# Selective Betta Breeding



## chocolatecrunch (May 21, 2010)

My goal is to start spawning bettas sometime in december or early january...I think I want to do selective breeding to get bettas with long finnage but are halfmoon double tails (like my fish, GummyBear). I want the body to be silvery blue with pure red finnage (unline GummyBear who has some chunks of blue) and with a thick, black lining on the ends of the finnage. I just want to know what is a good way to get these genes? 
GummyBear is already a double tail halfmoon. His body is a really really dull grayish blue but I want to get fry who have bright, silvery blue matalic scales.....He also has pretty bright red finnage exept there is a chunk of blue streaks wich I want to get rid of. He has kinda a medium sized lining of black on his finnage wich I want to increase the size of. It seems kind of tricky so I am asking for your help 
What would be the best mate for him? I was thinking a double tail or a halfmoon with a metalic blue body and red fins (if that is possible to find) and hopefully the black linage will be passed on through some of the young? I need some help with what charaistics the female should have so can you please describe a good mate with color, fins, and the catagory she sould fit into (halfmoon, double tail, or halfmoon double tail mix)? 
I just need to get a good picture in my mind of what the female should look like...

Thanks! 

P.S. If you need to see what gummybear looks like, just go to my album-link is show below-

http://www.fishforums.com/forum/album.php?albumid=366


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## chocolatecrunch (May 21, 2010)

Actually, I hope to eventually get color like this:








This is pretty much the color I want exept a more silvery look for the body because that is a little too blue. And then I also want to EVENTUALLY (may take one spawn or ten, IDK) want to get a thicker black lining than the one in the pic by about X2.




I hope to then get finage like this:










I'm pretty picky but just wanted to give you a picture of what I'm trying to get 
Have any ideas for the female???


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## chocolatecrunch (May 21, 2010)

Anyone there?


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## hXcChic22 (Dec 26, 2009)

I think the best thing to do is figure out first what characteristics in betta color genetics are dominant and recessive. Just crossing bettas randomly will probably not give you the result you want. You might end up with some interesting stuff... but I imagine getting a specific betta color/pattern is almost like creating a "designer dog" breed. You find the best candidates for the desired qualities you want, then carefully cross them after doing lots of research to make sure it's going to produce what is expected. 
Here's a great site that has recessive/dominant tables and also pictorial references to what colors/patterns there are. http://watershed3.tripod.com/types.html

From what I'm seeing, your best chances at getting double-tail offspring is by mating your male with a doubletail female, that has coloring similar to your male, or more similar to what you want the offspring to look like. The likelihood of getting doubletailed fry from a doubletail/other tail cross is slight since the gene is recessive. Ever do Punnett Squares in Biology?


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