We have some new fish I think?

[bettasusa]

Amazing thread, interesting read! Keep the photos of the bettas and Thailand coming please. Thanks :)

[toddscire]

This is one of the fish that checked out good to go. Slide looked good and meds are stopped. We will check one last time in one week but most of the time we get everything in the first run. There is not to much we can not cure. But most of the wild fish actually check out better than tank raised stuff. They are very very hardy fish. They eat the same day and will become ready for jars in one or two days from wild. By day 5 or 10 the males will be producing nests and looking out the jar for Love!
OK, back to the fish......This is #17 and as you can see it is void of much color and no stress bars are showing and the fish is eating well.


This is fish #4 and you can see that it has some bars but still not showing any color but red and orange. Again the black spot on the tail. smaragdina is void of this spot on all locations we collected.


This is fish # 16 and is eating and is female. She was collected with male #17 in a breeding trap at pond 2. The trap is a 4 inch bamboo log with a water lily planted in it and a open end that hangs in the water just below the lily. If there is a betta ready to spawn with in 5 feet it will be in the tube the next day. Just as this was. Notice no color againa and the bars and tail spot.


OK this is #13 and again void of all color.. this is female and colected with male #14 pond 2.


This is # 18 he is very large and was collected from the pond the first day I was there. He was collected with a dip net and not a trap.
Again tail spot and no color but orange and black. He is a jumper and we had to net the top of his jar to keep him in and he still bites the net above his jar. We will not breed him as he seems to be a fighter and not a lover...My wife has nicked named him rocket.

[toddscire]

So here is a update on the fish. We pulled all the flood records for the last 40 years and we know for a fact that pond 2 has never had flow into it from out side. We as this is on high ground the water can flow out during rain and flood out not in. It can get several feet of water and still not overflow. We have pulled a few hundred samples now from a 2k circle and have not matched the fish yet. We will now pair up a few that are making some good nest with a few of our whites so we can see what they produce. Anything we put with our dd whites will give us a 50% mix we should get a ggod idea of the background of the fish. We will also keep 4 or 5 pairs and have moved 30 pair to local breeders and the pond will be kept as is. We will keep it till we see what we have. We are getting into breeding season now and gearing up for summer sales. We have a lot of extra pairs to play with and will keep this new betta in our line. We know that it has a lot or red and black in it so we will cross with some whites and some ddblack and a few left fielders we have that are black and white and orange and black. We also are working on a purple that my wife said she is going to cross out. The purple did not sell good this year. But we think this fish is a wild blue that has lost most of the color from line breeding. This fish was very isolated and we are waiting for DNA to show if it is a local green or a blue from some other river a few km away. But this is not a normal local betta and they are some very very nasty betta. One jumped the jar and got into our sell tank and really did a number by day time. He had all 40 fish 2 times his size backed into the back of the 200 gallon tank. His range was around 4 feet. Amazing! Let us know if you have some ideas on what to cross this out to. We can get pictures of what ever color you think might be nice to get wild dose. We have every color you can think of. Some you might not get in other countries. LEt us know....

[cjayBetta]

This is so interesting... I wish i lived there and could just go pluck wild betta's out of a pond :P

[toddscire]

It is not very easy. Wild bettas are fast and smart when compaired to pellet few farm raised fish. If they see a shadow they are gone and you will not get them. For every 2 fish we get there are 20 we miss. Cobra and spiders and ect all that can kill you before the doctor visit. But, it is a good hobby and keeps me out of issues. We have only hmpk and pk and wild stuff. My wife has a lot of food fish and this is just a local hobby for us as betta AAA only bring 10 baht or so at market or around 35 usa cent. Most of the time it is 3 for 1.00 usd. And this is for grade AAA for grade b and c it is less. We ship grade b and c to usa mostly and grade AAA.

[toddscire]

Epimedium sagittatum
120gr/Kg
Tribulus Terrestris
90gr/Kg
Chlorella ptotothecoides
180gr/Kg
Spirulina platensis
100gr/Kg
Haematococcus pluvialis
170gr/Kg
Euchema cottonii
190gr/Kg
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
40gr/Kg
Rice bran
110gr/Kg
Mash Size
<0.2mm

94% male sex if fed for 48 days and is all natural. I saw this in use at a breeder in Thaialnad today when we tood some fish to BKK and we talked about hormones and betta's this guy bragged on how he can produce 90%males every time and 99% with hormones. The above was added to pellet and micro diets and few to bb brine.

This is the dose for non organic and was used to get around 98 to 99 % males and very very large males in 3 or 4 months.
The china issue was with the use of 17a-methyltestosterone (MT), which was incorporated into a starter fish feed at 600 mg MT/kg feed and not the normal dose of 60 mg/kg in betta's I hear that 90mg/kg of trout chow is used. We use from chow and skip all hormones as we are a certified organic farm. The above recipe can be added to your normal food. I would bet 60% of betta's that come from the huge breeders are hormone enhanced males that should have been born a female. They will have small egg production, bad fins and not produce the color you are thinking you will get. I have seen 5 inch betta fish now. I am sure this will be the next fad. Just like the flower horn was. What a mess that is. Most of the fish farmed for food are are sex reversed where hormones were used in producing male monosex tilapia. How else can they get it from egg to table in 4 months. Why do you think tropical fish are not the same and come from other countries. We can use stuff that you can not. We can produce them fast and cheap. I say we because my brother in law feeds a lot of hormones to his snakeheads to get them to table fast. They are like mad dogs and I would not like to fall in a pond while they are feeding. We hear story after story of the stupid farmers kids that went swimming and never came back. But this is about betta's we will be posting some pictures this week of our new fish and better wild pictures also. Again please do not contact us for sales. We do not sell to public. If we have some fish that are wild and you need them for breeding let us know and we will work to get you wild stock from thailand. You must be a import agent and the fish are free of charge. We do not sell wild fish and thing they should be saved when possible. We can guarantee that Wild green and wild blue are safe for now in 12 locations. All have snakehead traps and betta breeding tubes. We do fish counts every year at all locations.

[SpookyTooth]

This is an absolutely fascinating topic! Thank you for sharing all this information with us, toddscire. I look forward to reading more. Best of luck with your breeding efforts!

[Coppermoon]

Any update on these???? photos gone :(

[toddscire]

Originally Posted by Coppermoon

Any update on these???? photos gone :(

We keep the wild fish in a land locked swamp in our farm in Thailand. They are in the north east of thailand. We have put up a fence and have set this aside as we have some wild orchids there also. This area was not cleared in the war and we will leave it untouched. We check it every year. We decided to keep it as we have for over 100 years. Untouched. The land will stay in our family for all time. This spot is well protected.