived from Ikan Bettah – a local dialect of Thailand. In Thai, “Plakat Morh” or “Trey Krem” means Fighting Fish. This fish species is the native of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and parts of China.

Fighter Fish Tanks – How To Pick The Best Fighter Fish Tank

Fighter Fish  are pretty simple fish to take good care of as long as you know the basics of what keeps them healthy and strong. Right now you are going to learn exactly what kind of fish tanks are acceptable to use and which kinds of fish tanks will result in your Fighter Fish dying off.

So, first things first, there is much debate on which size of a tank you should actually keep your Betta Fish in. From my experience you should have no less than a 3 gallon tank to give them maximum amount of movement and space to grow and move around.

Remember, a happy Fighter Fish is one that has lots of space to move around and frolic in all its fish-like glee.

Fighter Fish Diet – The Secrets To Betta Fish Health

To fully understand what the perfect Fighter Fish Diet is you first have to understand where the Fighter Fish is originally from. These awesome fish have received the nick name “The Jewel Of The Orient”, their native home is originates from Thailand but they can also be found in their natural habitat in and around Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and parts of China.

They like to hang out around small, shallow ponds and even some slow moving streams. While there is some debate about which is actually the best possible habitat for your Fighter Fish, one thing that is often over looked is the actual water temperature. In their home countries the average water temperature is about 80ºF, so that is their ideally perfect water temp.

As the water starts to cool the Fighter Fish will get increasingly more agitated, which can really lead them to live up to their name. Fighter Fish have been known to fight to the death just because the other Betta Fish looked at them the wrong way. So be sure to keep their water temperature right at 80ºF and you’ll be fine. That’s why you shouldn’t keep them in a small bowl, because you cannot regulate the heat control very well. I highly recommend getting a top of the line Fighter Fish Aquarium.

The Secret Fighter Fish Diet

Back in Thailand, you would find the Betta Fish feeding on all kinds of cool fish food like insects and insect larva. In a perfect world that’s all they would eat. But if need be they will adapt to eating the dry flake foods found at your local pet store or even freeze dried food if that’s all ya got.

However, the BEST food you can ever feed your Betta Fish is live insects. They will love that stuff and will eat it all day. Their digestive system are geared towards primarily consuming meat so when you can, give them the good stuff.

The healthier, more live food you give your Fighter Fish the more their colors will pop and the happier they will be.

They actually have a upward turned mouth made specifically for eating any unlucky bugs that happen to fall in the water. What you wanna try to do as a Fighter Fish owner is replicate their natural habitat as much as possible. By feeding them live bugs, you can do this and they’ll love you for it.

Some of the best things you can feed these little guys are Brine shrimp, Daphnia, plankton, tubifex, glassworms, and beef heart. Those are all great things to feed your Fighter Fish, you can find them either frozen or freeze dried. Either one will do nicely. But if you have flake food, you’ll need to suppletment with either freeze dried, frozen or preferably live food.

Some of my favorites are the freeze dried blood worms. Betta Fish go bonkers for these nasty little worms and will be sure to really brighten up their colors too.

Fighter Fish Breeding – The Best Breeding Technique

Fighter Fish have a fairly short life span, living on average between 2 to 5 years, so if you are planning on breeding them its best to do it while they are under a year old so you will yield the best offspring. Most of the Betta Fish that you will find in pet shops are typically about 6 months old.
Most breeders feel that a 10 gallon tank or bigger works great, just make sure its bare bottom so the Fighter Fish can make their little bubble nests with ease. You definitively want to avoid using any kind of pebbles in the tank when breeding as the eggs may end up falling through them and dying.
If you really wanna get some great offspring then you’ll need to precondition your Betta Fish for breeding by feeding them a ton of live food. The water should have a PH of exactly 7 and have a temperature no colder than 80ºF, you can got a few degrees hotter if you would live too.
Whats going to happen next is the male will blow an elaborate bubble nest, they look really cool. At this point you’ll need to create a little hiding place for the female as the males can get kinda aggressive when its time to mate. It’s actually not that uncommon for the female to loose a few scales or have a few nips taken out of her tail.

Just make sure that after the breeding session is over that you remove the female from the tank because the male Fighter Fish have been known to kill the female Betta while he is tending to the bubble nest.
When the pair is ready to spawn their colors will become extremely vibrant and the male Betta Fish will start to circle the female under the bubble nest. Then the male will wrap himself around the female after she has been flipped to her back. As she excretes the eggs they will become fertilized by the male and will begin to float to the bottom on the tank.
Next the male will gently scoop up the eggs and spit them into the bubble nest where they can finally hatch over the course of the next few days. From this point on the male Betta Fish will tend to the young and the female most definitively needs to be removed from the tank because this is when the male is most aggressive.
In the next few days the male Fighter Fish will continue to watch over the nest making sure to spit back in any eggs that fall out of the bubble nest, but in the next 2 or 3 days the eggs will hatch and the young fry will be swimming around the tank with Daddy. At this point, you’ve gotta remove the male fish because he might eat the young, and there goes your whole spawn.
Now that you’ve got an open tank, the fry should be fed a few times daily preferably with baby brine shrimp as they contain the best nutrients for the young broods. For the nest you should use some kind of Tetra mix as it does great for the bubble nests and resembles the Fighter Fish’s natural habitat. And take care about not over feeding the fry because if you do it will pollute the water.

Fighter Fish Types By Color

Green:

Green is the least fixed single color and varies in shade from fish to fish and line to line.  Most Green Betta Splendens have a bluish green hue but less so than a Turquoise variant.  It is often difficult to distinguish these two hues because they really do look quite similar and also depends on the angle you look at them.

Make sure you go after the dark green Fighter Fish, they a prime choices.  This and the turquoise hues derive from the same alleles (BlBl). But the much sought after, dark, forest green is very rare. If you happen to come by one then I highly recommend you pick it up right away.

Reds:

Solid red Betta Fish have non iridescent color and must have that color spread over the entire body, evenly for it to count. What you really want to get is a clean read, without iridescent colors and absolutely no fading.

However reds can come in many different hues ranging from a bright and beautiful fire engine red to shades of deep crimson and even reddish brown colors. yet, color will always vary between breeds, usually most red Betta Fish end up showing some iridescence or show a little bit of other colors creeping in.

If there is any opaque overlay is will distract from the bright red and will tend to show more pinks and muted reds.s.

Of all the red Fighter Fish out there, a brilliant cherry red is by far the most desired, with no iridescence or opaque color to take away from the solid red. Usually the red loss occurs as they age, being bright red as fries but as they grow, it gradually lessens, getting more dull with time.

Royal Blue & Corn Flower Blue:

The consistent, solid royal blue is the choice form: the genotype Blbl or blBl gives adeep, rich royal blue in the green/steel blue/royal blue complex.  The most common form has a dark head and royal blue body and fins.  The ideal color lacks reds and greens.

Corn-flower blues are the same genotype as royal blues but with a dark head and corn-flower blue body.

Royal blues with red factors may appear violet or purple when young and will lose it if the red-loss factor is present and so produce royal blues.  Red loss occurs also occurs in Steel Blue, Turquoise, and Green.

Black:

A true black Fighter Fish has a deep, dark and mysterious shade of black to it, all the way around. However, it is often times more of a smokey black and you will even see black Betta Fish with transparent, smokey looking fins.

Black is one of the most difficult colours to achieve, as the melano gene produces infertile Black females. Several crosses with other colours have tried to alleviate this problem, e.g. Melano x Celophane or yellows.

Getting a true black Fighter Fish can prove to be very difficult though, because the black or Melano gene products infertile black female Betta Fish. And even attempting several crosses with other species has not really solved the problem.

Steel Blue:

Steel Blue Betta Fish are created by crossing the allele combination blbl, this creates a metallic iridescent glow when compared to the Royal Blue Betta Fish.

Steel Blue, Green, Royal Blue, Green and Turquoise Betta’s have an interesting genetic inheritance pattern based on the Bl / bl alleles that show incomplete dominance and determine iridescence.

Many Fighter Fish, such as the Royal Blue, Turquoise, Steel Blue, Royal Blue and Green all show and interesting incomplete dominance and determined iridescence based on the genetic inheritance pattern Bl /bl.

Examples Of Betta Fish Genetic Crossings:
Steel Blue x Steel Blue gives 100% Steel Blue off-spring;
Green x Green gives 100% Green;
Green x Steel Blue gives all Royal Blue;
Royal Blue x Royal Blue gives 50% Royal, 25% Steel, 25% Green;
Green x Royal Blue gives 50% Royal, 50% Green.
Steel Blue x Royal Blue gives 50% Royal, 50% Steel Blue
Turquoise is a variation of the “green” coloring (BlBl alleles).

Turquoise:

A variant of the green, with a distinct blue hue.  Consistent color across the fish is rare. The choice color contains tones of blue rather than any Green or Yellow shades, to distinguish them from the common green.

Fish with colors close to turquoise are often found in Royal Blue and Steel Blue spawns.

The ideal is a dark shade of turquoise.

Opaques aka Pastels

You’ll know a Opaque or Pastel Fighter Fish when you see once because it will have this sort of milky white overlay that seems to dilute any of the underlying colors to more of a pastel type of shade, this usually includes the eyes in most cases.

What’s really cool to know is that there is an opaque or pastel from of each of the main color types. All that the breeder needs to do in order to trigger this type of color is make sure the Op allele is present and you’ll have yourself an awesome looking pastel Betta Fish.

Pastels can be almost any pastel color.

Yellow

Brilliant lemon yellows or even a butter yellow are the best yellow colors produced so far, although some breeders claim to have produced a golden yellow.  Colors that tend to be either a very pale yellow or a yellow-brown tinted are inferior colors.

Yellow results from a gene that transforms red so sometimes the presence of red is also visible.

Golden yellow Fighter Fish, with golden iridescence, are rare. In some Betta Fish, like the yellow/apricot strain, only the operculum is iridescent gold.

A lutino form exists, in which the eyes are yellow, too.

Apricot And Peach:

These are yellow pastels of varying intensities.

Apricot yellows have a distinct pale orange tint to the yellow.

Some yellow Bettas show a faint orange tint to the fins and are called Apricot.

To continue the fruity colours, “Pineapple” Bettas are yellows with a
distinct black outline to the scales, giving a net-like or pineapple
appearance.  Pineapple Bettas are pattern form, not a colour type.

Albino:

Rare.  A characteristic of any true Albino fish is that the body lacks all pigmentation, including the eyes which appear red.

Like Cellophane, these are completely colourless fish and may appear pinkish white or solid white if the opaque factor is present. True albino Bettas have red eyes, with no pigmentation and may show a little bit of color if they are very translucent due to their organs wand what not.

If you ever have the chance to come up on an Albino then I highly recommend you do because they are VERY hard to find and even harder to breed. Take a big time advantage and jump at the opportunity to get one.

White:

Some White Fighter Fish may be completely solid in color and are a true beautiful dense white because of the opaque factor in their pigments. You’ll be able to tell the sure fire difference between a white and an albino every time because albinos will always have red eyes and true whites will always have black ones.

The image to the right shows a truly perfect white Betta Fish, yet it may still have some weird coloration with blues and black due to the way the light is hitting the Fighter Fish in the photo.

Just always remember that whites of this type have black eyes and true albinos have red eyes. Don’t be fooled.

Chocolate:

Chocolate Betta splendens look brown to the eye, but are actually a black and yellow mix and are one of my favorite colors you’ll find on the Fighter Fish.

While the Chocolates are not are rare as the dark forest green Betta or the Albino Fighter Fish, it’s still a pretty tough one to come by sometimes, usually because most people just don’t have the chocolate color ones around.

If you want to help improve the color of the Chocolate Fighter Fish you can actually breed it with a yellow one to try and increase the vibrancy of both the yellow and the chocolate fry.

Orange:

Orange Fighter Fish are actually a new strain of Betta Splendens, and for some reason each breeder seems to think about the shade of orange a little bit differently. I have never really seen a true orange Betta Fish, except in pictures. Most of the ones I see are more like a light reddish orange or more of a deep Halloween type orange color that tends to be more yellowish red and orange.

But none the less, all forms of the Orange Fighter Fish still look really really cool and I would most definitively keep one of them in my fish tank without question. They are yet another hard strain to come by, so if you find a true orange one, make sure you do everything you can to get it.

But the real question is… How “orange” is orange?

In my opinion, true orange is the spectrum right in between red and yellow. I always think of Halloween and pumpkins when talking about orange so maybe my view is a little slanted, but then again, maybe it’s right on target, what do you think?

Lavender:

A lavender Betta is genetically a Cambodian Betta Splendens with extended Red and a layer of light iridescent blue-green.

Truly Purple Betta Splendens are also very new and rare and it appears that the color results from blending red and blue, just like you would get from blending some water colors together. Nature always works the same way.

The Royal Blue strain throws purple or violet fry that appear violet at their first show of color and darken to royal blues within a few months, as the red fades (due to the red-loss factor, L) as the fish mature .

Truly violet colored Betta Fish are rare. So again, if you find one for sale or a breeder with one. Do what you can to get some off spring. It will be WELL worth it.

So there you have it, those are virtually all the different color combination you will find. Keep in mind these are the basic main color combos out there, many breeders will cross black with yellow for example to make really cool looking Fighter Fish that are totally unique. They are always coming out with new strains and new colors.