After looking at Shi Xuan's post on the B. edithae from Bintan, I've decided to share some photos and experience of the B.edithae "Kalimantan" that I've been keeping for some time (also, I needed to take a break from school assignments).

I was introduced to wild bettas and fish keeping by a friend who's extremely knowledgeable about bettas and fishes in general. He gave me a single male B.edithae about 2 years ago. Back then, I knew pretty much nothing about keeping fishes and thinking back, I'm really surprised that I didn't accidentally kill the fish (I had once dumped him into a tank that was only filled up with aqua soil 10 minutes earlier). Initially, I found the B.edithae to be a dull fish colour-wise. But over time, I started seeing the subtle iridescent blue spots on the scales and fins, the blueish face masking and the "dusty" gold on the body when shining a light over them. They really are beautiful fishes. Not to mention, they have very interesting personalities. Anyway,here are some photos of the male:

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This photo was taken about 2 months after I had gotten him.
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This photo was taken last month.


It's been quite some time since then and I've learned a lot from fellow forumers here,reading up on the internet and of course, the friend who gave me the B.edithae in the first place. The same friend also gave me another pair of wild caught edithae a year back and they have spawned numerous times. The pair has been kept in a 1.5ft tank with sand, driftwood and some hardy plants (java ferns, java moss and anubias) The male swallowed the eggs in the first two broods. On the third attempt, he held for over a month before releasing in the main tank. I did not spot any fry from that brood and I had assumed that the female had eaten them. Three months later, while sitting and looking at the tank, I noticed something small darting out from a corner of the tank and it was a fry! It had somehow found enough food in the tank (I observed it pecking at the driftwood and plants) and avoided becoming food itself. I spent a few days trying to catch it (not easy in a tank with lots of plants and driftwood) and put it in a breeder box. It was fed on a diet of microworms till it was large enough to take crushed flakes and pellets.

At the same time, the male was brooding for the fifth time(he had swallowed the fourth brood). I transferred the fry into a spare 1ft tank I had and placed the male into the breeder box around the time I predicted he would release. Again, there were no fry in sight. This time, I suspected the the fry might have gotten out into the main tank through the slits in the breeder box and got eaten by the female. On the sixth brood, I decided to move the male into a 1ft tank with some java moss and ceramic rings. This time, there were about 15 fry spotted but the male still had more in his mouth and hence, I left him in the tank so that he could release the remainder of his brood. The next morning, I woke up to find the male digging through the java moss and HUNTING the fry down and eating them! By then, he had finished off most of the fry and only 3 survived by hiding in the ceramic rings. This cleared up a lot of the questions from previous broods that went missing. According to my friend, this is a strange behaviour on the male's part because male edithaes are not known to eat their own fry. Finally, on the seventh brood in December, I bought a small guppy tank and kept the male in there when he was close to release. This time, the moment I saw him starting to release, I tried to catch him to strip him. However, he spat everything out the moment I netted him, which saved me the trouble. There were about 30 fry from that brood and some slowly died off over the first week. There are about 20 plus left now and they are about 3 months old and have been feeding on microworms initially then BBS. Here are some photos of the pair and the latest batch of fry:

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Male brooding (I think this was the second brood)
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7th and most successful brood
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3 month old fry after a meal of BBS. They've associated the pipette with food as I always use it to feed the BBS to them, hence they're crowding around it.

Finally, two months ago, I decided to place my first male into the tank with the pair. I was okay if that disrupted the pair from regular spawning because I'm running out of space for additional tanks to keep more fry in. The older male was significantly larger than the younger one and after some sparring, seemed to have subdued him. The female chose to mate with the older male and became extremely aggressive towards the smaller male near mating time. I didn't expect this because 1) I thought the female had bonded well with the smaller male,considering that they had spawned 7 times and 2) I thought that the older male might not be able to spawn after being alone for so long. So far, the female and the older male have spawned twice but both times, he swallowed the eggs. Hopefully I'll be able to get some fry soon. Anyway, here's a video of the female and the older male spawning. They were really going at it but the moment my camera came out, the female became shy.



I'm sorry for the long post but I hope you've enjoyed reading it. Thanks for reading! I have more to share on my experience keeping and breeding these fishes but it's late and I just had a beer. So maybe next time

P.S: My knowledge of wild bettas is still poor so if you spot any factual errors in this post, please let me know!