Breeding Betta Macrostoma

Betta Macrostoma is one of the most beautiful betta. Because of its small geographical(Malaysia and Brunei) habitat. Wild specimen is rare and command a very high price. On the other hand, because the fish is very sensitive, keeping it alife is a challange, let a lone breeding it.

I had tried keeping Betta macrostoma twice before and failed. This is my third time trying and I finnally able to keep it alife. And manage to breed it. Yes!!!!!!!!!!

Since the wild betta is getting rare. I hope this post will help others in breeding this species and keep the strains going on.

Colorful Male

Macrostoma prefer soft and acidic water. pH 5 is what I aim for. Higher pH will lead to skin infection and often fatal. I lost two fishes because of that. Peat filter medium is good way to reduce pH. Alternatively you can use ADA Amazonia II soil. The fish prefer lower temperature. I used to keep them in room(28-30C) temperature, they survive but never thrive. I am now living in a service apartment with 24 hour aircondition. The temperature is kept at 25C with a heater.

Colorless Female

Most of the report on the web tell you that Macrostoma need space to breed. On contrary, mine breed in very small space. Because of space constrain in Hong Kong(which I am currently posted in temporary), I only have a 24"x14"x8" tank. To make it worse, I divide the tank into two with a divider and keeps a pair on each side. The tank has ADA amazonia II as substrate and is heavily planted. The current is slow with small powerhead filter.

Courting pair

I got these two pair from Andrew(my Malaysian friend). The fish settled in quikily and almost instanting court. Within a couple of weeks, the fishes spawn, both of them. The first two spawn was like a practice round. The male incubate the eggs in thier mouth only for a few days then swallowed all of them.

Courting dance

Subsequently the male learned how to brood the eggs properly. During this period, if you feed the fishes, the male might try to eat and I suspect while doing it, some eggs are accidentally swallowed. Learning that, I seperate the pair when the male is brooding. Oh. The female do help carries the eggs when it is a large spawn. But I never manage to get the female to complete the brooding because I feed them after the laid eggs.

Brooding male. Its color turned pale.

Not all fries mature at teh same time. After about 3 -4 weeks, the male release the fires in batches. Only free swiming fries are released. Once I tried harvesting the fries by plying open the mouth and found that they are at different developmental stage. Some free swimming and some still carries thier yolksac.

Each brood yield about 20-30 fries. Plying actually harvest more, I suspect I lost some fries to the filter in the natural method.

Fries

The fries is able to survive in the heavily planted aquarium without feeding. I suppose there is plenty of macro-organism in the tank. For those that I harvested, they accept newly hatch brineshrimp readily. Once they accepted brineshrimp, they readily accept frozen brineshrimp/dapnia and dried food.