Brian's Tropicals! (Betta albimarginata)

I keep these fish at 76°F (24°C) in a 20 gallon long. The substrate is white playground sand and there are lots of plants, even emergent anubias (see pic). I have started adding lots of oak leaves too. I use tap water (pH 7.6, 220 ppm) that has filter bags of peat moss added (I just put the bag in the tank). Malaysian driftwood also helps color the water. I usually keep floating plants like Riccia with them also. Babies just show up in tanks that have albimarginata. The male will disappear for a few days which means he has a mouth full of eggs. Then the male reappears and a few days later you start seeing babies in the tank. The parents will eat the babies, so remove the parents if you want a lot of fry to make it. These fish grow extremely fast. I've had a tank full of about 20 babies grow up into adults and start spawning within just a few months. I actually saw a pair of them spawning right up at the front of the tank so I videotaped it. The video is below. Remember there's about 20 fish in this 20 gallon tank! The female seems to hold the eggs a lot and then spit them out in front of the male. If he ignores them, she picks them back up and tries again later. Eventually, he takes them. They spawned for at least 90 minutes like this.

Here's some more pictures of young adults.

Another spawning!

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