New to the forum :)

[Merrilyn]

Hi all. My name is someone. I've been keeping fish for over 35 years, mainly discus, but I got my first pair of wild betta macrostomas in 2005. I was lucky enough to breed them 2 months after I got them, and after several spawnings, got a total of 91 fry from this pair. I've been out of fish for a couple of years due to health reasons, but I'm back again in a small way with 2 pair of betta macrostomas again. This time I'm trying low tech planted aquariums to house the betas. Only had them a couple of weeks, but they are looking good and seem to love their new homes.

I'm so glad to see they are being bred by some of the members here. When I bred my fish, there was no one else in Australia breeding them, so my blood lines came to a dead end. This is a magnificent fish, and worthy of a place in your fish room. The best advice I could give to anyone wanting to breed them is "leave them alone". They are very private fish, and apart from a daily 10% waterchange using airline tubing, and feeding, leave the tank completely alone and let them get on with it. I'll share some tips I got from one of the leading collectors of macrostomas when they were still able to be collected from the wild, in subsequent posts.

Looking forward to hearing of more members having breeding success.

Cheers.

[KatuwaToy]

hii someone xx i hope you like this forum as much as we all do xx , id love to hear your stories, experiences and advice on breeding fish.

xx Kat

[Merrilyn]

Thanks for the welcome Kat. I'm more than happy to share any tips I can. I'd love to see several breeding colonies of these fish in Australia so that the breed is firmly established, at least in a captive population. With the constant destruction of their native habitat, soon the wild populations will be gone and all we have left will be our captive populations.

Not sure how the word "someone" got in the post. Maybe we're not allowed to use real names, so please, just call me Mez :D

[afr3178]

Welcome Mez!

So happy to have another macrostoma breeder on here! There are definitely 3 people on here (me included) that have bred macrostoma successfully and have quite a few resulting fry. I know there are definitely another 2 people that keep pairs and I'm sure they'll both get theirs to breed soon too.

They're such a gorgeous fish! With the higher availability of them, it's great to be able to introduce new bloodlines and share knowledge. I'm very excited to have you on this forum

Cheers

Adam

P.S we are allowed to use full names, it's possible autocorrect changed it... it always does silly things like that :P

[daniely]

Welcome mez!

[Merrilyn]

Thanks for the warm welcome guys. I'm so thrilled to hear that there are macrostomas being bred on this forum. Is anyone breeding wild caught fish, or are they all coming from breeders in Malaysia.

My understanding is that there are no more wild caught fish being imported and that what we get are domestic bred. I know my two pairs came from Malaysia.

Love to see some photos of your fish guys. I know you have probably already posted pics but you can never have too many photos of mactostomas

Mez.

[afr3178]

From what I know, it's illegal to catch betta macrostoma from the wild anymore. So all fish are from captive bred lines, as much as we would all love to get our hands on wild caught specimens, I don't think that will happen anytime soon due to habitat destruction and a shrinking population. Unless a reintroduction to the wild happens, I doubt we will ever get wild caught fish...