Bill and Dottie : The Arranged Marriage

  My dad and I have been thinking of breeding Bill for quite some time. At first I was rather hesitant

due to me being in college and space for the fish. However, since I'm back for 2 and 1/2 months, I

decided to give it a go.

  Relatively speaking I'm pretty new to breeding bettas but I've done my research and I also rely on

my dad's knowledge of the Betta's he owned as a child.

  The initial plan was to find a gal as vivacious as Bill and with the same coloration. Hopefully, Bill's

white coloring is a dominant gene, but the chances of that are slim.

  I must say that finding a white female is hard. Males are not so rare but females for some reason

seem to be mostly blue and red! So finally I settled on a brilliant blue one and named her Dottie.

Now she isn't dotty as her name may imply but she was named Dottie after my mom Dorothy.

  I have an old glass tank that has got to be over 6 years old, lying in my backyard so I decided to use

that instead of my plastic 2 point something gallon tank. I washed it up and rigged up the filter and

 bought a bunch of plants for the aquarium.

  First, I gently transferred Bill into the tank, followed by Dottie. They seemed a lil surprised at first.

Tensely I watched the two of them, hoping that they would at least be able to bear each other. To my

 surprise, they get along pretty well. The exception is that now Bill has a bride, he gets pretty excited

 and keeps trying to mate with her. The silly guy hasn't even built a bubble nest yet!

  Usually Bill would build the nests in the span of a day and I hope he will build one soon. Can't wait

to see him take care of his eggs! I'm starting to feel as if I'm the one giving birth. The annoying thing

 is that my older tank sprung a leak, forcing me to transfer them both back to Bill's old tank

 temporarily.I did so want them to enjoy the larger tank.

 This is a picture of Bill and Dottie. I don't have a camera, so the pics are taken via my phone and it's

 not really clear. I think Dottie was overfed in the petshop thats why she looks so huge. Since she was

 in a tank with a whole lot of other Betta's I guess one of them must have gotten into a fight with her

 and ripped her fins. Nevertheless, she's still a beauty and after a few weeks with me she'll be just

 fine.Yay!

That's the tank that eventually sprung a leak.Pity but the did look awfully happy in there

That's Dottie down there and that's Bill going insane again

Ah that big showoff there is Bill :)


  I hope that these two will be able to get along well enough so that i can have a whole bunch of

 adopted fish kids in a few days :)