Betta imbellis pics

[delmore]

These are young fish so don't have the coloring of the adults.

http://www.wu7.net/imbellis.html

Here's what they will look like some day, I hope!
http://www.notcatfish.com/findex/fish/betta_imbellis.htm

[ChilDawg]

Those are some beautiful little fish!

On a related note, have you been able to wean them to other foods? Those worms are very high in fat and might shorten their life spans...if you can get them to eat a high-quality flake or pellet food, that would be in their best interest.

[ChilDawg]

Sorry, I don't want to come across as flaming or anything b/c I know how hard it is to get fry to feed on real foods, and I think that you should be commended for even getting to that stage, especially with anabantoid babies, but I figured that this might be helpful. If I am out of bounds in having made this suggestion, I apologize.

[delmore]

Originally posted by ChilDawg
On a related note, have you been able to wean them to other foods?

Thanks for asking. This morning i fed them some frozen bloodworms, and they gobbled them up. They are conditioned to expect food in the morning when the lights come on, so they were expecting something edible. I used the wetman's method of feeding the worms -- chopstick to pick out a few worms at a time. This way only the worms, and not the water enters the tank, so less bacteria. It worked well with the dethawed blood worms too.

Different subject - notice the caudal ocellus, the fake eye on the tail?
I think this is only found in the juvinile B imbellis.

[ChilDawg]

I notice that now that you mention it...they look stunningly like licorice gouramies when at that young age!

[kveeti]

They are awfully cute!!

Kinda off-topic, but I was wondering what brand of heater that was with the fancy little white doodads on it?

[WaterBaby]

Looks like a Marineland Visi-Therm Deluxe submersible heater. I have them in my tanks. They work great, but are $$$$$

[delmore]

Originally posted by WaterBaby
Looks like a Marineland Visi-Therm Deluxe submersible heater...

You are correct.

[OrionGirl]

Awesome pics! Suck lovely little fish.

Glad that they are taking to the frozen blood worms. That's great! How old do they need to be before they can be sexed and breed?

[delmore]

They breed at the same age as the B splendens. So far there is zero aggression, so they're still a bit away from being ready to breed.

Today they also ate FD tubliflex. I was afraid that they would only consider food to be things that wiggled. -- not I know this isn't a problem.

[SnakeIce]

how do you get ahold of this species? I don't have room for them now but would like to keep them in the future

[delmore]

I got them from thefishwzards.com They have some pretty cool and unusual fish - killifish and fish from SE Asia.

I actually bought the fish from Aquabid, but I knew of the sellers - fish wizards. Their aquabid user name is Tdbettasand

They are based in RI, and ship priority if you want for $8. I would only do the priority mail if you live in the north east.