Cull the bad ones, sell the better ones, keep the best ones

If you want to breed a lot, you will need to be prepared to cull a lot too. Personally I use a hungry fish to cull mine, but as long as its humane and painless any culling method can be used

 

I did read a bit on culling, but found it to be quite cruel (depending on the reasoning). Though, if I must, I would much rather feed it to other fish. That way, it's natural.

 

Yeah I can see how some people view it as cruel and its no fun task, but considering an average spawn size is 500 it becomes an unfortunate side effect of breeding. But by culling you are doing the nicer ones a massive favour, giving them better chance at survival and growth by removing competition for food and space, plus less fish=cleaner water

In the wild only about 1% of betta fry would survive into adulthood, with nature weeding out the unwanted ones...in captivity the breeder has to take on this job instead

 

Yeah. I mean, what if I just kept some African dwarf frogs with them? Wouldn't the frogs kill off and eat the weaker and slower ones?

 

In a confined tank theres a chance they might eat them all.
Theres also a good chance that theyll eat the good ones, since if you are culling early and before they start looking like actual fish, you have no way of knowing what youre removing

Its best to remove culls as you find them, so start by looking for bent spines and other deformities, then runts, x factors, topline, shape, colour etc all of which you notice as the fish ages.
When you get to the shape and colour stage culling can be as easy as giving them to a petshop...But if your petshop takes poor care of its bettas it may be more kind to humanely cull them instead of letting them suffer and die slowly in a store
Decent shape and colour stage such as short first dorsal rays, slightly round edges etc can be sold to the public, just dont sell ugly culls to them or you will be known as a cull seller...

But basically, if you do one big early mass cull you have no clue what quality youre culling

 

Breed practically also means culling, especially when you want to experiment. Some would even cull undesired colors.
It
I dot mean to sound negative, but when experimenting, you will end up keeping 100+ adult bettas. In many cases the desired "genos" do not physically show the traits (fin length, Betta size/giant, and color). There will be times when you need to keep several offspring in order to experiment possibilities. . . .imagine doing that for each desired trait.

I suggest you start with one line of breeding and go along adding new traits. Avoid jumping from one to a totally new line. . . . Eg. Experimenting on CTEE then jump to PK x HM, from black to lavender. . . . . let's say you're working on CTEE orchid. Make your next project black melano or Super, then followed by black EEHM or EECTPK . . . . . so try understand each line before you jump in.

I wouldn't suggest keeping frogs with fry. Not sure how these frogs are, but local frogs can kill every fry and adult with its wastes. Unless heavily planted or naturally set up, bettas are easy prey because they are slow and need to surface for air.

 

Are you talking about African clawed frog? I don't think African dwarf frogs can do much harm to bettas except young fry. They're too small and slow and a lot of people actually keep them with bettas as tankmates. In fact, bettas are more likely to kill them. You want a big fish that can swallow a betta whole.

 

I am referring to the dwarf ones. I didn't mean full grown bettas, but the fry. It was just a thought I had on a way to natural cull some of the betta fries.

I was honestly unaware that the dwarf frogs wouldn't eat them at all. I'd love to get a few as tank mates for my baby betta, but I'm scared they'll eat him (He's around an inch long).

 

I agree the poor little dwarf frogs probably couldn't even fit a betta fry in their mouths, let alone hunt one down. They starve to death with pellets in front of their faces. People (me included) have to very carefully make sure the little frogs eat by hand feeding or teach them where to find food (ex: in a bowl), they can't see very well and definitely aren't the best hunters. And clawed frogs get huge. Frogs are a terrible idea to cull fry, just my opinion.

 

I'm hunting for an Axolotl for culls. I might as well have a species I enjoy. Until then I have a fellow fish friend that has a couple of Oscars. That way I don't even have to watch.