Breeding Betta Guide / Fry Growth

Above is one tutorial video found in youtube.
Or you may refer to this http://www.wikihow.com/Breed-Betta-Fish

Here, this is my Method of Breeding.

1) Conditioning the Bettas.
Firstly, your pair of betta must be properly fed 1 week before breeding. So usually ppl fed it with frozen blood worms or freeze-dried bloodworms or pellets(Hikari or atison betta pro). Did i say pellets? yup, not wrong, the below photos/video of betta breeding is fed only on pellets. I fed it 3 times a day with 4-8 pellets each time on both pairs. You gonna get lots of waste i know, just get the water change every 2-3days. During this period they are placed side by side, i flare them once to twice a day with duration of 30mins-1hr(Time of 1 game Dota) each time, then i recarded them i repeat doing this again after couple of hours.  Soon you will notice the female gets bloated with eggs, and vertical stripe lines come out of the female(White female bettas are hard to spot). but doesnt matter anyway. as long as the female stomach gets bloated with eggs. And the male will have bubble nest like foam thickness(if its a well taken care male).

A Good Conditioned Male will produce such Bubble-nest

2) Breeding Tank Set-Up

(Notice? I did not use any ketapang*Indian Almond Leaves or extract. Just Proper Water Conditioned.) 

Temperature were kept at 27-29 Degrees Celsius With the use of Warm Light and cover for the tank.

Items You Need:

1ft Tank minimum w/ cover(cloth or anything, this will maintain their water temperature not to fluctuate)

1 Half Cut Styrofoam Cup

1 Clear Bottle

1 or 2 Live Plants

3-4 inch Conditioned Water in breeding tank

2-3drops of methylene blue to the water (it will make bubbles stickier, and protects the eggs).

(Get Ocean Free White Spot Special (It contain Methylene Blue(Sgd $1))

1 Sponge Filter with pump at 1 bubble per sec rate (Optional)

Lightings (Warm Light Or any light but not direct bright lights.)

3) The Embrace(Mating)

Placed them together into the Breeding tank, house the female for a day. During Daytime, switch on the lights(No direct bright lights), during the night switch off the light and allow them to rest. Then The next day, you should notice a huge thickness of bubble nest, and the female should have stripe on her body. Then release the female.
If no embrace after release like 6hrs, rehost the female back to the bottle. Try again tomorrow.(And you can feed them again, while they in their own space). Remember to off the lights at night for them to rest again. Once you placed them together(Released of the female), do not feed them at all.
If after 3 tries, still no embrace, most probably you did not condition them well or they doesnt like each other.

Once the embrace starts, the laying of eggs and the male put them into nest.
After everything done,
you will see female gets chase fiercely by the male after mating, remove the female carefully, not to disturb the nest/water, treat her with clean conditioned water, add ketapang extract/stress coat/methylene blue to heal the female. And you may start feeding her again alittle.* Switch on the lights for the breeding tank 24hrs till the fry swimming.

4) The Guardian Angel
The Male Will Continue to care for the eggs till about 24-48hours(With lights on all the way till fry Swimming). After 48hours the eggs should hatched. And you should be able to see like bottom Pictures.

 

The male will continue to pick them if they drop from the nest for another 1-2days till free swimming of the fry.(You may wanna have the fry food ready to feed). If you using microworms you should have it ready to harvest. otherwise get instant dead baby brine shrimp(BBS) $17 sgd from ocean nutrition(Any LFS) it will work but costly. I used natural habitat like you see the plant is inside it will produce some micro organism food for the hatched fry, as well as using spirulina, i dipped 1 index finger and then dipped to the water each time for once in the morning and once at night. It works fine.

5) The Ready Fry

Spawn Tank
Marble Plakat Breed (Left) , Red Half-Moon Breed (Right)

Once you see majority of the fry is out from the nest, free swimming horizontal, you can remove the male carefully.(Don't scoop or hurt the fries) The Father job is done. Condition & Treat in his own tank properly with medication or ketapang extract in his own tank. You can start feeding him alittle as he is most probably hungry after 4-5 days not eating. (You can now off the lights during the night for the fry tank)
Then You may start feed your fry. Using the available food you prepared. Feed the fry alittle, so that you do not overfeed and spoil the water(Check if they are eating otherwise stop feeding and wait for another day or 2, As mostly newly free swimming fry won't be eating, the very first 1-2 days of free swimming). i feed them with spirulina water, then about 1 to 2days later with 1-3ml of concentrated live BBS(Make sure you rinse them with clean water before feed), 2 times daily, once in the morning before work, and once in the night after work. You will see them starts nipping on the bbs.
You can continue this till 2weeks and observe them properly.
First 2 Weeks
*Brine shrimp can be fed to fry once bbs hatched first 12 hours(First 6hrs has most nutrition, after 12 hours v.minimum nutrition) , i don't see any problems of the fry eating them after 12hours.*
So i only hatched 1 bottle of bbs each day and 1 small bottle for spare.(Make sure your bbs eggs amount is enough to feed twice a day(I used 1/4 of a teaspoon) ) Another bottle with just (1/2 the amount you usually used for daily feeding) of bbs eggs for spare/emergency. The fry had to be fed at least once a day. If both did not hatched in time, Spirulina water may comes into handy =)
Note: Dec-Jan, Cold Weather caused my bbs didn't hatch in time twice during first 2 weeks of raising fry. (For about 1-2days, didn't had food for them except spirulina water and about 8-10 fries died.)

Feeding Schedule:
1st Week: First 2 days(Free Swimming), Spirulina + Vitamin Solution , after that, BBS feeding on day & night.
On 2nd week after birth (Roughly 8-9days), increase the bbs to 1/2 a teaspoon, as 1/4 wont be enough to keep all of them full.
On 3rd Week, 15days Old , you may start feeding Daphnia & BBS, this will allow them to grow fast with variety of food.
Week 4-5, BBS / Daphnia / Tubifex Worms every 3rd day.
Week 6 , Frozen Blood Worm Can be introduced now(Chopped Into smaller Pieces!!) (I starved them for a day or 2 before feed) (Trained them for Dead Food (They started eating Atison Betta Starter)).
You may still continue feeding BBS / Daphnia & Tubifex Worms.

Note: All my live food is rinse with tapwater before feeding. (MICROWORMS CAN ONLY BE FED DURING THE FIRST WEEK. AS THEY CARRIES BACTERIA THAT WILL AFFECT THE VENTRALS OF THE FRY IF FED MORE THAN A WEEK)

*TIPS ON KEEPING TUBIFEX WORM LONGER*

6) The Water Change
First 2-3 weeks, slowly add a cup of conditioned water (6ml of ketapang extract/500ml of water/2-3drops of anti-chlorine/2-3 drops vitamin plus/1 drop of methylene blue and leave it overnight) once every 2 day (make use of airline tubing and air stone to slow down water flow) once two weeks or more(you should have already added about 6-8times) the tank should be full. After 2-3 weeks, you may wanna start the 50% water changes.

< - My Method, place pail below the fry tank and tie a chopstick with the airline tube(the one going in the fry tank) suck alittle to kick off the suction to the fry tank water, use the chopstick and slowly aim for the bottom dirty particles to remove them. Then place new conditioned water higher than the fry tank. use airline tube with the same method flow in downwards with an air stone to slow down water flow. 
(On the left is pumping new water to the fry tank w/airstone)
(Usage of a cup of ketapang extract, 3-5 drops of methylene blue, 3-5 drops of vitamin plus and 1/2-3/4 tank of new water and leave it overnight for at least 24hrs for 2 of my breeding tank)

Use airline tube carefully suck up the dirty particles at the base slowly, (if you suck up some fry, you may either used the same method and return them to the tank or sacrifice them, chances of these fry survive is 50-50% for this siphoning here and there), then add in new conditioned water. (Rule: 1 litre take out, 1.5-2 litre goes in) . Repeat every 3-4 days for next 2 weeks. After 1 Month, you may start 70%-90% water changes every 2-3days till the 6th/7th week(Another 2-3 weeks). The fry are strong enough to handle 100% change now. (And you may start jar the aggressive males(7th-9th week).

(If before the 2nd weeks, you see many fries dying off(They will turn white, amount Like 10 or more dead fries), something might be living in the water that is killing your fry. Add few drops Methylene Blue or Scoop the fry up, do a 100% water change carefully. Chances are 50-50%. they will survive. As if you leave it, most probably they all die, so do something before it happens.)
So far for my top 2 breeding tank, on 7th day since hatched, (Meaning 9-10th day after eggs laid), i siphon about 3-4 Dead fry from each tank . So you can roughly judge for reference.
(I also spotted micro whitish wormy stuff is growing/climbing my tank, eating bbs, but i dont think it harms the fry, and also the fry is nipping on the base which i doesnt know what it is<might be some micro-organism that produced by the plant/vitamin plus/spirulina), but occasionally their stomach is full, white in color, i suspect the fry is feeding on them.)

7) Jarring
Week 7-8
Now, you may start jarring the aggressive Males. Those Larger ones can be isolated and they should live well on their own. However if you have limited space do not take them out till you prepared for it. Otherwise wait till 9th week, when they are ready for smaller pellets. Females can live together as a community tank.

8) Fry Log 
Day 1-14

Day 15-21

Day 22-43