Plakat or Cichlid? Never seen this before!

[BettaBaited]

Friday I put my conditioned plakat pair in the spawn tank. I was surprised the next morning to already find eggs in the nest. :D I promptly (and easily) removed the female. I have never bred with this male before, so I watched him carefully for egg-eating tendencies. For the first few hours he was doing a great job watching over the nest, but when I checked back after lunch, he was on the other side of the tank, under an IAL. Not alarmed, but curious I examined the leaf. Underneath he had built a large bubblenest! But that wasn't what was most surprising... He then proceeded to spit a mouthful of eggs into the new nest!! I watched for the next few hours as he moved half of the eggs to the new nest. He then spent the rest of the day taking turns guarding the two nests.

...This morning there are no little tails in either nest. :( I am forced to think he may have eaten them overnight. But I still had to post this because I have never seen a betta move eggs from one nest to the other. What do you guys think happened?

[AlphaBetta1]

This is interesting. There is a type of Betta called Betta Pugnax or Forest Betta which is a mouth brooder. He may have put the eggs in his mouth to protect them. Can you post a picture of the male and female?

[Myates]

A lot of male bettas will move their nests.. usually if they don't feel comfortable where it was originally - say the front of the tank and you come to look he may feel it's too close for comfort. He may of stopped moving them because he was interrupted, or he still wanted to claim the other site just in case he missed any.
Hard to tell exactly with them. But what you saw is him moving his eggs.. not mouth brooding.

As for no little tails sticking out.. how long had it been since they have bred?
If it's been more than 3 days then you can probably assume they aren't properly fertilized or the male/female is infertile. Moving should not cause harm to the eggs.
Do you use plastic wrap or a glass cover over the tank? If so make sure to remove it slowly trying to avoid a draft from blowing into the tank which can cause sudden coolness and could possibly cause harm.

I would just leave him be, disturb him as little as possible.. look from afar - use a camera and zoom in to look at him more closely if needed.. or make sure the room is darker and sneak in a bit more. But give them some more time, if by day 5 (from spawn) or so there aren't any babies swimming around, or if he seemed to of lost interest then I would remove him.

[MSG]

How many gallons is your spawn tank?

My betta "Dimples" relocated his nest 3-4 times. At first he built the nest in the FRONT under an oak leaf, then next thing I know the nest is gone. Then I noticed it's been moved it to the CORNER. A few hours later, nest vanishes again. Reappears on the side of the tank and then a few hours later, it gets moved one more time all the way into the BACK where I can't SEE.

For 2 days Mr Dimples Betta was swimming around moving bubbles & eggs. It was fun to check up on him because he always busy. When the final location was decided, he kept adding bubbles to reinforce the nest until the hatchlings appeared.

Once they showed up, he started chasing them around the tank. Didn't see many of them hit the floor of the tank though.

The spawn tank was next to my computer.

[BettaBaited]

The tank is a 20 long, with the original hood & a piece of plastic taped over the accessories cutout on the back. I am sure that they are both hmpk because I got the male from Junglist & the female from one of my past spawns.

It has been since Friday night... so not quite 3 days. I don't see any eggs left in either nest, but I'll give him another day just in case. I will definitely take care not to bother him... although I have only opened the cover once- to remove the female- I might've been putting my big clumsy face a little too close to his precious progeny... lol ;D

MSG you make me feel much better... at least my male isn't some kind of freak. haha

[MSG]

If there's no fry in 24 hours just recondition & try again in a week.

First time Dimples spawned was a complete mess because I didn't provide a good foundation for the nest. I didn't want to use styrofoam in the tank so I used the bottom half of a tupperware container, but it was completely unstable. The nest broke apart & dimples got sick of rebuilding, so he ate them all. I think I was using 2 powerful HOB filter too.

I'll be attempting another spawn when Spring arrives. Way too cold to attempt breeding now.

BTW, my spawn tank was 5G super planted messy jungle with a giant piece of driftwood in the middle that occupied half of the tank.

What type of filtration are you using?

[BettaBaited]

I usually don't use filtration until the fry are free swimming, but I've got a small sponge filter collecting good bacteria in my sorority tank, to put into the fry tank when ready. I have quite a few plants too (It seems to speed up the spawning process IME) & some IAL. The first nest is in the half of an 8oz styrofoam cup. I also have a heater set to 80F. (a few degrees higher than their home tanks)

This is my usual spawning setup, so I guess maybe he's just picky. lol :) I'll probably just end up reconditioning... I didn't have any bloodworms this week (lfs was late getting a shipment) so I used small fruitfly larvae, which they love, but I guess it just wasn't the same. lol

[Myates]

Woke up this morning and one of my virgin boys I'm working with had built 10 bubble nests spread throughout the whole tank (10g) overnight. Poor girl didn't know where to go once released lol

Silly boys..

[BettaBaited]

lol! :D