Fighters By Keri McDonald
When my 12 year old daughter and I decided to breed Siamese Fighters, we read every book we could lay our hands on. The advice varied from book to book, so we decided to try the basics, ie. no gravel on bottom, with darkened glass, pH level 6.5, no plants, heat 30C.
Our first few batches were a disaster. They would hatch, then die. At the time we were feeding them a commercial fry mixture. A few attempts led to the death of both male and female from the oily scum that develops, and it happened quite fast overnight. Finally we had some young fry. We didn't even know that they were there until I decided once more to strip the tank and try again. There were seven. They must have been at least three weeks old as all had developed their labyrinth organs.
A few more failures and we were close to giving up. Then we bought a beautiful turquoise male. We decided to have another go, but my breeding tank was full of molly fry. My l0 year old's silver molly regularly produced many fry, but on this occasion had produced 107. We decided to use the 'sick' tank. It has an undergravel filter and was planted with lace plant and floating jenny. I told my daughter that I couldn't be bothered taking out the filter as the tank had been completely stripped the previous day, and I wasn't about to do it again. We sloped the gravel quite steeply from front to the back, so we could put the female in a coffee jar at the back of the tank. I didn't bother with the pH level, as this wasn't a serious 'go', just an attempt to keep one daughter happy. The temperature was 30C. I purchased a long, wide riser tube to cover the riser and tubing of the filter so that the bubblenest wouldn't break up.
The male made the biggest bubblenest I have seen, being several inches in diameter, and at least an inch high. The mating was successful. I mated him to one of our 'undiscovered' bunch. We left the male in until he was a nervous wreck in one corner. Success! We had 18 viable fry, 17 of whom are now 2 1/2 months old.
Spurred on by this success we tried again, this time with a male from our original seven. We had two ripe females, so I gave him both. He obliged by stripping them both. It seems we now have approx 30-50 viable fry.
They are in their third week and labyrinth organs are developing well. They are just over a centimetre long. Their food for the first week was frequent feedings of home-made liquid fry food. It makes the tank mucky, but cleanable. Now they have 4 feeds a day, 2 of liquid fry, 2 of Brine Shrimp nauplii. I also think that the success is due to the fact that whenever I put fighters and floating jenny together, the latter rots. Instant infusoria culture.
As a footnote to this, we cleaned the tank when the fighter fry were 4 weeks old, and we have 75 fry! OK, any suggestions from anyone as to how we separate them all, 'cause I don't have 75 small jars'? We also have a tank full of 2 week old fry. HELP'
Editors Note: An excellent article which should inspire the others of us that haven't stuck with Fighters over the years to give them another go. One of our more experienced members who has bred a lot of fiddly fish has been quoted as saying "if you can breed the Siamese Fighter in reasonable quantities, you can breed anything!" Like Father Thorofare used to say, "I think there's something in that for all of us, don't you.