Quality Thai V United States

[ChoclateBetta]

All my Bettas at Petco get theirs from thialand I am pretty sure so do most Bettas also live foods are given and soft water in thailand there are many people who mass produce lower quality Bettas.

[DiiQue]

Originally Posted by ChoclateBetta

All my Bettas at Petco get theirs from thialand I am pretty sure so do most Bettas also live foods are given and soft water in thailand there are many people who mass produce lower quality Bettas.

Off topic -- sorry.
Hi Choclate... can you please use punctuation as I find your posts super hard to read (I have to read several times to make sense of it all). I find you usually have great stuff to contribute and I do learn from what you post, but again, my head spins.

[ChoclateBetta]

I have a really hard time in grammar and spelling so sorry plus my new laptop can not have spell check.

[ChoclateBetta]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...JuXa2wXq5oDoCg Some of theses are traditional Betta farms some are commercial.

[Maddybelle]

I think part of it is just a numbers game: the more fish you produce, hopefully the more show winners you get. Also, I think it definitely helps that Thai bettas are raised in more natural setting. IAL is awesome, btw. I make a tea out of it, and add it to all of my betta tanks. Its especially good for stressed fish. I think that having darker water makes them feel less exposed.

[ChoclateBetta]

You dont mass produce show quality.

[Maddybelle]

Actually, if you get very nice parents, and raise the fry right, say on a large farm in their natural habitat with plentiful food, there is a high possibility you would get plenty of showable fish. =) Most Thai breeders don't breed their fish the same way we do in the west, and some folks over here would take one look at how they do things and say, "Thats wrong!" But these breeders have been doing this for centuries, first with fighters, and then with show bettas.

[ChoclateBetta]

Most of them breed 2 to three star Bettas from what I have seen plus those farms dont cull they breed then sell.

[EvilVOG]

Thai and other Asian breeders breed in numbers that are much higher than what anyone in this country does. We're talking several hundred thousand fish. Just by sheer numbers there are extremely good odds of a truly special fish being born in one of the thousands of spawns every couple months. Throw into that what others have talked about that Thailand, the weather there, the water there, the insects there and everything else there is their natural habitat, food, ect.

Are they necessarily breeding better quality fish though? Probably not. The conditions they breed these fish in are extremely tough, and are based around a quantity rather than quality approach (not that i would do it any different if i lived in that part of the world). One breeder with a very small operation, paying extra attention to selection of breeders, and extra care to proper feeding is going to probably produce more quality fish per spawn. But are always going to look pale to the sheer numbers of fish the Thai breeders turn over. They will make more quality fish just by accident.

Now also factor in the IBC members. Some of the best fish in the country, and perhaps the best you will ever see, but they pretty much only go to shows, and get sold at the auctions at these shows. I haven't really looked that much at types other than PK, but in that category on Aquabid you will be hard pressed to find a fish by any of these breeders.

[ChoclateBetta]

From what animal planets betta fish care says they breed then sell because there is a higher demand for adults.