Before you breed a fish, make sure you know exactly what you'll be doing with the grown babies--300 is a conservative estimate of how many babies will survive. My first spawn was over 1000, half of which died because I couldn't keep the baby tank clean (can't see the babies when there's a cloud of bacteria in there so twice daily water changes was extremely hard to do)--and I still had about 500 babies that survived and had to be jarred and found new homes. Finding new homes for them is always the hardest part for me--even though I breed high quality bettas, it's a lot of fish to have to find qualified homes for. I knew the conditions my lfs (all of them) keep their bettas in and didn't want my fish to end up like that so I refused to sell to them. I was spending 3+ hours every day doing water changes alone (more time sterilzing tanks/jars, feeding, etc.) on all those juvvie jars so I had no personal life. You'll need to get a signed contract from a store if you intend to sell or give your fish to it--and make sure your contract covers what you'll have to do if you cannot come through with fish (if your whole spawn dies) because stores will easily tell anyone who asks that they'll take their fish but then when it comes to actually taking the fish, suddenly the store doesn't have room for them. Selling on Aquabid or elsewhere online you have to deal with irrate buyers who find the fish in the photo isn't as splendid in real life. Or they default and don't pay so you have to relist the fish and go through all that again. Or the fish dies during shipping (if you've packed properly, 95% of your fish should arrive safe and sound) and you have to replace at your own cost (shipping aint cheap, fish shipping supplies ain't cheap and in general you don't get them back). You also have no idea what the buyer will use your fish for (hopefully, since you're selling for dollars, they won't be using your fish for feeding bigger fish--but there are those out there who think fighting bettas is fun; you also have those out there who haven't a clue how to keep fish and basically your fish, who you've lavish a lot of attention and time on, will die a horrible death from neglect and ignorance). In the 2-3 months of summer, your babies will not be old enough to give away quite yet so you'll be doing the bulk of the heavy work in the autumn [when you've got school again?] and winter. And if you do go into winter and still haven't found new homes for all your fish, how are you going to keep all those fish warm enough? There's a lot to think about before doing a breeding.
