breeding out agression in bettas

[carpenter547]

apologies for the hijack this is the new thread.

basic premise of my stance.

we have selectively breed the most colorful long finned anti social bettas possible.

we should now that we have the looks start to breed out the anti social.

[carpenter547]

in the wild fish get mates by out competing and out advertising thier rivals.

we have many many many years ago replaced natural selection with human selection. we took the choice way from the female betta and instatuted the betta rape stand *dog fight reference*

we have already gone so far away from nature with these fish that we have breed in flaws "swim bladder problems, velvet weaknesses etc."

it is possible to alter a betta behaviour with genetics we have done it so lets undo it. breed the bettas with the calmest disposition.

you won't be losing any color or fin lenght or any thing.

[carpenter547]

as you can see they are far from drab and ugly fish short finned yes but then again these are wild bettas what our splendis came from so if they can come from this into what we have and be made to be more agressive then surely we can tone down thier behaviour and keep the finnage and colors no?

[CodeRed]

But do we want to? Part of what makes the bettas special are their beauty when they flare, the personalities that comes from their aggression. There was a thread on this topic earlier, I'll see if I can find it. Essentially, while it would be a nice idea to think about, we would lose part of the reason we all love bettas.

[MrVampire181]

If you want them to be peaceful...breed your fish in a large tank, remove the female, leave dad with the fry and they should stay peaceful.

Each fish is different, I doubt you could just breed calm fish and make them not aggressive. They've been bred for aggression for the last 800 years, it'll be a while to get it out of them.

[CodeRed]

http://www.bettafish.com/showthread.php?t=48473

There we go.

[carpenter547]

funny thing about betta people they abhore the act of fish fighting and look down at people who intentionally breed bettas improperly and then say

but i need my fish to be agressive so that he has personality.??

and yeah mr. vampire me and you been talking about different methods of how to decresse agression and increase stocking count. and your method demonstrates that nothing but the fight would be lost in the attempt.

[JKfish]

What Mr.Vampire said was correct, however, here (first part- I'm not taking info from here http://www.bettysplendens.com/articl...?articleid=809. Second part- Info I'm using is in here http://www.bettysplendens.com/articl...?articleid=839 )

the youngsters looked like a pretty drab bunch of solid brown or cambodian fish. It wasn't until the males were jarred that they grew territorial and began flaring at their neighbors; that's when their dynamic color appeared.

Therefore, it leads one to believe that we colors we love in our bettas would be supressed when and if they were more social, because that super bright coloring is a very good way to impress others and defend the territory, and therefore wouldn't be needed or wanted because they are social (unless it was the alpha male, who would definately be colorful)

Carpenter: we might want to move our little debate over to the other thread. XD

[1fish2fish]

This topic always irritates me. If you have a problem with domesticated Betta splendens being aggressive then get another fish! Don't try to act like the fish I love are wrong. There is nothing wrong with Betta the way they are. The reason there are so many health problems and genetic issues is because people either inbreed too much or breed what ever fish they can pick up at their local petsmart, not giving a care to the genetics of the fish.

Bettas breed the way all bubble nesters breed. Your dog fighting reference has absolutely nothing to do with the point your trying to make.

If you don't like the fact that bettas are aggressive then get guppies. They come in many different colors and can be kept peacefully together. If you like bettas than look into a less aggressive wild species, all are beautiful and unique in their own way.

If you were to breed a non-aggressive betta it wouldn't be the same species as Betta splendens.

[carpenter547]

and i do think that the ability to have a large tank filled with many bettas would be worth the effort.